Parents Bill of Rights Passes Education Committee

On Wednesday, the House Education & Workforce Committee passed H.R.5, The Parents Bill of Rights. The contentious mark-up, which included dozens of Republican and Democratic amendments, passed on a party line vote. The bill is scheduled for a vote on the floor of the House in two weeks.

AASA’s engagement on a full floor votes and calls to action are reserved for bipartisan bills, bills of priority, and/or bills that have a companion bill in the Senate and may stand a chance of getting to the President’s desk. This bill is a Republican priority, and while it will likely pass out of the House, it is a partisan bill that has no chance of passing in the Senate. Given this, we are not asking AASA members to do anything in response to the bill and are monitoring at the staff level.

We know that this may be a topic of conversation in your communities; to that end, here are two things to be aware of about the legislation:

• As champions of local control, AASA has long opposed top-down, prescriptive federal education policies that dictate how districts utilize limited federal funding, pressure districts to adopt specific standards or curriculum or create national teacher or educator standards and requirements. The Parents Bill of Rights is another example of federal overreach and undermines local control over education.

There are practical issues with the legislation, chief among them changes to FERPA and PPRA that would drastically change districts use of education technology and maintenance of student data.  AASA’s Child and Student Privacy Team has a write-up of all the tech, operations and privacy related issues created by this legislation.