As an attorney who has worked with parents and teachers to fight for their constitutional rights across California and beyond, I have seen my share of offensive and potentially illegal conduct pulled by government employees working at school districts.
But I never thought that kind of behavior would land on my own kitchen table.
Let me back it up to about six weeks ago.
After school one day, my nine year old third-grader bounced into my home office and announced: “I took a social, emotional learning survey from ‘Panorama’ today!”
To say I was concerned would be an understatement.
Fortunate for me (and unfortunate for the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, which contracted with a private company in order to collect the personal data of my child), I have some specific background on this controversial topic.
A quick primer:
While “social, emotional learning” (SEL) has been widely touted as a super fun and effective way for kids to develop social and emotional skills (overseen by your helpful local government bureaucrat, of course), it has also been widely criticized as a means of sneaking politicized content into the classroom.
According to Dr. James Lindsay, “Social Emotional Learning is the psychologizing of schooling, and, as one might expect, it comes in a variety of forms. The most contemporary and relevant form is the most Marxist form.”
Of course, the question is not whether children should be taught social and emotional skills, or whether those skills are crucial to achieving full human development and flourishing. The question is whether government employees should supplant parents as the primary source of their children’s development of values, attitudes, and beliefs.
While we teach our child to respect others’ opinions, and to challenge them when done appropriately and respectfully, we certainly don’t rely on government employees to teach them “proper” opinions. And we certainly don’t rely on them to teach her social and emotional skills.
And while there is room to disagree about SEL generally, there is no such room when it comes specifically to SEL as deployed by Panorama Education, the private company contracted by the government to probe into my child’s social and emotional development, which is, without question, none of their business.
Founded by former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s son-in-law, Xan Tanner, Panorama is widely recognized as producing teaching materials focused on systemic racism, oppression, white supremacy, and intersectionality, all under the seemingly benign rubric of SEL.
According to the Washington Examiner, the multimillion-dollar company’s marketing plan appears to be: get educators to buy in and then show them how to pay for it all with government grants.
“International SEL Day is a perfect opportunity to tell your policymakers that committing to dismantling systems of oppression and advancing equity-centered SEL is important to you,” the Panorama “toolkit” reads. “Reach out to your local, regional, state, and national policymakers.”
The Daily Mail reports that Panorama has run a free online workshop entitled “SEL as Social Justice: Dismantling White Supremacy Within Systems and Self” that included an article entitled “How White Supremacy Lives in Our Schools” among its recommended resources for teachers. The essay identified rallies supporting President Donald Trump as being comparable as symbols of white supremacy to the Ku Klux Klan.
But even if government-administered SEL was the greatest educational innovation since the chalkboard, and even if Panorama is staffed by a bunch of politically objective saints, the government employees working at the District still had no business probing into my child’s personal life.
Federal law, as enforced by the U.S. Department of Education, specifically requires that parents not only be notified before their children are exposed to SEL surveys, but give a chance to review the survey before it is administered, and if they so desire, opt their kids out.
None of this happened in the case of my child.
Had my child not come home and told me what happened, the District would likely have never said a word about it. How many other families, I wondered, would have wanted that information before the fact, as is their legal right?
What followed was a six-week long journey to try to find out just what exactly is going on in the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District when it comes to SEL surveys. And while the ultimate results were satisfactory, the process and context were alarming.
My first stop was the bottom of the institutional totem pole: my child’s teacher.
I began by asking through email whether the kids had really taken an SEL survey (which I still found difficult to believe, given the law requiring prior notice).
Her response was the equivalent of a nod and a digital shrug.
She seems like a nice person (and good teacher), so I didn’t press her. Instead I requested my child be opted out from future SEL surveys (which I legally should have had the option to exercise before she was forced to take one).
The teacher then connected me, via email, with the school social worker, who I was informed is in charge of the school’s “SEL programs.” Not only did I not know that grade schools have social workers on staff, but I had no idea they were in charge of SEL regimes provided via private companies.
I didn’t hear anything back for three days.
It wasn’t until I was forced to send a follow up email that the social worker responded and provided a terse confirmation that my child would be opted out of future SEL surveys at the school. There was no acknowledgement of the lack of notice, no explanation of what had happened, and no apology.
She did not even offer to remove my child’s survey answers from the dataset.
Frustrated at her lack of candor, I replied and asked whether the required notice and opportunity to opt out had been given. Afterall, maybe I was just mistaken and had missed it.
No such luck, and no answer was provided.
Eventually, after several rounds of phone tag, I got the principal on the phone.
After confirming that my child’s private information would not become part of a dataset, I then restated the follow up question from my previous email to the social worker: Had parents received advance notice of the survey before it was administered?
She said, no there hadn’t been, and the line was quiet for a few seconds. Was she waiting for me to explain why I was asking?
So, I asked her why the notice and opportunity hadn’t been provided.
She nonchalantly said the SEL survey “is just something the District does every year.” I then informed her that not only am I an attorney, but that there are federal requirements that they provide advance notice, and failing to do so was a potential violation of those requirements.
She then asked me what specific problems I have with SEL surveys.
Surprised by the question, I informed her that I am not legally required to give specific reasons. Nonetheless, she persisted.
In short, I told her that I don’t think public school teachers, school districts, and especially questionable private companies like Panorama, have any business collecting students’ private information to teach them social and emotional learning skills.
In my view, such guidance is the duty of parents, and any parent failing to teach their kids those skills is deficient in their responsibility.
She thanked me and said she would “elevate the issue” to the District, and I requested an update on steps taken to prevent this kind of potential violation again before we ended the call. I also sent this request shortly again in an email.
What followed was two weeks of silence.
Finally, after several email exchanges I was able to get on a call with a District official.
While the official also like a genuinely nice person, to me his apparent naivete exposes a larger problem with the level of autonomy these government employees claim for themselves when it comes to our children.
After I again expressed my concern with my child being subject to this kind of SEL survey from Panorama, and the apparent lack of notice, the official stated that the District’s position was that the survey my child was forced to take should not be considered a true “SEL” survey because these are “the kinds of questions teachers usually ask students in class, anyway.”
Really? Here are some of the questions the District considers par for the course in a third grade classroom (as shown by a copy of the survey I later received):
These questions were submitted to eight-year-olds…without their parents’ knowledge or permission. Not to mention: what does any of this have to do with reading, writing, or math? Who elected or empowered government employees to probe into our children’s personal, emotional, and psychological lives?
I don’t remember teachers asking me or my classmates if I thought I could change my level or intelligence, control my emotions, or have a supportive adult at home when I was in the third grade. Likely because thirty years ago they knew it was none of their business.
Surprisingly, the District official appeared more concerned with my child telling me the name of the private company, Panorama, that was listed on the survey. He said he planned to ask to have this name removed from future SEL surveys.
Not only did this topic appear beside the point, but I would think the District would be in favor of more transparency, not less. What is there to hide?
He then offered to send me the questions from the survey (after my child had already taken it), and to remove the answers they had provided from their dataset.
I told him I would look at the survey and get back to him about it, but that given the potential violation of federal law, and to avoid the necessity of my filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, the District would need to give me some assurance that the situation was being properly corrected.
Ultimately, I was as shocked as you might have been when finally reviewing some of the SEL survey questions.
This is precisely the reason why the federal notice requirements exist in the first place: to inform families before their kids are subjected to invasive pseudo-psychological probing and give them the opportunity to opt their children out from attempted political or other conditioning.
I told the District official as much in a follow-up email.
Several days later, I was contacted by an attorney representing the District, who informed me they were now apparently doing everything they could to avoid a federal investigation.
The District agreed to scrub not just my daughter’s survey answers, but the entire unauthorized Panorama SEL dataset from across the entire District. I was also assured that going forward they would make sure to comply with federal notice requirements prior to administration of SEL surveys.
But the District’s attorney’s letter didn’t mention notifying parents about what had happened, which was another point I specifically raised with the District official. This was certainly information I would like to have as a parent.
How else are we to practice democratic oversight of public officials without sufficient information? How many other families (likely hundreds) were in the dark about what had happened?
From the teacher to a social worker, to the principal, to a District official, to the District’s attorney…what a ride.
In the end, the only assurance I could get was that the District planned to notify parents at some point in the future before they administer their next Panorama SEL survey.
I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough.
I keep coming back to the question of what would have happened had my child not told me about the survey, or had I not had some legal background on this topic and pressed the issue? Were the officials at the District ignorant of their legal obligations, or given Panorama’s reputation, were they trying to hide the ball? Which is worse?
And when are they planning to actually tell parents what happened? Will there be an apology?
In the end, I have more questions than answers. But I do know this: Our children are not the property of the state to do with as they please. That is especially true when it comes to our kids’ moral development.
I hope the officials at the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District will not only meet their legal obligations going forward but rethink their decision to expose our kids to potential indoctrination through future Panorama Education surveys and programming.
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