Parents: Know Your 14th Amendment Rights

New York State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia recently asserted “There are ramifications that can occur,” for parents who opt out of Common Core. “I’m not saying what will occur, I’m just saying there are.”

She’s also assembled a legal team and is providing information for school superintendents to use when talking to parents in local communities about “the law” she asserts they must follow.

However, the law everyone should be following is clearly outlined in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Parents are already legally protected to opt-out of Common Core and can submit a form to do so. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.” It declared:

the child is not the mere creature of the State: those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations” (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35).

The Supreme Court criticized the Nebraska state legislature for attempting to interfere “with the power of parents to control the education of their own” (Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 402).

And the Court ruled that a parent’s right to raise his/her children means that a parent is protected from unreasonable state interferences, one of the unwritten “liberties” protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment (Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 399).”

Most problematic for New Yorkers is that their state no longer evaluates its teachers — a private company does — Pearson Education, whose primary investors allegedly fund terrorism and propagate Islam.

Parents can also demand that:

• State school board members be investigated and/or fired and replaced.
• State legislatures and governors reject “Race to the top” federal funds and implement legislation or reverse its state education department’s implementation of Common Core in their state.
• Their child not participate in state testing; and in all curriculum teaching Islam, without being penalized.
• Information about their child not be collected as data.

Parents can also take their children out of public schools altogether.

The $632 billion the federal government spends each year on public school “education” is spent on education policy and curriculum that directly violates Constitutional protections.

August 25, 2015