On June 20, conservative state superintendents from Florida, Louisiana, Montana, and Wyoming joined Louisiana’s Republican attorney general and other right-wing operatives for a press conference outside the U.S. Supreme Court. They were there to condemn the Department of Education’s amendments to Title IX, which expand protections for LGBTQ+ and pregnant students and modify how colleges and universities respond to reports of sexual harassment and assault. Ruling on the court challenge to the changes, which were supported by President Biden, SCOTUS put them on hold in August.
Many of the speakers at the June press conference organized by the Heritage Foundation—the influential right-wing group behind Project 2025—signaled that they are at war with the federal government, and touted legal actions they have taken to upend the Biden administration’s reading of Title IX.
“I stand today in opposition to a federal government determined to hijack rights, endanger children, and dismantle long-standing protections for women and girls,” Louisiana State Superintendent Cade Brumley said. “These Title IX changes are a misguided pursuit to shift America from level-headed policies to absurdity.”
“Unfortunately, since January of 2021, the Biden administration has waged a war against women in order to cater to the woke mob,” Florida Commissioner Manny Diaz added.
“The new Title IX is extreme and its illegal redefinition of biological sex is the real war on real women,” exclaimed Montana Superintendent Elsie Arntzen.
Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy and author of Project 2025’s Department of Education chapter, referenced the culture war in her comments. “The Biden administration is leveraging one of the most powerful federal laws, twisting it to enforce a cultural ideology on sex and gender onto [sic] our schools and our children,” she said.
In addition to Heritage Foundation staff, other speakers at the press conference included Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R), Wyoming Superintendent Megan Degenfelder, Southeastern Legal Foundation Executive Director Kimberly Hermann, Moms for Liberty Cofounder Tiffany Justice, Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney Rachel Rouleau, and two former student athletes.
Following the press conference, the speakers headed to the Heritage Foundation’s auditorium for a public event on Title IX and a “private strategy lunch” at its Davis Policy Center that included “state education superintendents, solicitors general, attorneys general, conservative legal firms, and grassroots allies,” according to an email invitation.
In her remarks at the press conference, Burke also thanked superintendents for their “leadership” in opposing the Title IX rule changes, even though it was Heritage itself that manufactured the opposition.
Hundreds of pages of materials obtained and reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) demonstrate how Heritage has weaponized state superintendents to ramp up culture war divides, move education policy to the Right, and promote the privatization of schools.
Fighting Title IX Protections in Public Schools
The Heritage Foundation effort to drive opposition to the Biden administration’s Title IX rule changes began as early as February, records reviewed by CMD indicate.
A February 21 email from Heritage’s Center for Education Policy Project Coordinator Madison Marino to state superintendents in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota with the subject line: “Emergency meeting RE Title IX changes” called for a meeting within the week with Heritage “legal expert” Sarah Perry.
Before Perry joined Heritage, she served in the Trump administration as a senior counsel to the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights and “managed education reform initiatives at the Family Research Council” (FRC). The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FRC as a hate group for its use of “discredited research and junk science…to dehumanize LGBTQ people as the organization battles against LGBTQ rights.”
Perry told Time in 2022 that the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay or transgender employees from discrimination, sent a signal to conservatives “that Title IX was separate.”
After the meeting, Marino asked superintendents if they would “mind providing the contact info for your office’s general counsel? We’ll include them in future emails regarding drafts of coalition letters to protect against FOIAs, etc.” It is unclear why Heritage would find it necessary to coach public officials on how “to protect against” freedom of information record requests.
After the virtual meeting with Perry on February 26, superintendents Brumley, Degenfelder, Ryan Walters (OK), and Ellen Weaver (SC) met in Phoenix, Arizona on March 19 for a meeting of the Heritage-organized National Council of Conservative State Leaders, or what they had referred to previously as the Superintendents and Secretaries Roundtable. Details of what was discussed at that meeting are unknown, but Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Heritage President Kevin Roberts, and “a few others” were also in attendance, an email indicates.
CMD was able to confirm that Brumley, Degenfelder, Diaz, Walters, and Weaver were there because it obtained an attendance list for Heritage’s Conservative Vision for Education Conference held the following day and Burke tweeted a photo of the five of them on the day of the meeting.
Great meeting today of our National Council of Conservative State Leaders. This stellar group is working tirelessly to empower parents and restore excellence to K-12 education. @CommMannyDiazJr @cadebrumley @RyanWaltersSupt @megdeg4wyoming @ellenfored pic.twitter.com/gKKtAJNzJh
— Lindsey Burke (@lindseymburke) March 20, 2024
Education officials from Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia were also included in communications about the gathering.
The Conservative Vision of Education Conference appears to have focused on curriculum, with sessions on STEM and the humanities, the science of reading, and history and civics. The first session and the luncheon keynote featured educators from Great Hearts Academies and Institute, respectively, which Network for Public Education describes as “an Arizona-based chain of classical charter schools [with] deep ties to right-wing politicians and designs to tap into more public funds funneled through its new private school initiative that will capitalize on so-called Education Savings Account vouchers.”
Great Hearts has a history of discriminating against transgender students. “In 2018, the school issued a biological and gender nonconforming policy, requiring students to use facilities corresponding to the gender listed on their birth certificates,” Network for Public Education reports. “The ACLU of Arizona filed suit against the schools, alleging the charter school network broke the state’s public records and open-meetings law in private deliberations over policies related to transgender students.” Great Hearts eventually updated its policy, but still prohibits student-led LGBTQ+ groups.
The 2024 National Symposium for Classical Education hosted by Great Hearts coincided with the Heritage meeting from March 20–22 at the Phoenix Convention Center.
The March meeting is not the only example of curriculum discussions among the Heritage-organized National Council of Conservative State Leaders. In a January 16 virtual roundtable, “Book procurement/Curriculum issues” was a topic of discussion, with Heritage education fellow Jonathan Butcher asking registered attendees if they had “heard of” a number of textbooks listed.
On April 16, Heritage’s Burke emailed superintendents and education officials in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming after the new Title IX rules left the White House Office of Management and Budget asking those “interested in sending a guidance letter on Title IX to your LEAs [Local Education Agency]” to consider using “a draft letter written by Sarah Perry (cc’d) in our legal center.”
The letter calls the Title IX policy changes “illegal” and asks “each district superintendent in [insert state name] to wait for guidance from the [insert state name] Department of Education.”
Moving Towards a Right-Wing Capture of Public Education
In addition to weaponizing state superintendents to fight the federal Title IX rule changes and enact right-wing-approved curricula, records obtained by CMD show that Heritage is working with these state education leaders to privatize the U.S. educational system and tilt school boards to the Right.
On November 9, 2023, state education leaders from Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming gathered in Des Moines, Iowa to discuss school privatization. One panel featuring Florida Commissioner Diaz, Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow, and Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair (R) focused on “Putting Education Choice into Action.”
Another panel, “Education Report Card Overview,” featured Heritage staffers and likely promoted the right-wing group’s “Education Freedom Report Card,” which assigns states rankings based on factors such as whether they ban the teaching of critical race theory or whether students are allowed to use their preferred names or pronouns.
The conference wrapped up with a discussion between Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) and Heritage President Roberts.
At the January virtual roundtable just two months later, Heritage staffers again discussed “education choice implementation” with state education officials.
Also in January, South Carolina Superintendent Weaver participated in Heritage’s Awakening conference on Sea Island, Georgia, where she delivered remarks titled “Fighting for Children’s Education” and participated in a panel on privatization called “Promoting Education Reform in the States: How We Can Fight for Kids and Take Back Our Schools.” Weaver’s presentation slides from the panel show she focused her comments on math and reading.
An email sent by the director of policy and research at the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) in February indicates that the state is interested in partnering with Heritage on a “one-stop shop” so that potential “school board members can go through [OSDE] to attain all their statutorily required trainings.”
The close relationship between Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and Heritage has been well documented. For example, in July, Walters appointed Heritage’s Roberts to an Executive Review Committee that will work to “eliminate DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives] and ‘indoctrination,’” and emphasize “American exceptionalism” in the state’s schools.
Walters’ announcement in Oklahoma drew a lot of national attention because it appears to jump-start Project 2025 plans to decimate the U.S. Department of Education and also noted that the group would look to “incorporate the introduction of the Bible as an instructional resource” in grades 5–12.
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Well done – you data suggests a clarion call for political intrigues and financial excesses for the election of State Superintendents.
There is at present no coordinated national organization to take a leadership role in dealing with this threat. The result leaves states to compete with well funded national right wing groups capable of taking control.