Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller will introduce legislation when the House returns to session requiring parents to opt in to surveys that gather and categorize personal information from schoolchildren.
Miller’s legislation, the Parents Opt-In Protection (POP) Act, responds to surveys that collect a raft of data from students, including about their sexual activity, orientation and gender identity, her office told the Daily Caller. Notably, Duval County in Florida on Monday opted out of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). The survey, which schools have administered since the early 1990s, asks students about their sexual activity, orientation and gender identity.
The POP Act requires “the prior written consent of the student (if the student is an adult or emancipated minor), or in the case of an unemancipated minor, without the prior written consent of the parent” before schools can circulate surveys. The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, which currently governs such data collection, requires schools to provide information about federally sponsored surveys to parents, and allow them to opt their students out.
Read the bill here:
Parents Opt-In Protection A… by Michael Ginsberg
“Schools are partnering with radical left-wing lobbying organizations and Big Tech to force young children to fill out surveys regarding sexual orientation, transgender ideology, and woke politics. I am introducing the Parents Opt-in Protection Act to ensure parents are informed and give written consent before schools and Big Tech can collect any information from our children. Schools should never force sexual materials or political ideology upon children while keeping parents in the dark. Parents are the guardians of their children, and we must protect parental rights in the classroom,” Miller said in a statement.
School districts around the country have begun instituting such surveys in recent years, arguing they help treat students fairly and indicate the inclusion policies that districts should institute. District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) hired the education consulting firm Panorama Education, owned by the son-in-law of Attorney General Merrick Garland, to poll students between sixth and 12th grade in 2022. The survey included questions about “gender and sexual identity,” according to an email sent by DCPS.
Fairfax County Public School students were also asked about sexual activity and drug use in a 2021 survey. Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s parental bill of rights in education, passed in 2022, requires schools in the state to notify parents when sexually-explicit material is presented in classrooms. (RELATED: Virginia School District Now Must Tell Parents When Sexually Explicit Content Is In School Curriculum)
Critics of such surveys argued they are ineffective and introduce mature content to students at inappropriate ages. The state of Florida opted out of requiring schools to administer the CDC survey in 2022, with then-Education Secretary Jacob Oliva explaining the state would set its own standards to make sure questions “are specific to Florida.”