• The Supreme Court’s Mahmoud v. Taylor case marks the culmination of the erosion of collaboration between parents and schools.
• Historically, schools in the United States were characterized by close links between school, religious influence, parental involvement, and local control, but now some parents worry that school policies might be antagonistic to their efforts to help their children.
• Going forward, policymakers should focus on reestablishing the connections between schools and (1) parental influence, (2) local control, and (3) religious accommodations.

​As the U.S. Supreme Court’s term comes to a close, the Court still has pending decisions regarding age verification laws, the scope of federal agency authority, and more. The religious freedom case that has probably gotten the most attention this term is one the Court has yet to address. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court must determine whether parents can opt their young children out of instruction that conflicts with their values.

When the Court issues its decision, it will create important precedent for the future. However, it is worth briefly examining the context of this dispute.

In its early decades, the United States had literacy rates comparable to European nations with well-developed school systems, even though, at that time, reading would have been taught at home or in community religious schools. As more formal school systems developed, the close nexus between school, religious influence, parental involvement, and local control persisted. This meant that parents usually viewed schools as providing them valuable assistance with their children — helping them learn what their parents wanted them to know, consistent with the parents’ deepest convictions.

Trends towards bureaucratization, central government control, and professionalization for teachers attenuated some of these connections, and parents have sought different ways to stay involved in their children’s education. Most commonly, they did this by banding together as auxiliary supporters of the schools. Eventually, some turned to lawsuits to exert more influence on children’s education.

The most well-known early examples are a pair of cases from the 1920s. The first, Meyer v. Nebraska, was intended to repair a perceived breach related to the elements of parental involvement and local control. It challenged a state law prohibiting teaching in German, the language of many parents in the community.

The next case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, addressed parental involvement and religious influence. In this case, the Supreme Court struck down a law that banned private education, with a particular focus on ending Catholic education.

These cases, and Pierce in particular, signaled that parents might sometimes see the developing public schools as undercutting their values and acting as competitors rather than partners.

The next major Supreme Court decision on parents and public schools illustrates this. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the state criminally prosecuted Amish parents for declining to send their children to school after the Eighth Grade. The parents did so because their belief that God’s vocation for their children would be undermined by spending additional years in the public schools.

These cases demonstrate changes in the public school system and parents’ worries that school policies might be antagonistic to their efforts to help their children. Justice Samuel Alito noted this new perspective in a concurring opinion in a decision involving school restrictions on student statements about drug use.

The public schools are invaluable and beneficent institutions, but they are, after all, organs of the State. When public school authorities regulate student speech, they act as agents of the State; they do not stand in the shoes of the students’ parents. It is a dangerous fiction to pretend that parents simply delegate their authority—including their authority to determine what their children may say and hear— to public school authorities. It is even more dangerous to assume that such a delegation of authority somehow strips public school authorities of their status as agents of the State. Most parents, realistically, have no choice but to send their children to a public school and little ability to influence what occurs in the school. It is therefore wrong to treat public school officials, for purposes relevant to the First Amendment, as if they were private, nongovernmental actors standing in loco parentis.

The Mahmoud case the Court will soon decide is a powerful illustration of this fraying of the sense that schools can be trusted to stand in the place of parents.

This historical context points to ways forward regardless of how the Court rules in the current dispute. Going forward, policymakers should focus on reestablishing the connections between schools and (1) parental influence, (2) local control, and (3) religious accommodations. Promising initiatives include securing curriculum transparency, providing parents the ability to direct the use of funding intended for their children’s education, and respecting requests for opt-outs from sensitive discussions that implicate family beliefs. Scaling back direction from the federal level is also a welcome development.

While our educational system has changed, the foundational principles meant to ensure parental trust are not outdated. Efforts to bolster or reintroduce them are an investment that will produce dividends for America’s children.