Clarification: A previous version of this article should have said CASEL is an advocacy organization that does research on SEL programs. It is not a reporting agency for SEL funding.
The prominent conservative group, Moms for Liberty, launched its own “university” in January and now claims more than 7,000 people have participated in its educational events.
The Moms for Liberty University, or M4LU, which is not an accredited university, says its mission is to “inform, equip, and empower parents with knowledge, understanding, and practical tools,” according to its site.
The program is meant to be a place where parents can take an in-depth look at education issues.
“Moms for Liberty was growing at a rapid pace, and our parents have been asking questions, trying to understand a lot of the issues that have been going on,” said Tina Descovich, co-founder and executive director of Moms for Liberty.
According to Descovich, the M4LU resource page has generated more than 52,000 site views since January.
While M4LU may have growing interest and participation, there are concerns about the validity of the organization.
Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, has been following Moms for Liberty since its launch in 2021. He said the organization behaves like a “political advocacy group” instead of an “education reform organization.”
“It looks like [Moms for Liberty] is trying to exploit parents’ fears in order to elect the types of candidates they prefer,” said Valant.
Valant also warns that M4LU might distract from pressing issues in education such as absenteeism and lagging test scores. “I think this initiative [M4LU], just like essentially everything else that Moms for Liberty has done, is just fanning the flames of the culture wars.”
Where does M4LU fit in the history of the organization?
Moms for Liberty entered the political spotlight in 2021 shortly after the start of the pandemic, when mothers and fathers across Florida lobbied against COVID mask mandates in schools.
The organization grew quickly and by the end of 2021, Moms for Liberty had 70,000 members across 165 chapters in 33 states. Since then, Moms for Liberty has expanded its platform to include prohibitions against the teaching of critical race theory and social-emotional-learning skills, as well as opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and LGBTQ rights in schools.
Moms for Liberty has also been involved in numerous school board, local, state, and national elections across the country. As a result, the organization has been credited for bringing in new voters on the issue of “parental rights” to the Republican party.
During its first national conference in 2022, Moms for Liberty featured prominent politicians such as Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott. At the August 2024 conference, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice did an on-stage interview with President Donald Trump about his support of the parent rights’ movement and removing undocumented students from schools.
Additionally, Justice was on the shortlist for Trump’s secretary of education and previously told Education Week she would be “honored” if picked. While Justice did not become Trump’s secretary of education, the administration’s latest decisions are in line with the issues Moms for Liberty has advocated for, like the dismantling of the Department of Education.
As Moms for Liberty continues to influence education policymaking at the local, state, and national levels, experts say M4LU may be a strategy to further mobilize its base.
Maya Henson Carey, a senior research analyst for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that Moms For Liberty operates on a local level with each chapter “hyper-focused” on a specific issue like book bans or DEI curriculum.
“I think that it has kind of been the goal of the main chapter, the national chapter, to put out these so-called resources, so that the local chapters can use them as they need to,” said Carey.
M4LU programming and participation
Most of M4LU’s engagement has come from chapter members, as the organization has not yet marketed M4LU outside its newsletter, which is sent out to Moms for Liberty members with updates on education policy and access to organization events. Some of the participants are using M4LU to lead their chapter meetings, Descovich said.
“If [parents are] concerned about one of these [educational issues] in their school district, they can go and they can pull down slides and do a presentation,” Descovich said.
Every month, M4LU focuses on a different issue. January was social-emotional learning, February was critical race theory, and March was restorative justice.
Throughout each month, M4LU has seminars with speakers and an updated resource page with a toolkit that includes articles, presentations, and steps to take action in their local schools.
One chapter chair in Linn County, Iowa, Geralyn Jones, has been taking the SEL course at a slower pace to then bring back the learnings to her chapter.
“What we’re experiencing a lot of, in our community, is so overwhelming. [Parents] don’t know where to go and how to unpack anything, so I’ve taken it upon myself to take the courses, take it at a slower pace, unpack it before I move on to the next,” Jones said.
For Jones, the benefit of M4LU lies in how deeply each program covers a specific issue.
“I thought I had a really good understanding of what SEL was going into this,” Jones said. “I knew that [schools] were kind of implementing it through surveys and stuff like that, but I didn’t know the extent of the data mining and the project unicorn ... all of our information is being data mined and our kids’ information the moment they hit enter.”
Some educators are worried that the information M4LU is putting out there is not accurate and could harm effective SEL programs.
Chris Young, the principal of North Country Union High School in Vermont, said he is worried that M4LU could jeopardize his school’s SEL program.
Young’s high school has a program called Community Development Days in which students tackle different topics throughout the year, such as suicide prevention, substance abuse, and time management, among others.
“I would agree that [program] is a social-emotional learning curriculum for us,” said Young. “If people were to think that you just can’t do SEL and all of a sudden we’re not able to cover those topics with our kids, that would be harmful to us [educators].”
For another Moms for Liberty chapter chair, Gabby Ide, her strategy is to use the M4LU “smartbooks” to get a quick summary of an issue and then the “whitepapers” to access research articles.
“It is super important that parents are informed about what’s going on in schools and we don’t always feel invited to the conversation or like we know enough and so this M4LU is a whole tool belt of resources to stay current on the information and on how things are implemented and then it allows me to ask intelligent questions of my kids’ teachers and administration,” Ide said.
Ide has also used M4LU to be more involved in her son’s education. Ide’s son attends an IB high school, and says she’s had a hard time accessing curricula. While IB programs give teachers flexibility in setting their lesson plans, it also requires educators to comply with state and local standards.
Ide says through M4LU, she was able to take a different approach to find out more information about what her son was learning. “I can ask [the teacher] specific questions about what I have concerns about or I can even ask the school board member for their CASEL reports,” Ide said. (CASEL is an advocacy organization that does research on SEL programs.)
The impact of M4LU programming
Despite the positive reviews of M4LU by Moms for Liberty members, some experts raise flags about the accuracy and purpose behind the initiative.
For example, Carey said the use of “academic approach” to describe M4LU can be a veil. “M4LU claims to take an academic approach, but it appears to just be their usual methods of bringing in speakers who align with their views and push out inflammatory and disinformation about things like critical race theory, social-emotional learning, gender identity, comprehensive sex education.”
M4LU does offer counter perspectives throughout the programs, according to Ide, Jones, and Descovich. They also have a “Views From The Left” section on their toolkit page.
Descovich said that as the program grows, there is room for more counter-perspectives to be included. “I’m hoping to have more civil discourse with those that approach some of these ideologies in a different way and have discussions about benefits and concerns,” said Descovich.
Even then, an expert says viewers should keep an eye out for the accuracy of any information displayed on M4LU. “It’s an impressive amount of stuff they have on there but ... it’s not peer reviewed in the way that most academics have some prestige to their documents and so forth,” said Maurice Cunningham, author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.
Terri Daniels, principal of Folsom Middle School in Folsom, Calif., and a state coordinator for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, also expressed concern about the accuracy of the information M4LU is providing.
"[M4LU’s programs] concern me because [they are] very much more opinionated, and I felt that some of the people that were speaking were not as familiar or educated on the topics and were possibly sharing information that wasn’t fully accurate,” said Daniels.
Daniels earned a doctorate in education from the University of Phoenix focused on helping parents better understand their school systems. She recognized that some parents do not understand how their school systems work and were concerned about their kids’ performance in school.
In response, Daniels’ started holding parent sessions at her middle school where she would talk about issues affecting her middle schoolers such as “how to understand the adolescent brain” or “grading versus levels of mastery of concepts.”
While Daniels recognizes that parents have a right to advocate on behalf of their children, the information they receive on a topic should be well-balanced.
“I think that there would be a real benefit for [M4LU], if they had somebody there that could answer the questions in a moderate platform, not having someone for lack of better terms, far to the left or far to the right,” said Daniels.
