WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democratic leaders on Wednesday called on Congress to pass President Joe Biden’s $16 billion supplemental child care funding request.

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The  passed 213 to 208, with five Republicans voting against it. 

“Teachers unions and education bureaucrats worked to push progressive politics in classrooms while keeping parents in the dark,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House education committee, said during Thursday’s floor debate. “The Bill of Rights …aims to end that and shine a light on what is happening in schools.”

But with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that it would face a “dead end,” the legislation is unlikely to get far in the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

House Democrats — who renamed it the “politics over parents act” — say the legislation duplicates existing policies and rights and would micromanage how local schools interact with families. 

“This legislation has nothing to do with parental involvement, parental engagement, parental empowerment,” said Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “It has everything to do with jamming the extreme MAGA Republican ideology down the throats of the children and the parents of the United States of America.”

For years, educators who work with families have longed for this level of national attention to the role parents play in their children’s education. But some experts called the Republican approach adversarial and heavy-handed. Republicans view parents rights as a cornerstone of their agenda and are expected to carry the issue into next year’s elections. Even if the House bill dies in the Senate, the debate likely won’t.

Family engagement experts, meanwhile, say they’re hoping for a less-partisan discussion about building trust between educators and parents.

“If we’re creating bills that pit parents against teachers, kids lose,” said Vito Borrello, executive director of the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement. 

Democrats, he said, have sent the wrong message at times, pointing to former Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s that parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach and the that educators know “better than anyone” what students need. But the GOP legislation, he said, approaches parents rights from a “vigilante perspective.”

Among other provisions, the bill would require schools to post curricula online, provide lists of all books and other reading materials in the library and notify parents of the affiliations of any outside speakers at school events. 

Prior to the vote, the House approved several amendments, including one that would make schools disclose when they eliminate any gifted and talented programs and another requiring educators to turn over videos or recordings of any “violent activity” at school. Another stating that parents have a right to “timely notice” of a cyberattack against a school that could expose student or parent information received overwhelming support from both parties, passing 420 to 5.

But amendments that would have eliminated the Department of Education, sent Title I funds directly to families to use for private schools or homeschooling, and block grant education funding to the states failed. 

Dozens of education organizations, including AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the NAACP and The Education Trust, endorsed , led by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, that emphasized inclusion, high-quality schools and a well-rounded education. But the bill failed, 223 to 203, with one Democrat, Sharice Davids of Kansas, voting against. 

Charles Barone, vice president for K-12 policy at Democrats for Education Reform, said the Senate would likely let the bill GOP die and not try to negotiate a compromise. The question is whether passage of the bill gives Republicans momentum going into the election next year. 

“As a general election strategy, it’s pretty ill-advised,” Barone said. “There is a set of voters that buys their line of argument, but that set is pretty narrow. This is such an old playbook.”

The Biden administration has already expressed its disapproval. “The administration strongly supports actions that empower parents to engage with their children’s teachers and schools, like enabling parents to take time off to attend school meetings,” the White House statement said. “Legislation should not politicize our children’s education. It should deliver the resources that schools and families actually need.”

Gender identity provision

The administration’s statement drew attention to a provision that it said would make LGBTQ students feel less welcome. The legislation would require schools to get parental consent if a student wants to officially change their gender markers or pronouns or use facilities inconsistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. During the debate, Foxx clarified that the bill would not require counselors or teachers to “out” students if they discuss such topics in confidence.

During the education committee’s mark-up of the bill March 8, several Democrats said not all trans students have supportive parents and that a “one-size-fits-all” federal mandate could put already-vulnerable students at a greater risk. 

But Republican Tim Walberg of Michigan, who pushed for notification, said that informing parents of their child’s request would alert educators to potential maltreatment.

“When a child goes on a field trip or fails a test … their parents are told and often required to sign some sort of acknowledgement,” he said. “Why should the small things require notification but something as significant as a child’s pronouns or a change in accommodations be withheld from the people who raise them care for them?” 

Civil rights advocates argue that even if the bill fails in the Senate, the House’s move still harms trans students. 

“More trans kids are going to wake up reminded that there are leaders in this country who don’t want them to be safe,” said Liz King, senior director of the Education Equity Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The GOP’s bill is inspired by laws that have already passed in several states, like , that allow parents to contest books used in school lessons and libraries and prevent discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the early grades. Gov. Ron DeSantis now plans to apply to all grades.

Melissa Erickson, executive director of Florida’s Alliance for Public Schools, said the laws are “exacerbating the ” and don’t reflect the concerns of most parents. She doesn’t see the need for a national version. 

“I thought education was left to the states,” she said. “Parents have a right to be heard, but there is a difference between being heard and being accommodated.”

This week’s events in the nation’s capital drew 75 representatives from the National Parents Union, who lobbied against the GOP bill and in favor of Bonamici’s amendment. They met with U.S. Department of Education officials and they visited every House member’s office. 

But their highlight was getting from New York Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who cited their

“We’re all gripping our seats,” said National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues. “When we got up to leave, the Democrats stopped on the floor and waved at us. For these parents, it was a powerful moment.”

To some, the congressman from New York is a rising star in the party. But he’s no stranger to the charter school community. 

“We have been able to consistently rely on his support for a decade,” said Nina Rees, CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

As his profile in the party has risen, however, Jeffries has grown less outspoken on the subject. Now responsible for uniting progressives and moderates, observers say he’s less likely to take a firm stance.

Jeffries probably won’t enthusiastically endorse charter schools because of the Democrats’ “need for teachers union support,” said Ray Ankrum, superintendent of Riverhead Charter School on Long Island. But, “if he goes on an Obama-like ascension — which it looks like he can — maybe he’ll be more vocal for school choice.”

The Brooklyn native’s transition to party leader comes at a pivotal moment for the charter community. Advocates and school operators say the Biden administration’s recent changes to a federal grant program for charters will hinder growth. A lawsuit challenging the public status of charter schools and a new openness toward religious charters in Oklahoma could further disrupt the sector. Advocates say they would welcome more public support, but still view Jeffries as an ally.

“To me, he gets it — what’s possible for people of color to start a school,” said Yomika Bennett, executive director of the New York Charter Schools Association. “To dust off an old term, there’s hope.”

In 2014, Jeffries voted for to increase federal funding for charter schools. He visited schools in the Success Academy network and participated with CEO and founder Eva Moskowitz in a 2016 Brooklyn event where thousands rallied for the city to increase the number of charters.

“Everyone in this city, every parent, every child, deserves to have an option, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of immigration status, regardless of ZIP code,” he told the crowd.

And two years later, the Alliance honored him with one of its first #BringTheFunk awards for Black charter school advocates. Jeffries could not be reached for comment.

‘An intra-party debate’

But those examples seem to be part of the distant past.

David Houston, a George Mason University assistant professor, who studies the politics of education, isn’t surprised.

“It doesn’t shock me that Democratic elected officials — especially those who are appealing to a broader swath of their constituency — are going to downplay charters as a key pillar of their education platform,” he said. “Charter schools were never wildly popular [with Democrats]. There’s always been an intra-party debate.”

Charters enjoyed more bipartisan support prior to the Trump administration. President Barack Obama as “incubators of innovation” and urged states to on the number allowed. 

The partisan gap in support for charters grew during the Trump years, Houston found, in part because Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, was a “reviled figure on the left.”

New charter rule

Recently, that tension resurfaced in the debate over the U.S. Department of Education’s new rule for its . The update urges charters to partner with their local schools, requires more transparency in funding and expects operators to justify creating new charters when local public schools are under-enrolled. Department officials say their goal is to increase accountability and promote more racially diverse schools. 

But critics argued the changes will hamper the growth of smaller operators who predominantly serve Black and Hispanic students — even after the department revised some provisions after backlash from charter leaders.

Now chair of the education committee in the GOP-led House, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina said in a statement to �鶹��Ʒ that she hopes Jeffries will “urge his conference to support charter schools” and help students by “ending the Biden administration’s harmful anti-charter school rule.”

Last May, some Democrats in the Senate might have agreed with her. 

Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Diane Feinstein of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey joined Republicans in telling Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that the rule — as it was originally written — would “add significant burdens and time to an already complex application process.”

By the December vote in the Senate, however, the political winds had shifted. No Democrat voted to overturn it.

The updated requirements, in fact, could give pro-charter Democrats, like Jeffries “more freedom to support increased … funding,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the progressive Century Foundation. 

That’s because the rule requires charters to disclose any contracts with for-profit entities. Ankrum, the superintendent of the Long Island school, said he doesn’t view Jeffries as anti-charter — just being heavily involved in running them. 

“That,” he said, “seems to be the new Democratic push.”

A civil rights lawyer by trade and an education activist by avocation, Shavar Jeffries was thrust into the spotlight in early 2010 when he was elected to a school board seat in Newark. It was an era when odd political bedfellows Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker showed up in Newark bearing a $100 million check from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to be spent on both charter and district-run schools.

On Jeffries’s watch, Newark’s schools posted historic gains — inviting gale-force political blowback that’s still reverberating.

He then embarked on an eight-year run as the head of Democrats for Education Reform and its nonprofit sister, Education Reform Now. He took the helm at a time when many Democrats were abandoning the centrist school-improvement policies of the Obama era, yet Jeffries — who is a distant cousin of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — coordinated dozens of winning political strategies.

Now, Jeffries is heading up the KIPP Foundation, which coordinates a coast-to-coast network of highly regarded public charter schools. His new job is to lead 280 schools — and affiliated groups tackling everything from increasing alumni college persistence rates to recruiting and training the next generation of education leaders — out of an unprecedented pandemic crisis.  

�鶹��Ʒ caught up with Jeffries recently to hear what prompted him to move to KIPP, his advice about the Democrats’ education agenda and what he believes will meet young people’s needs at a critical juncture. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

�鶹��Ʒ: How many people have hit you up in the last two months for a pipeline to your cousin? 

Shavar Jeffries: A lot. It reminds me a little bit of when I was school board president in Newark. Every time I go into my LinkedIn, there’s somebody. So yeah, we’re getting a lot.

What advice do you have for Democrats who want to shepherd an education agenda? 

We need more political infrastructure to support Democrats. There’s a heavily funded infrastructure to oppose charters within the Democratic Party. A lot of that is funded by our colleagues in the teacher unions, who we work with on many different issues. 

There have to be more political assets made available to candidates and elected officials. As long as many Democrats feel like they have to put their political career on the line in support of an issue, we’re going to have challenges. Having said all that, we continue to get bipartisan support for the charter school program in Congress. President Biden has supported that, Roberto Rodriguez [U.S. Department of Education assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development] has spoken publicly about that. Many of the communities with the largest charter school shares of enrollment are run by Democratic mayors and Democratic school boards. 

Tell us about the impetus for your move to KIPP.

I’ve been a part of the KIPP family for 22 years. My children attended both KIPP elementary and middle schools. I’ve been on the KIPP national board for about five years. I love it. I love our mission. I just believe in our promise. 

Really what motivated me was how profound the impact of a pandemic has been on our country from a student learning standpoint. When the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress came out showing that throughout the country we lost about 30 years of gains, I was convinced to use the resources and talents I have in a way that will be even more directly connected to kids and to student outcomes. 

KIPP is the largest public charter school network in the country, with 120,000 kids in 27 regions. We ought to be the model for the country in terms of how to deliver educational excellence and equity at scale.

Before COVID-19, a lot of research outlined how successful schools in networks like KIPP are with students from traditionally disadvantaged communities. The pandemic spared almost no one, though. What is the challenge for the high-quality charter sector right now?

Delivering academic good for kids, first and foremost. Given the pandemic, given school closures, given the disruption evidenced by the NAEP data and other data, all of us in public education — whether public charter schools or traditional public schools — we all have a lot of work to do to address unfinished learning, to support young people to obtain the skills, the competencies they need in order to fulfill their potential. That’s job one, as far as I’m concerned, for everybody in public education.

Throughout our network, when we’re sharing best practices, we’re able to deliver for young people. Most powerfully, we’ve seen this in our early literacy program. Several of our regions are working together to implement aligned, consistent [strategies] rooted in the science of literacy. We’ve already seen 28 percentage point gains in literacy rates for the [KIPP] regions participating in that program.

In high school, we see acute mental health challenges many young people are experiencing. In many places, we’re now seeing levels of violence in our communities coming to bear in our schools, so we’re pushing an aligned high school strategy focused on academic health, but mental health support as well.

We’re working on a middle school math [strategy]. And we’re focused on leadership. We have a principal pipeline program. We’re also excited to see the diversity throughout our organization. More than 60% of our school leaders are Black or Latinx. That’s three times the rate of what we see in public education broadly.

Policy wonks and researchers have floated lots of evidence-backed strategies for different aspects of pandemic recovery. But traditional school leaders often say, “Well, I can’t find the people.”

The teacher shortage is really a national challenge. We would love to see policymakers work with traditional public schools, public charter schools and a broad diversity of stakeholders who are committed to making sure that we have great teachers in every classroom. This is a macro-level problem, and we really need national leadership, a Marshall Plan-type level of engagement. This should be a call to arms that one of the most important things that any set of human beings can do is to go into our classrooms and educate our babies.

Similarly, there is a lot of talk about circumstance as a hurdle to student success, especially over the last three years. Many families’ circumstances are jaw-dropping. How should that inform our thinking going forward?

We have to be very clear that we’re equipping our young people with the skills and competencies they need to have a limitless future. That means we need to be unwavering in the idea that our kids are geniuses, they’re brilliant, they’re amazing. We need to hold them accountable to the hard work they need to invest in and we need to support them in. And then, the quality of teaching and learning so they actually obtain those skills. 

Our children are dealing with very difficult circumstances. And most of the communities that we work in, they’ve been dealing with difficult circumstances for generations. Notwithstanding all the macro-level, political, social, economic work many of us are engaged in, they’re likely to be in difficult circumstances for the foreseeable future. Our job is to work within the reality that the challenges they face can actually be a source of strength and power. Some adversity that actually can make you stronger, right? 

We have to be clear with all the adults who interface with our children that they do not need, or want, your pity. With the right expectations and the right practices, their challenges can be converted into energy to power them into their dreams. We have to be unwavering with the bar of what we expect students to be able to achieve. We have to make sure the adults are clear about that bar, and that we provide them the support, training and coaching they need to deliver against that bar, day in and day out.

Some people will talk about, “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure it out.” That is problematic. We have to make the investments that young people — and, frankly, adults — have the support that they need, and the coaching and training to recognize the greatness of our kids, to recognize that we have to support them as they’re dealing with very difficult and adverse circumstances.

Do you have fears about all this being subsumed by what feels like a societal inflection point?

It’s always been hard, right? When I was president of the Newark School Board, we dealt with a version of all of that. All kinds of misinformation, efforts to politicize the curriculum, to politicize accountability. We’ve been working to break cycles of poverty and the bonds of intergenerational racism for a long period of time. This work has always been challenging. In the current moment, there’s been many conversations around education, around equity and efforts by political figures to micromanage the curriculum. That’s obviously very concerning. Perhaps we’re seeing this play out in more uncomfortable ways than it has in the past.

We just want to continue to focus on children, to try to not get caught up in a partisan food fight, to really focus on what’s going to support students to love themselves, to recognize their culture and their identity as a source of power and a source of strength in order to fulfill their potential and change the world.

We’re going to ensure that student achievement and outcomes are the lodestar. And hope and hope that if we tell our story to enough of the right people, over a long enough period of time, more often than not, that’ll be good for kids.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to KIPP and �鶹��Ʒ.