Education owes a lot to parents. But where do their rights begin and end?

In the early afternoon at a one-room schoolhouse northeast of Hampton, Nebraska, a bespectacled teacher named Robert T. Meyer opened a Bible and began to read – in German. This was a daily event for him and his elementary aged students at the Zion Evangelical Lutheran parochial school; the best way, he and the children’s immigrant parents agreed, for his pupils to learn religion.

It was also, Mr. Meyer knew, illegal.

The prior year, 1919, in the shadow of World War I and in the midst of growing tension among ethnic groups in the Midwest, the Nebraska state legislature had passed a bill outlawing elementary educational instruction in any language other than English. It was a part of a flurry of laws intended to ensure that young students grew up American in “language, thought and ideals,” according to politicians. And it was part of a debate that would continue to swirl around the intersection of schools, parents, and democracy for a century – the precursor to the fights sweeping school board meetings the last few years, or the new “parental rights” bills introduced in statehouses across the country.

“A real democratic society is a society in which individuals are empowered in every dimension of their lives. And since there’s nothing people care more about than their children and education, that’s where the rubber meets the road,” says Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Since the beginning, people have had very divergent views about what a democratic educational system ought to be, and where parents fit in. It’s always been complicated.”

Indeed, the story of what happened to Mr. Meyer is part of a long-standing conflict that sits underneath today’s political posturing over mask wearing and critical race theory. At its core, it reflects an unresolved question about how parents have – and should – influence the American education system, a dilemma that underlies both the successes and inherent conflicts of public school in the United States. 

School authorities and state legislators have regularly pushed back against parental influence. At times, such as in early 20th-century Nebraska, they explicitly worked to undermine family norms and culture for what they saw as a greater social good. But parents have also repeatedly fought for more say over their children’s schooling. And they have changed the education system in profound ways.

Certainly, parents’ cultural arguments – about how and whether to teach about evolution or sex or racism, for instance – have affected generations of young people, experts say. But more importantly, they argue, parents have shaped educational access and quality. Sometimes that has meant more equity. The decadeslong fight for desegregation, for instance, or for students with disabilities, would have gotten nowhere without committed parents. But it has also meant the perpetuation of privilege, as parents with more resources influence the system to ensure that their own children benefit.

“Parents have always been an incredibly powerful group in shaping what happens in schools,” says Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. “In general, nothing matters more to parents than their kids. And we know that when parents feel that their children’s opportunities are threatened, they respond.”

That was clear, even in 1920.

A limited victory for parents

That spring afternoon, when Mr. Meyer saw the county attorney standing against the sunlight in the doorway, he knew that he had a choice. He could switch to English, and there would be no consequence for his teachings that day.  

But he took a deep breath and kept reading in German. That was what his pupils’ parents wanted, he knew, and the way he believed children would best understand their lessons about God.  

“I told myself I must not flinch,” Mr. Meyer recalled later, according to his attorney, Arthur Mullen, who later argued Mr. Meyer’s case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. “And I did not flinch.”

For the next few years, Mr. Meyer was embroiled in the legal system. He was arrested, found guilty, and fined $25. He lost his appeal in state court. But when his case went to the country’s top court, his attorney, Mr. Mullen, made an impassioned argument about the rights of parents to decide where and how their children learn.

The court ruled in favor of Mr. Meyer, and in doing so, explicitly tied the right to “establish a home and bring up children” as part of the 14th Amendment. In his opinion, Justice James Clark McReynolds suggested that outlawing particular types of instruction – particularly learning that would take place outside the normal school day, and outside the public school system – would be “doing violence to both letter and spirit of the Constitution.”

But the decision in Meyer v. Nebraska was not the clear victory for parental control that it has sometimes been portrayed as being. In his opinion, Justice McReynolds said the legislature was justified in both regulating what could be taught in public schools and deciding what was in the best interest of the community – in this case, ensuring that children grew up learning and thinking in English. The Nebraska law had simply overstepped in banning what parents could teach children on their own time and in their own schools.

The sentiment the court reiterated in its ruling – that there is a broader, social goal of education, beyond individual achievement – has been a hallmark of American schools since their founding. Public education in the United States was established to meet the need for an informed citizenry capable of self-government. As some Founding Fathers saw it, teachers would train future citizens to participate in a democracy – a job that sometimes diverged from what individual parents might want.

“When people ask, ‘Why aren’t parents in control of everything?’ The answer is, well, the returns of public education are not exclusively to individuals,” says Jack Schneider, associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The benefits, he says, “are to our society.”

But since the creation of the first “common schools” in the early 1800s, people have differed on the definition of what, exactly, “benefitting society” means. And the dividing line, it turns out, is not between parents looking out for their individual children on one side and the rest of Americans promoting a communal role for education on the other.

Individual versus societal benefits 

In 2017, Dr. Valant and fellow scholar Daniel Newark published a research paper about how and whether parents’ goals for their own children’s schools differed from the attitudes of a broader adult population asked about the educational system overall. The researchers surveyed both groups, asking about the importance of various factors, such as individual success, the promotion of democratic character, and the perpetuation of a strong economy. Dr. Valant says he had expected to find a split, where individual parents gave preference to personal achievement and success, and the general public valued the communal goals.

But he was surprised.

“When we ran this survey experiment, we saw little difference between what the public as a whole wants for schools, and from schools, and what parents want from schools,” he says. “Where we saw the big difference was along partisan lines.” 

Republicans were drawn to markers of individual success. Democrats – both parents and non-parents – said communal goals, such as building democratic character, were most important.

“Republicans and Democrats have very different ideas of what the purpose of schooling is and what they want schools to do,” Dr. Valant says.

So it is perhaps not surprising, some experts say, that in an increasingly politically divided country, schools have emerged as a flashpoint. Combine the different views on the purpose of school – whether the individual or society should be its primary beneficiary – and add to that different cultural views about gender, race, and other topics, and there are bound to be disagreements. Especially with some political maneuvering thrown in. 

This year, as of the end of May, at least 22 states have considered creating or modifying an education-related “parents’ bill of rights,” according to National Conference of State Legislatures researchers – along with efforts by the right to control what values-related subjects are taught in schools. Part of Florida’s high-profile Parental Rights in Education bill, for instance, prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through grade three – “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” The law, which goes into effect on July 1, also gives parents the right to sue districts if they believe the new rules have been violated. 

“I think we’re dealing with, in some cases, fundamentally different views of reality,” says Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. “If a parent thinks that people come in two sexes, male and female, and their kindergarten teacher is saying that’s not true, there’s going to be a conflict. And so the question is, okay, so which source of authority has the priority in that case?”

But despite the high-profile school board tussles and political posturing around these issues – in Virginia, for instance, many pundits believe Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial election last year by claiming to defend parental rights – many experts see parents’ real influence on education as being far more under the radar.  

“As long as we’ve had public schools, there have been people claiming there are things happening inside the schools that you would not be comfortable with,” says Dr. Schneider. “You can point to lots of examples – stoked fears about sex ed or the brainwashing of young people during the two Red Scares. These are claims that ... have traction for some relatively short period of time, and then sort of die out.”

“Public schools should be for everyone”

Even those parents who agree strongly with one political side or the other – whether on issues such as gender identity or critical race theory or prayer – often see nuance in how their values should play out in schools.

Renee Chiea, for instance, is a Florida Republican and an activist with Moms for Liberty who supports Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “parental rights” policies. She opposes what she sees as “wokeism” ideology in public schools. Similarly, she doesn’t want school staff promoting politics or prayer in school, either, even though the latter is a practice supported by some ideologically right politicians.

“Public schools should be for everyone,” says the Dunedin mom, whose youngest son graduated from public high school this year. “We have a public school system that should be designed to teach objectively academics and leave value-based decisions to the home.”

Many parents, regardless of how they vote, would agree with that. Indeed, the real story of public education today might be how stable it is, says Dr. Schneider.

“People are actually pretty averse to the politicization of public education,” he says. “There are 13,000 school districts in this country. There are 13,000 school boards. ... Sure, some people are unhappy. Some people are totally happy. Most people are kind of in between. The vast majority are not showing up and taking over school board meetings, and that’s true in red states and blue states and red counties and blue counties.”

While a Gallup poll last year found that more Americans said they were “dissatisfied” with the country’s K-12 education system than “satisfied,” most parents – 73% – said that they were satisfied with the quality of education that their own children were receiving. In other words, the majority of parents are not upset with their own schools or teachers. 

When parents do show up in a sustained way, scholars say, is when they are motivated by something deeper and more lasting than the political fury of the moment. The push for desegregation is one example of this, including when parents sued on behalf of their children in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. So is the effort to ensure bilingual education, or a system that includes students with disabilities.

“I can assure you, we would not have accommodations for disabled children if it had not been for the efficacy of parents,” says Dr. Mintz, the historian. “It was parents who lobbied Congress. They lobbied school boards. It was parents who brought lawsuits.”

But parents also show up when they want to ensure advantages for their own children. And that, many scholars say, can perpetuate inequality. A number of studies show that parents with more resources, whether financial or social, are more likely to advocate effectively for their children, whether it’s getting them into better classes, making sure they have the favorite fourth grade teacher, or ensuring their kids’ schools have the financial resources to buy better supplies.

“Parents care more about education than they care about anything,” says Dr. Mintz. “But there are different ways of thinking about what democracy [in education] ought to be. Is democracy the right to excel? Or is democracy that everybody should get the same thing?”

Meanwhile, parents such as Graciela Guevara have often struggled to navigate the educational system. When her eldest son was in elementary school, and she was a new immigrant from Mexico who only spoke Spanish, she says she didn’t understand her eldest son’s individualized education program, or her rights as a parent. Fearing deportation, she was too afraid to ask for help. 

Now, years later, Ms. Guevara is a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Denver. She feels comfortable advocating for her youngest child, a second grader with an individualized education program. But she still sees the barriers clearly.

“It’s more difficult for an immigrant parent or a single parent in a single household to attend [school and community meetings], because you have to prioritize,” says Ms. Guevara. “And it’s not that your kid’s education is not a priority, it’s just that sometimes ... you don’t have any other choice.”

The need to “deliberate our differences”

The nation has been recalibrating the balance within schools – between parental and school control, between individual and societal benefits – since before Mr. Meyer read to his students in German. Each adjustment, including today’s, reflects the societal stirs of the time.

“Parents and citizen groups have extraordinary influence over what’s taught – much more so than any other democracy we know about,” says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

A century before parents railed against critical race theory at school board meetings, conservatives called for bans on the teaching of evolution.

Democratic education, Professor Zimmerman says, “requires us to deliberate our differences.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the explanation of comments by Dr. Schneider about parents and school board takeovers.

This story is the last in a four-part series:

Part 1: Do Americans agree on the importance of common schoolhouses? Do they still hold that public education is fundamental to democracy?

Part 2: How should schools teach children what it means to be an American?

Part 3: Are we better off as a nation investing in a system where talented students can soar, or one in which everyone is educated equally? Can’t we have both?

Part 4: How has parental participation in public schools shaped U.S. education?