KC area teachers feel under attack as KS, MO lawmakers pursue parents bill of rights
On Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and disrupted certification of the 2020 presidential election, Angie Powers was teaching a freshman language arts class at Olathe Northwest High School.
Her students had questions.
“One of my students mentioned, ‘Hey, I don’t understand why people are making a big deal out of it,’” said Powers, director of the Olathe National Education Association. The next day, she put together a lesson that allowed the class to explore news articles from vetted sources.
“I realized these students needed help understanding what happened on a factual basis,” she said.
Legislation now under debate in Kansas and Missouri could make it difficult, if not impossible, for teachers like Powers to respond the way she did — using her skills and experience to meet the needs of her students.
Many of the proposals, often referred to as “parents bill of rights” and “transparency” acts, would require educators to post online every piece of material they use, and empower any parent to decide a lesson is inappropriate.
State lawmakers across the country, responding to anger over everything from pandemic restrictions, to curricula on race and gender to local school boards seen as arrogant and unresponsive, are floating a raft of legislation to give parents more say over what goes on in the classroom. They assert that decisions about issues as personal and sensitive as the education of a child should remain ultimately in parents’ hands.
Many teachers see politics, not education policy, underlying the rush to empower parents.
“I think there are bad actors, not parents, but bad actors who want to censor what happens in classrooms, particularly when it comes to experiences of people of color, experiences of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people. And that type of censoring should not be the role of public schools,” said Blue Valley teacher Annie Goodson.
Proponents of the legislation struggle to identify problematic content within Kansas classrooms, instead claiming action is needed to combat a “perception” that students are being exposed to lewd materials and toxic ideology. When pressed, Mike O’Neal, a lobbyist for the right-wing Kansas Policy Institute that wrote one of the bills, couldn’t name specific issues.
“What we have more concrete evidence of is the suspicion of what’s going on whether it’s happening or not,” O’Neal told lawmakers Thursday.
In Kansas, the bills require teachers to post a list of every material they’ve used in their classroom by the end of the school year. Districts would also publish everything used in teacher training and outline the rights guaranteed to parents of public school children.
The legislation calls for a process to flag objectionable material and possibly remove it from classrooms and libraries if parents object.
Rep. Kristey Williams, who chairs the House K-12 Budget Committee, said she plans to combine the parents bill of rights and transparency measure with school choice bills and the overall K-12 budget. Under the Missouri legislation, school districts sued for violating parental rights would be liable for damages, to be paid into a voucher-like school choice program.
Educators say parents already enjoy many of the “rights” lawmakers are seeking to establish for them. They are concerned that the wording of the legislation puts an unnecessary target on their backs. An original version of a Kansas bill would have allowed teachers to be criminally charged for providing harmful content to minors. The provision was pulled in committee.
‘Enormous’ burden
In both states, legislation would require teachers and administrators to compile and publish sweeping lists of instructional materials. Proponents compared it to a college syllabus.
“We give syllabus in college and this isn’t even that level of detail,” said Sen. Caryn Tyson, a Parker Republican who wrote one of the bills. “Once (teachers) see that, it’s not a problem.”
But teachers don’t always have a clean list of materials ready at the beginning of a semester. Plans change at a moment’s notice.
Linda Sieck, a high school Spanish teacher and Shawnee Mission NEA president, argued that requiring teachers to post in advance every material used is a nearly impossible task that will leave educators with hours of additional work.
“The burden that this bill would place on classroom teachers is enormous. Because it is time sucking,” Sieck said. “Teachers already work so many hours beyond the actual school day. And so to document every piece of curriculum that they’re using, and resources and websites, you have to ask, where would that time come from? Ultimately, it comes from student learning time.”
Sieck argued that the bill would strip teachers of the ability to personalize lesson plans. She noted that for years Kansas has been moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach, focusing more on individualized instruction.
“Teachers will tell you, you have kids with every lesson who get it right away, kids who pretty much have it but need additional practice, and then kids that you have to go back and reteach skills needed to do those lessons. We can’t teach those students the same way,” she said. “We’re constantly having to pivot and change. So this is not kid-friendly. It’s not in the best interest of students and their learning.”
Goodson said she can understand why parents would support legislation promoted as an improvement to transparency. But she argued that the idea that teachers are not willing to share what’s going on in the classroom is simply not true.
One result of the shift to remote learning during the pandemic is that many districts have turned to online learning platforms to post materials and assignments. Both students and parents, Goodson said, have access to it.
“Most of my students’ parents are technically enrolled in the class through that. They can see every assignment, and they get a notification when I post something. It’s not like we’re doing anything on paper in the classroom that they’re not seeing,” she said.
Powers said that teachers are also regularly communicating with parents about lesson plans and materials, through email and phone calls. When a parent has concerns, teachers hear them out and make adjustments if needed.
“We aren’t scared of working with parents and community members. We aren’t scared of community members asking questions about curriculum. We want that to happen,” Powers said. “But it has to happen at the local level. Once you start getting politicians involved in that process, it takes away the focus from students.”
Teachers said that they worry the legislation could drive more educators, already stretched to their limits, to quit.
“Already, if I just worked my contract hours, I would get nothing done. Tons of time has to be put in outside of the classroom. Bills like this one, specifically in Kansas, would take that into overdrive,” Goodson said. “So much additional labor would happen outside of our contract. And at the end of two really difficult years, a lot of teachers will be bolting for the door. Anyone on the fence about retirement, I think, will end up leaving.”
Proponents of the bills, however, said the listing of course options will help young teachers plan classes. The intent, Williams said, is not to have teachers post their lesson plans but rather provide parents with a list of their go-to resources.
Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican who sponsored the parents bill of rights in the Kansas Senate, said the material she wants teachers to make available is not substantially different from what they’re already providing to administrators.
“I find it somewhat concerning that educators would not say, ‘Yes we affirm this very much.’ We always talk about how important parental involvement in their child’s education is,” she said
Censorship?
Proposals in both states give parents wide latitude to object to teaching materials they find troubling or controversial, including certain race-related curricula in Missouri.
A bill from Missouri Rep. Doug Richey, an Excelsior Springs Republican, requires that parents be allowed “to object to instructional materials and other materials used in the classroom based on such parent’s beliefs regarding morality, sexuality, religion, or other issues related to the well-being, education, and upbringing of such parent’s child.”
In Kansas, parents would have the opportunity to challenge classroom or library content and have it removed. Certain items could be flagged as needing parental approval for a child to check out.
Lawmakers said the provision came after hearing of books in schools that they believed were pornographic content.
“There are materials that we reviewed in our interim meeting and if I were to pull out one of them for you today I think you’d be very embarrassed that it’s even at a school district,” Williams said. “When those are the instances, rare as they may be, parents don’t feel like they have an option.”
There is, however, little definition around what would and would not be deemed objectionable and how schools should determine that.
Dianne O’Bryan, a longtime Blue Valley teacher, argued that the legislation undermines educators’ experience and skills.
“We are professionals and we have been trained to do this job. I have my master’s degree, plus 60 additional hours, and 27 years of experience. And people need to let us use that professional experience and wisdom to teach,” O’Bryan said. “They need to trust that we do know what we’re doing and how to work with kids, and allow us to do that.”
Last month, a handful of Clay County high school students traveled to Jefferson City to decry the bills as “censorship.”
Yoana Zamora Miranda, a senior at North Kansas City High School, said she’s been “mocked, insulted and stereotyped for being Hispanic” but had teachers who “challenged my thinking” on race and identity.
“Why do people have this preconceived notion? It’s because we don’t know enough about the complexity of race and ethnicity,” she said. “I barely knew about Asian or Black history until students and teachers talked about these issues in the classroom. I was more comfortable to explore my identity and I became more empathetic.”
One Missouri bill, sponsored by Ballwin Republican Shamed Dogan, states schools should not be allowed to “compel a teacher or student to discuss public policy issues of the day without such teacher’s or student’s consent.”
Testifying in opposition, former Hazelwood middle school science teacher Amber Benge said the proposals would “make teaching and planning impossible” and impose a “chilling effect” on a teacher’s role to guide students through everything from routine adolescent experiences to difficult current events.
Benge, who is now assistant director of the advocacy group Missouri Equity Education Partnership, described “helping students through heartbreak, death, and the discovery of their voice.”
In 2014, when unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in next-door Ferguson, Benge’s “tired, scared students” came to her classroom.
She and another science teacher incorporated chemistry lessons into a mock criminal investigation complete with a crime lab, she said. Students played the roles of police officers and reporters.
“They were mad at police officers, they were mad at teachers, they were mad at anybody,” Benge said of her students.
But the lessons allowed them to “see how hard those jobs are” and “reinforce that there are good community members in Missouri,” she said.
Powers, the Olathe teacher, said that if the legislation pending were on the books on Jan. 6 of last year, she might have made a different plan for the next day.
“That maybe would have made me think twice about having that lesson,” she said.
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
