Even if you are just remotely following the gubernatorial race in Virginia, you know that the campaign issues between McAuliffe and Youngkin largely revolve around parents having or not having a say in how and what their children are taught in school.

Radical Agenda Poisoning Public Schools

In Loudon County, VA, for example, school superintendent Scott Ziegler had an “extraordinary” request: that law enforcement be allowed to weaponize against parents who want to voice concerns at Loudon school board meetings.

Inclusive American Families Plan

In April the Biden White House released a summary of its “American Families Plan”:

President Biden is calling for a national partnership with states to offer free, high-quality, accessible, and inclusive preschool to all three-and four-year-olds… The President’s plan will… ensure that all publicly-funded preschool is high-quality, with low student-to-teacher ratios… and developmentally appropriate curriculum, and supportive classroom environments that are inclusive for all students.

James Freeman in the WSJ writes of the Biden administration’s promise for “inclusive” programs and a “developmentally appropriate curriculum” for childcare, all of which is supported by massive amounts of federal dollars.

Radical Agenda Poisoning Public Schools

Mr. Freeman covers Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum, in which she wrote last month in The Federalist:

Want to guess what “developmentally appropriate” curricula and “inclusive” environments for America’s three-year-olds will contain?

Ms. Lukas seems to be among the increasing number of Americans who treasure living in one of the world’s most inclusive cultures but also realize that when progressive leftists talk about “inclusion” they mean excluding people who disagree with them from public life. The same radical political agendas that are now poisoning public schools could come to dominate preschool and child care.

Extremism under Biden’s Plan

Ms. Lukas, describing the new leverage the federal government would be able to exercise under the Biden plan:

It would likely require states to develop and submit childcare plans. Parents have every reason to fear that a government-approved preschool and daycare program would create the same problems parents face in K-12 public schools.

The federal government may promise just to partner with states and localities by providing taxpayer funding, but it will also set regulations and expectations for who can staff these preschool and childcare centers and what must occur in these facilities…

Parents Will Have Fewer Options

Parents paying for their own programs now might shrug this off, assuming it will only affect other facilities that work with these bureaucracies. But any preschool or daycare program that doesn’t meet those requirements (and therefore isn’t eligible for any of this funding) will struggle to compete with these heavily subsidized alternatives. That means many private options, including faith-based programs, will disappear. Parents will be left with fewer options, outside of whatever government offers.

On Thursday the White House rolled out its latest spending framework. The proposal still includes a huge, costly intervention into pre-K and childcare programs, continues Mr. Freeman.

But the White House’s new description of these provisions doesn’t include a word about “inclusive” programs for kids or “developmentally appropriate” curricula. Nor did the president employ these words in his remarks at the White House, nor did he use them in a Thursday fundraising email to Democrats as he touted the child-care provisions among other spending plans.

Strings Attached?

The White House is boasting about all of the fresh government subsidies it intends to channel into the child-care market. But Team Biden isn’t talking about the federal strings that are sure to be attached to federal money.

Mr. Freeman contends that with the White House’s scrubbing its talking points suggests “Ms. Lukas has been raising all the right questions about this massive federal intervention into the lives of millions of our most vulnerable citizens.”

Interesting how elites and elected officials never want to subject their own children to the government-controlled public schools.