Conservative Parent Groups Working to Reclaim Schools from Leftists

Chinese parents in California rally against Assembly Bill 101 before it was signed into law and made ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, in Los Angeles on April 26, 2020. Linda Jiang/The Epoch Times

A group of American conservatives established a national grassroot organization, Parents Defending Education, to fight left-wing indoctrination in the classroom. Neily, a civil rights advocate, and Asra Nomani, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, were among the leader. The group’s objective is to “reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.”

“In recent years activists have targeted public, private, and charter schools across the country with a campaign to impose toxic new curriculums and to force our kids into divisive identity groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Many schools have already embraced this model, and many more are preparing to embrace it,” the organization posted on its website.

The group explained that they do not tell parents what to do, because no one knows the school and community better than the parents themselves. Instead, it compiled numerous cases and resources that have emerged around the country for parents to use as a reference. “It is time to join together and stop the madness in our schools,” says the group’s website.

According to the information compiled by the organization, it has seen a number of indoctrination examples in New York City’s public and private schools.

In February 2019, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) sponsored a panel discussion titled, “How to Talk To Your Kids About Racism.” The speaker identified whites as the most privileged race and African Americans as being at the bottom, while Asians benefit from “proximity to white privilege.”

According to the New York Post, the panel was steered by the Center for Racial Justice in Education. The Department of Education, headed by then Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, paid the organization approximately $400,000 to conduct “near-weekly training sessions throughout the city to address what it believes is rampant racism infecting schools.”

In June 2020, Queens Chronicle, a local media outlet in the borough of Queens in New York City, revealed that the father of a 7-year-old at PS 144 in Forest Hills reported that the reading materials recommended by the school had racial wording that was “extremely bigoted and unhelpful.”

According to a Sept. 17 report by Fox News, public schools in Buffalo, New York, have incorporated Black Lives Matter propaganda into their elementary school children’s curriculum, and encourage the students to question the importance of the nuclear family.

In December 2020, dozens of faculty and staff at The Dalton School, an elite private school in New York City, put forward an 8-page manifesto and 24 radical requests for an “anti-racism” curriculum. If parents refused to cooperate, the school wouldn’t open, which deeply angered the parents.

In February 2021, the principal of East Side Community High School in Manhattan, Mark Federman, sent materials to all parents, asking them to “reflect” on their “whiteness.”

Parents Unite Against Left-Wing Propaganda

In response to these issues, parents in New York City have established several organizations to fight back.

No Left Turn in Education has 116 members, and Moms for Liberty Facebook group in Nassau, Long Island, New York has 465.

The Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York (CACAGNY), the oldest Chinese civil rights organization in the United States, is also among the grassroot organizations fighting against the CRT curriculum.

In an open letter released in February, CACAGNY said “Critical Race Theory is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud. Hate groups, with allies in politics, the press, and education, pass CRT off as anti-racism and diversity, equity and inclusion, but CRT is exactly the opposite. From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.”

The organization also fights to defend the original admissions policy of the NYC Specialized High Schools, supports Gifted & Talented legislations, and was involved in the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit to stop racial discrimination in college admissions.

The Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a non-profit advocacy group of academics founded in 2015 to counteract what they see as a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses—especially political diversity. Its network includes more than 4,400 professors, K-12 educators, and students. The group has published insightful and thought-provoking works discussing topics such as “splitting and identity politics.”

On April 20, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) posted a recorded conversation on Twitter, in which George Davison, the head of Grace Church School in Manhattan, admitted that the school is “demonizing white people for being born.”

In March 2021, Parents Defending Education requested Buffalo Public Schools, in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to obtain all communications and documents related to “destroying the Western nuclear family structure” in the curriculum, as well as the implementation of courses related to the New York Times 1619 Project.

Schoolhouse Rights seeks to defend and support the individual rights of students, parents, and faculty members in public K-12 education, and defend the basic rights essential for liberty and a free society.

The first CRT lawsuit Schoolhouse Rights filed against CRT was the “Clark v. State Public Charter School Authority,” when William Clark, a mixed race high school senior, sued over the “coercive, ideological indoctrination” in a taxpayer-funded charter school in Nevada.

William’s mother, Gabrielle Clark, is black and his late father was white. William is regarded by his peers as white because of his blonde hair and green eyes. He was threatened with failing grades and non-graduation because he refused to acknowledge “white supremacy.”

William and his mother filed the lawsuit on Dec. 22, 2020 in federal court in Nevada against school authorities. According to the court filing, the charter school, Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus, forced students to identify by race, sex, and sexual orientation and then labeled some of them as “oppressors” in classes. The critical race curriculum was launched without parental notification.

In early April, the school authorities not only retracted William’s failing grades, but also allowed him to opt out of the controversial course. William will graduate as planned this spring.