David Whitlock
Parental Rights Columnist
Reading the fine print your child's school hopes you skip, on one stubborn conviction: parents, not institutions, hold the final say over their own kids.
5 articles by David
How to Find Out What Your Child Is Actually Being Taught
The classroom is not a sealed box. Your child's school runs on documents you have a legal right to read, and this is the order to ask for them.
Albemarle Let a Counselor Meet Kids Alone, Then Hid It From Parents for Months
The county's pandemic era wellness coaches got private access to children with no cameras and no real notification rule, and the one keeping the records was the counselor himself.
A Portland School Teaches Five-Year-Olds Their Parents Are Optional
A Portland school counselor wrote a cheerful picture book teaching kids as young as five that family is something you pick. "Chosen family" was built for the truly abandoned. Aimed at kindergartners who are loved at home, it quietly teaches that mom and dad are optional.
Killing Gifted Programs for Equity Punishes the Poor Kids It Claims to Protect
Seattle and New York are scrapping gifted programs in the name of equity. A Nobel laureate's new research shows those programs are the strongest ladder poor kids have, and the children who lose them were never the privileged ones.
A Permission Slip for the Zoo, a Secret for Your Daughter
A Wisconsin school that needs your signature for a field trip decided it needed no permission to give your daughter a new name. Here is what that certainty costs, and the court that finally overruled it.