AGAINST THE EDUCATION STATUS QUO.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: FUTURE - 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election

"I DON'T THINK parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

With those words, once and aspiring Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe set off a bout of culture warfare that culminated with his Republican rival, political neophyte Glenn Youngkin, taking the executive mansion.

When the race began, parents were already spitting mad--the worst kind of mad to be in a respiratory virus pandemic. Virginia had the seventh most closed K-12 system during the 2020-21 school year, joining California, Oregon, and other blue states in offering minimal in-person instruction during COVID-19.

Virginia's public schools stayed closed even after it became clear that the risks to school-aged children from the virus were relatively limited; even after the vaccine was made available to teachers and administrators; even after private schools in the state reopened without major incident; even after public schools in redder neighboring states successfully welcomed children back.

While kids sat at home, day after day, chaotic classes tinnily echoing on Microsoft Teams, parents got an earful of what their children actually do at school. And a lot of them didn't love what they saw. Not just on hot-button topics, but on the more mundane stuff of phonics, social studies, and math. That often-disheartening information was blared directly into parents' brains right at the moment when their faith in the education system was already at a low ebb.

Before that, public school curricula had long been a black box. McAuliffe wasn't proposing something radical when he said parents shouldn't have a say in what kids learn; he was describing the status quo.

WHEN KIDS DID get back to learning in person, that status quo struck parents differently. After doing the jobs of teacher, coach, and cafeteria monitor for more than a year, many resented being told to sit down and shut up.

In school board meetings around the country, open mics were and are a scrum of parents angry about school closures and rollingquarantines, masking, race issues, gender issues, banned books, and probably dress codes too. This year saw 84 recall efforts against 215 school board members, up dramatically from an average of 23 recall efforts annually against 52 board members since 2006, according to Ballotpedia. There were also unusually large numbers of resignations and decisions not to run again, as well as an unusually large number of incumbents defeated (though some incumbents did survive well-funded...