America’s K–16 students have been swept up in successive waves of disorder and lawlessness for about a decade now. In late 2015 and early 2016, set off by claims of racism at the University of Missouri, campus protests punctuated by shout-downs and meeting takeovers spread across the country. Then, in 2017, triggered by the election of President Donald Trump, a wave of shout-downs drove conservative speakers off America’s college campuses, a situation unremedied to this day. Less noticed, but of real importance, in the months following President Trump’s 2016 election victory and well into the next year, anti-Trump high-school walkouts spread across more than half the states. While schools and colleges were largely shut down by the response to Covid during the George Floyd incident of 2020, that year saw America’s youth swept up in riotous demonstrations, statue desecrations, and attempts to intimidate conservatives. And this year, pro-Hamas demonstrators set up illegal encampments at colleges nationwide, took over buildings, and intimidated Jewish students, in some cases driving them off campus. Meanwhile, high schools in blue cities and suburbs have seen a rash of anti-Israel K–12 walkouts, many in coordination with college encampments.
Missing in all this has been any trace of accountability. Speaker shout-downs, college encampments, and high-school walkouts violate school policies and in many cases the law. Yet discipline is rare. On the contrary, campus shout-downs and quad takeovers are sometimes encouraged by faculty and administrators. More disturbing, K–12 student walkouts are often praised and in many cases directly authorized by schools as a form of “civic engagement.” Few Americans are aware of the extent to which civic education has been co-opted and converted into a pretext for political activism under names like “civic engagement” or “action civics.”
Sometimes K–12 “action civics” entails protesting or lobbying after school for course credit. At other times, however, it means walking out of school to protest. Those political walkouts may not count for course credit, but they do generally go undisciplined. Instead of discouraging walkouts by treating them as the unexcused absences they are, schools often exempt them from punishment. And increasingly, blue states and school districts are devising permission systems meant to allow and even encourage mass student walkouts for political purposes.
Protests at the college and K–12 levels are now mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, university activists set a standard for radicalism that can only be imitated by high-school students. At the same time, high-school activists cut their teeth on walkouts and enter college primed for something more radical. In the wake of the anti-Trump walkouts of 2017 and nationwide walkouts for gun control in 2018, college-admissions essays telling stories of political activism surged. Colleges responded by encouraging the trend and announcing that students disciplined for walking out of high school would not be penalized when applying for admission.
Since then, prestige universities have glamorized their legacies of student disruption from the 1960s, positively encouraging the leaders of school walkouts to apply. Not only can you now break the rules and get off scot-free, you’re likely to draw praise from your teachers and secure admission to a prestigious university to boot. That is the message being sent to high schoolers nowadays by everyone from civics teachers to college-admissions officers.
Forcing colleges to discipline students who shout down speakers and take over campus quads is difficult, although not impossible (see here). But making sure that high-school walkouts are treated as unexcused absences, disciplined accordingly, and not glamorized in the K–12 curriculum can be handled as a straightforward matter of state law.
That is why I have authored the Politics Out of Schools Act (POSA), model legislation co-sponsored by the National Association of Scholars and by my think tank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Removing rewards for politicized truancy at the K–12 level is the easiest and most effective way to break the cycle of disorder and lawlessness now entrenched in America’s K–16 education system.
The Politics Out of Schools Act does three things. First, it forbids schools in a given state from issuing excused absences for political protest and lobbying. Second, it prohibits school standards, curricula, regulations, or teacher-training materials from promoting or permitting student walkouts for purposes of political protest or lobbying. Third, it ensures that unexcused absences for purposes of political protest or lobbying are treated no differently from other instances of truancy. However schools treat a day of truancy — be it with detention, a brief suspension, or a mark on a student’s record — that is how political walkouts would be dealt with. This law might not end all school walkouts, but it would surely make them less frequent and extensive.
In 1969, the Supreme Court declared in Tinker v. Des Moines that students do not shed their constitutional right to protest at the schoolhouse door. Students were permitted by this decision to wear black armbands in class to protest the Vietnam War. At the same time, the court held that schools retain the power to set rules — on attendance, for example — that ensure good order and prevent disruption, as long as those rules are applied consistently. The Politics Out of Schools Act does exactly that.
In no way would students, under POSA, lose their right to political protest. They would be able to post on social media or write opinion pieces in the school newspaper. They would be able to assemble in order to protest either before or after school. They would be able to launch a petition on change.org. They would be able to wear symbolic armbands or T-shirts with slogans. But they would not be able to walk out of school. Regardless of the decorum with which a given walkout is conducted, the act of leaving school without permission is inherently disruptive. It violates the school’s “substantial government interest” in enforcing compulsory education and in maximizing its use of financial resources. And, of course, walkouts fly in the face of laws requiring students to show up at school.
Students who walk out in protest when they have many other ways of registering their views are engaging in civil disobedience. In that case, they must learn what Martin Luther King Jr. knew well — that civil disobedience brings consequences. There is also a difference between courageous and well-considered civil disobedience under pressing circumstances, on the one hand, and disruptive playacting, on the other.
Teaching students to follow the rules, or take the consequences when they don’t, is a very important reason for declining to allow political school walkouts. There are plenty more, however.
School walkouts should be discouraged because (1) they force schools to take sides in political disputes; (2) they leave students vulnerable to self-interested manipulation by the district’s political leaders; (3) they subject students to political pressure from their peers; (4) they subject students to political pressure from their teachers; (5) they subject students to political pressure from outside organizations; (6) they produce divisive conflict rather than thoughtful exploration of opposing opinions; and (7) they present a significant threat to student safety while raising liability issues for schools. Let’s examine each reason in turn.
Schools Taking Sides
Any school that excuses a student walkout for one cause but not another effectively endorses the one cause and opposes the other. This violates the neutrality public schools owe to a politically diverse citizenry. Treating causes differently would also run afoul of Tinker v. Des Moines, thereby opening schools to lawsuits for political bias.
Yet this sort of favoritism is common. In my recent piece on high-school walkouts over Gaza, I showed how Chicago Public Schools had discouraged vigils for the victims of October 7 while encouraging walkouts for a cease-fire. I also noted that although New York’s public-school system permitted student walkouts for both Gaza and the climate, its treatment of the two causes differed. It’s almost impossible to treat all political causes equally. And trying to do so could provoke an endless series of walkouts, substantially affecting the school year. In short, walkouts entangle schools in impossible political and legal dilemmas.
Political Manipulation
The above assumes that schools are at least minimally interested in avoiding political bias. As spelled out in my piece on Gaza walkouts, however, the political interests of mayors and teachers’ unions often lead to the gross manipulation of students and their use as political pawns by whomever happens to be in charge of their town. As I show, former New York mayor Bill de Blasio, Chicago mayors Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson, and the Chicago Teachers Union have all used student walkouts for their own political purposes.
Peer Pressure
Walkouts always bring peer pressure to bear on students who stand outside of the dominant — usually progressive — orthodoxy. Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder provides a striking example in her book Undoctrinate. In the run-up to one of the national student protests for gun control around 2018, administrators at a public high school decided that the entire school, including teachers and staff, would walk out. A single student who opposed gun control begged off. He wanted to go to school as usual that day. Since his teachers would be out protesting, however, that was impossible. The school was planning to march its teachers, staff, and students in a huge collective and continuous circle around the school’s outdoor track.
Given that, it was decided that the lone dissenting student should stand in the middle of the track as the entire school marched around him. Naturally, the dissenter was horrified by the prospect of what would be, in effect, a gigantic ceremonial ostracism. Kerrigan (working for FIRE at the time) suggested that the student explain to his counselor how uncomfortable this would make him. The counselor was able to get the plan to put the student in the middle of the track called off. The fact that the idea was suggested at all, however, illustrates both the power of peer pressure and the blindness of educator-ideologues to its dangers.
Teacher Pressure
The previous example certainly involved teacher pressure as well as pressure from peers, but Snyder offers another, even more striking case. She cites the Milwaukee Public Schools and several other Wisconsin school districts that directly sponsor multiple student walkouts annually (all for leftist causes, of course). The MacIver Institute, a free-market think tank in Wisconsin, has documented many of these walkouts, highlighting the decisive role of teachers.
In one case, student climate protesters, led by teachers, blocked a sidewalk outside a Wells Fargo bank while the drum corps of the school’s marching band, at the bank’s entrance, played in order to disrupt business inside. A number of teachers then joined the several activist groups present to occupy the lobby of the bank. The teachers were soon arrested along with the various professional activists. The teachers smiled back at their students as they were led away by police. These teachers were instructing their students in Alinsky-style protest tactics — not to mention teaching them how to get arrested.
Pressure from Outside Groups
The previous example shows teachers seamlessly blending their students with climate protesters from groups such as Extinction Rebellion, 350.org, and the Sunrise Movement. (The Sunrise Movement famously led student occupations of the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2019.) This is typical. Student walkouts are generally pushed for — and quietly directed — by outside groups. And student walkouts frequently join up with adult demonstrations, many of which involve property destruction and arrests. Students are trained in lawlessness.
Division Instead of Learning
The recent Gaza walkouts greatly intensified the divisions between Jewish students and students who support Hamas. The results were civil-rights complaints filed by both sides and continued communal bitterness. The pattern isn’t unusual. This student op-ed in a local paper in Oregon after a 2016 anti-Trump walkout, for example, complained of a “with us or against us” mentality spawned by the walkout. Nonparticipating students were accused of racism, and teachers openly took sides. In place of thoughtful discussion, the school was torn apart.
Student Safety and School Liability
To maintain neutrality and avoid lawsuits for bias or liability, some school districts prohibit teachers from accompanying students on walkouts. These schools also emphasize that the district is not responsible for students once they leave school grounds. Other districts insist that teachers must accompany student walkouts so as to ensure their safety. These districts consider the supervising teachers politically neutral chaperones, not protest leaders. These contradictory strategies bespeak an impossible dilemma.
An incident in Berkeley, Calif., illustrates the problem. Berkeley middle schoolers walked out “for Gaza” earlier this May. Initially, the school system disclaimed responsibility and said that no school personnel would accompany the marchers. In the end, however, safety concerns led two vice principals to join the march. They brought their student charges to a Jewish Community Center, where young Jewish (not Israeli) children inside were subjected to anti-Israel chants. The Berkeley Unified School District has sought to disavow responsibility for this ugly antisemitic incident. Its disclaimers, however, are unconvincing.
In early May, about 50 Boston-area high-school students, in alliance with MIT’s pro-Hamas encampment, blocked Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge’s main thoroughfare, for four hours at the height of rush hour. Blockades at major intersections are not infrequent products of student walkouts. The potential for arrest, injury, and liability is obvious. And if it matters anymore, these high-school students blocking the road were committing a crime.
While the overwhelming number of student walkouts favor causes on the left, it’s only fair that walkouts on behalf of conservative causes confine themselves to after-school hours as well. In rare cases, for example, students have walked out to protest progressive policies on transgender bathrooms. Those protests should wait until school is out.
The one big conservative protest attended by students is the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., with local versions in states at a distance from the capital. These marches may be affected by a walkout ban, but the impact is likely to be marginal. The great majority of students at the March for Life come from denominational or parochial schools, which often suspend classes and drive to D.C. by the busload. Unlike public schools, private and religious schools are under no obligation to remain neutral on matters of moral, religious, or political significance. On the contrary, many such schools are positively obliged to model and promote a set of values. This would in no way be barred by the Politics Out of Schools Act, which would apply to public schools only.
The Politics Out of Schools Act offers a simple and straightforward way to roll back the politicization of our public schools. Students have plenty of ways to express themselves politically during the school day without walking out. Encouragement of walkouts by our public schools has entangled these institutions in politics, destroyed their neutrality, ostracized nonparticipants, divided student bodies, endangered student safety, subjected schools to lawsuits, and promoted a culture of lawlessness that is slowly but surely dragging down not only America’s education system but America itself.
Student walkouts must end. The Politics Out of Schools Act is the way to stop them.