Kendall County Times

State Rep. Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora) said he wants to improve Illinois' education system by passing a parent's bill of rights.

"Education is a top issue on the minds of Fox Valley parents, myself included," Wheeler posted on Facebook. "To help ensure every child in Illinois receives the quality education they deserve, I am advocating to pass a Parents Bill of Rights to ensure you have a voice in your child's education, keep more funding in the classroom where it belongs instead of paying the cost of unfunded state mandates that make it more difficult for teachers to do their job, and promoting transparency by having local school districts make curriculum, course materials and classroom activities available online for parents to review." He then posted a link to an "Education Survey."

Republicans across the country have been advocating for more parental rights in education, leading to the proposal of various bills that would add more transparency to curriculums and give parents more educational decision-making powers, Future Ed reported. In 2022 alone, legislators in 26 states have introduced some form of parental rights bill. So far, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Louisiana have signed parental rights bills into law, and Kansas is expected to follow suit soon.

Many of the parental rights bills are a result of the belief that schools are teaching critical race theory (CRT) and what some see as divisive racial concepts, according to Future Ed. Indiana's HB 1134, which has passed the House, would prohibit schools from teaching what some parents would deem racially divisive concepts. It would also require schools to post curriculum online. Louisiana's HB 414, which has been introduced as an expansion of the Parents' Bill of Rights, would prohibit schools from teaching children that "they are currently or destined to be oppressed or be oppressors based on the child's race or national origin."

Britannica defines critical race theory as an intellectual framework and social movement based on the idea that "race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour."  Critical race theorists believe that the law in the United States is inherently racist and was designed to create and maintain white supremacy. CRT's roots are in critical legal studies, which taught that legal institutions benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and which is an offshoot of Marxist critical theory.