High court’s ‘opt out’ ruling could spur more school choice

If public schools keep teaching Woke culture
instead of the three R’s!

Progressives predict chaos as the result of Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, decided 6 to 3 in favor of parents who want to withdraw their children from LGBTQ+ indoctrination in public schools. They’re probably right about the chaos. Wonderful, pluralistic, democratic chaos.

Theoretically and now legally, parent opt outs could fill school cafeterias for all kinds of reasons. “The fight is far from over,” predicts a lawyer at WI Institute for Law & Liberty.

Mahmoud v. Taylor 2025 arose from mandatory classroom indoctrination beginning in kindergarten with story time about two male knights who marry each other. Another features a biological girl who transitions to a boy. (There’s equity for ya!)

Teachers in a Maryland district in the D.C. metro area were told to teach, “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.” But “the community” is never wrong. Right?

Remember when schools taught reading and writing? No one knows the difference any more between “your” and “you’re,” much less what is woman! (Don’t ask Tim Walz!)

We read that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that instead of the constant opt outs, parents should remove their children from public schools. Good idea! The Werkes wishes progressives would embrace school choice.

The Werkes discovered an outfit called “Democrats for Education Reform.” Like finding Jeff Bezos at a Mamdani rally. The organization argues:

Despite the Democratic Party’s deep roots as the party for equity, too many Democratic leaders were protecting a public education system that maintained a deeply inequitable status quo.

The argument being that poor kids — often minorities — are trapped in poor schools. We fell back to earth learning that the org has chapters in only 8 states: none of them Wisconsin. Dems for Ed Reform laments: “Not one of the 18 states where Democrats control both the legislature and the governor’s office had any substantial measure enacted to expand public school choice.”

 The state decides the truth

Law professor Jonathan Turley quotes a school board member in Iowa to say:

“The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.”

Like China! Its communist government forces Tibetan children into state-run boarding schools “to gut Tibetan culture and blunt generations of opposition to Communist party rule,” the Wall Street Journal reports. We side with Mr. Eric Baxter, lawyer for Becket Fund for Religious Liberty:

“Public schools are not an instrument of the state to force children into conformity — they serve the needs of the parents.”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Or should. No one this side of Stephen Miller would opt out of schools that encourage kindness. Or prevent bullying. (Harvard, take notice!) But teachers unions and Democrats on their payroll argue that religious choice schools, for instance, might teach the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. Is that worse than teaching the 1619 Project, that racist America was founded as a refuge for slavery? At least Jonah and the Whale is a fun read. 

The Bible may instill faith
but does it also require literacy?