Project 2025: Enact a Parents’ Bill of Rights
Project 2025 aims to protect the rights of some parents in ways that infringe on the rights of college students.
Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash
The push for a parental bill of rights affects K-12 students and their families most directly. However, there are implications for college students as well which I will get to in a moment.
FERPA and Parental Rights for K-12 Students
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulates the protection of privacy and security of student education records, including personally identifiable information (PII). Project 2025 is concerned that schools won’t inform parents when children (under age 18) might encounter difficulty with their sexual or gender identity.
The authors of the Chapter on Education assert,
“School officials in some states are requiring teachers and other school employees to accept a minor child’s decision to assume a different ‘gender’ while at school – without notifying parents.”[1]
Further, they worry that in California, New Jersey, and Kansas, educators may not inform parents about students’ confusion over gender identity if students do not want their parents to know. As a remedy, Project 2025 recommends new state and federal legislation that would
Prohibit school employees from using a name to address a student that differs from what is listed on the student’s birth certificate, without written permission from a parent or guardian
Prohibit school employees from using a pronoun to address a student that differs from the student’s biological sex, without written permission from a parent or guardian
Not require a school employee to use a pronoun that does not match a student’s biological sex if contrary to that employee’s religious or moral convictions
More sweepingly,
“Federal lawmakers should not allow public school employees to keep secrets about a child from that child’s parents.”[2]
Proactively, Project 2025 wants Congress and state legislatures to codify a Parents’ Bill of Rights that would make sure that parents, not teachers, would be fully informed and able to control what their children are taught and how. Predictably, this would mean that parents could stop schools from teaching about sensitive subjects such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory (CRT), or other “divisive” or sensitive subjects.
Currently, FERPA permits schools to release students’ educational information to parents until a student reaches the age of 18. Thereafter, FERPA’s protections transfer to the student.[3]
Unfortunately, Project 2025’s concerns and recommendations ignore the harm that students who are confused about or who have adopted a sexual or gender identity that is at variance with what their parents strongly hold. When such students fail to receive adequate, appropriate counseling and support, the consequences could be dire. Under these circumstances, if opposed parents are informed about their offspring’s situation, they might respond abusively or even violently.
Project 2025’s crusade against teaching about diversity and the history of racial and ethnic discrimination also ignores the rights of parents whose children are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, or reflect some other ethnic heritage. The concerns of these parents are somehow not included in Project 2025’s list of wrongs to be righted.
FERPA and the Rights of College Students
When students become 18 years old or attend an institution of higher learning that accepts federal funding, the protections of FERPA transfer from parents to students. That means that colleges and universities may not release a student’s educational record, including records of disciplinary action, grades received, or other personal information, without a student’s written permission to do so.
However, an institution may release a student’s educational record to a parent or guardian without the student’s permission if the student is listed as a dependent on the parent’s federal tax return.
Institutions may also release a student’s information to third parties, such as law enforcement officials or schools to which a student is transferring, without written consent.[4]
Project 2025 does not recommend sweeping changes in the law as it pertains to higher education. But the chapter does point out that the only recourse that students (or parents) have when institutions have violated the law is to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
Such complaints can take a very long time – six months or longer – to resolve. If the eventual resolution is unsatisfactory, there is no further recourse.
As a remedy, the authors strongly recommend that parents and students be permitted to initiate private litigation instead of going through the complaint process. I think it is likely that such a remedy would favor only those persons who possess the financial resources to pursue litigation. It might also result in nuisance litigation that would drain colleges’ resources and clog the courts.
Overall, Project 2025’s recommendations, if implemented, would weaken legal protection of college students’ education and personal records. More importantly, they would endanger or harm many students, especially BIPOC and LGBTQ+ persons, by ignoring the myriad complexities of racial, political, sex, and gender identity. The so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights is actually intended to benefit only one set of parents – white, traditional, affluent, and politically conservative.
Beyond FERPA
FERPA allows colleges and universities to disclose information about academic performance and status to parents or guardians without a student’s written permission when the student is listed as a dependent for tax purposes.
However, such an exception does not pertain to ethical constraints that social workers and other therapists must observe. In other words, a professional therapist may not reveal a client’s information, including the simple fact of obtaining therapy, to any third party without the client’s written and informed consent.[5] The only exception to this ethical principle occurs when a therapist concludes that a client presents a clear and present danger to self or others.
This principle of confidentiality arose frequently during my time as a professor and academic administrator. On several occasions, students’ parents became angry when I refused to disclose whether their offspring were undergoing therapy in our counseling office. When I explained to them that the counseling office would not even confirm to me that a student was in therapy, not to mention what was being discussed, parents became even more enraged.
Sometimes, a student would provide written consent for one of our therapists to reveal that the student was in treatment and, in very general terms, the degree of progress. That information could be helpful in determining other ways that the institution could be supportive. But in the absence of such consent, I and other officials were completely in the dark.
I mention this because Project 2025 discusses only legal implications of FERPA and other regulations. Such a narrow focus obscures or neglects very important considerations regarding the health and safety of adult students. A student who is struggling with issues of sex or gender identity, for example, has rights that extend beyond considerations discussed by Project 2025.
In the end, Project 2025’s authors are not concerned with students’ well-being. They are simply anxious to push their political agenda of eliminating legal rights for adult students regardless of concrete circumstances.
NOTES
[1] Paul Dans and Steven Groves, eds., Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2023), p. 346. Hereafter cited as “Project 2025.” https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf.
[2] Ibid.
[3] For detailed information about FERPA, see U.S. Department of Education, “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA),” https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html.
[4] For a representative list of such exceptions, see the preceding note.
[5] National Association of Social Workers (NASW), NASQ Code of Ethics: Ethical Standards, “Social Workers’ Ethical Responsibilities to Clients,” Section 1.07, Privacy and Confidentiality. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English/Social-Workers-Ethical-Responsibilities-to-Clients