How restrictions on teaching about race and sexual orientation have 'hijacked' parents' concerns about Covid

The pressures of the coronavirus pandemic are reconfiguring the politics of education, dividing Democrats and creating new openings for Republicans.

Both sides of that equation will be on display Tuesday in a recall election for three school board members in San Francisco, one of the nation's most liberal cities. The recall, which has split local Democrats, has combined genuine grassroots discontent over extended school closings during the coronavirus outbreak with massive funding from longtime critics of public education and some big supporters of Republican political campaigns. Divisions among Democrats are also sharpening in the accelerating blue state debates about how quickly to lift school mask mandates and other public health restrictions as coronavirus caseloads plummet nationwide.

Yet these internecine struggles between liberals are obscuring a much more expansive and explosive conflict spreading across the red states: an aggressive drive by Republicans to censor how public school teachers talk about race, gender, sexual orientation and other sensitive topics. That effort amounts to the most intrusive attempt to set legislative limits on the specific content of classroom instruction since the spate of state laws barring the teaching of evolution during the 1920s and the anti-Communist cloyalty oaths for teachers that proliferated during the Joe McCarthy era after World War II.