Published March 24, 2025
Texas has got a problem with politicized schools. K–12 student walkouts for purposes of political protest or legislative lobbying have become surprisingly common. Sometimes students cut classes to protest in favor of abortion rights, against President Trump’s immigration policy, in sympathy with Gaza/Hamas, or for a smorgasbord of other such causes, all in defiance of school attendance requirements. At other times, protesting students are granted excused absences for their walkouts, effectively turning educators into political collaborators. In some cases, teachers and administrators throw political neutrality entirely out the window and openly recruit students to help them lobby the Texas legislature — evading student attendance requirements by calling it all a “field trip.”
Texas Representative Steve Toth aims to put an end to these practices with HB 4561. The bill is inspired by model legislation that I published last year (co-sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the National Association of Scholars). Toth, however, has turbo-charged the concept by adding real teeth.
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Stanley Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Beyond his work with Education and American Ideals, Mr. Kurtz is a key contributor to American public debates on a wide range of issues from K–12 and higher education reform, to the challenges of democratization abroad, to urban-suburban policies, to the shaping of the American left’s agenda. Mr. Kurtz has written on these and other issues for various journals, particularly National Review Online (where he is a contributing editor).
