School Choice and Parental Authority

I finally got around to reading the (already) infamous Fields v. Palmdale School District ruling issued earlier this month, in which the Ninth Circuit held that "there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it," and that "parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."  The parents had sued after their first-, third-, and fifth-grade children were asked questions about sex as part of a survey at their public school.  The kids were asked, among other questions, to indicate how frequently they were "thinking about having sex," "thinking about touching other peoples' private parts," "not trusting people because they might want sex," and "washing [themselves] because [they] feel dirty on the inside."

The court reasoned that "parents have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on the subject of sex; they have no constitutional right, however, to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so."  The Meyer-Pierce line of constitutionally protected parental authority is distinguishable, in the Ninth Circuit's view, because "once parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend, their fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished."

The problem, of course, is that Meyer and Pierce are rendered meaningless for parents who cannot afford private school.  The Palmdale ruling may make sense in a system where school choice is the reality, but the choice to attend the local public school is not any choice at all in most instances.  If parents could choose a school based on the particular mission cultivated by that school, limiting parental standing to challenge curricular decisions might actually enhance the school's ability to function as a mediating structure.  Absent school choice, though, the marketplace does not exist, and the mediating function is a non-starter -- the only values imparted are those of a researcher with a scandalous understanding of age-appropriate inquiry.  Parental rights in this context do not mean that any parent could trump a school's curricular decisions, but simply that parents would need to be given the opportunity to pull their child out of a particular objectionable activity. 

As it stands, there is no exit option, no market pressure, and no hope for the financially strapped parent who believes that her first-grader should not spend her school day contemplating how often she is or should be thinking about touching other people's private parts.

Rob