Only 10% of American children attend private schools. Of the 115th Congress, nearly 25% of Senators and 25% of House members attended private school. With the lone exception of Jimmy Carter, no sitting presidents in the last century sent their children to DC public schools - they sent them to NAIS Schools. NAIS Schools matter. There is only one reason we champion this fight: we care about our children and the future of America. This isn’t a job. There is no glamour, no recognition, no paycheck. There is no way to buy our favor. That’s exactly what makes us dangerous.
In this Substack, a Guest Undercover Mother reminds us why privates matter:
As an NAIS school alum and a child of immigrants, I found education to be the leading way to achieve the American Dream. Elite private schools across America, called “independent schools” and members of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), are the bedrock of education undergirding the American dream. But they are in dire trouble. NAIS has submerged these formerly independent schools into a morass of what we casually call wokism, moving away from strong academics and character development to a fixation on gender and race ideology. With NAIS school graduates dominating power positions in America, the deterioration and degeneracy of these schools spell disaster for our country.
As immigrants, my parents valued family and education above all else. Growing up in a major city, the public schools were unpredictable and controlled by teachers’ unions. So, my parents worked around the clock and sent me to an NAIS school regardless of the sacrifices and humiliations they had to suffer. When I attended private school, I learned the soft skills JD Vance described in Hillbilly Elegy; I learned to use cutlery properly, ask for letters of recommendation, speak properly about social clubs, about the importance of handwritten Thank You notes, and how to lead with initiative.
When I had my own children, I had to convince my husband the exorbitant price tag for private school was worth it. My husband saw school as a purely economic question: Was the education worth the $30,000-$50,000 in after-tax dollars for each child? I explained the right private school provides a much more extensive education for our children than simply reading and math. The right private school is not only a community that partners with us in forming our children into principled adults; it provides incomparable relationships that last a lifetime, helping them obtain jobs, business opportunities, and social relationships in networks that include the most successful, influential, and powerful people in the country and the world.
Elite private day and boarding schools are arguably the most exclusive and historic schools in the country. Collegiate School in New York City was established in 1628 – years before Harvard College. Andover was founded only two years after the birth of our country. With storied history and limited enrollment, gaining admission into an elite private school can be a ridiculously rigorous process. After your toddler is assessed (sometimes with minimum IQ scores), you are vetted by the school in every aspect of your fitness from your education history, career, character, giving history, and personal recommendations preferably by existing board members. Once granted admission, you must sign an enrollment contract within days and provide a hefty deposit. Along with the school handbook of policies, you are given a roster with the personal contact information of every family in the school.
Once you become a member of a private school, you become a member of a family without the bounds of blood, age, location, or time. No matter what happens in our lives and how we change, we have a shared bond and loyalty based on our private school days. The pride and loyalty we feel for our schools compels us to remain active as alumni with service and financial support.
While entrée into this world provides boundless opportunities, it also implies unspoken rules of privacy and decorum. The intimate nature of private school communities cannot function without high levels of trust. For these reasons, NAIS school parents and alumni do not speak about our schools to others. We care deeply about our schools and want to maintain their traditions, legacies, and reputations. We also know the fate of our children’s current and future education rests within the hands of the schools through recommendations. Secondary school recommendations often include assessments of parent participation, support, and communications with the school. If we criticize or leave our school, we will immediately be vilified and ostracized.
In complete opposition to my private school DNA but entirely out of my love for my private school institution, I have chosen to violate these unwritten codes. First, our schools have taken advantage of parents, alumni, and children and breached our covenant of trust to an unforgivable extent. Second and more importantly, what happens in private schools, specifically NAIS schools, is critical to the fate of America. While only about 1% of the schools in America are NAIS schools, nearly one-third of Biden’s cabinet attended these schools. Graduates from these “independent” schools, controlled by the Washington DC-based NAIS, wield disproportionate influence in every aspect of American life from government, news media, tech, corporate, finance, and entertainment. Separation between individuals in spheres of influence is barely one or two degrees. In addition to alumni, nearly every influential person in America regardless of party affiliation sends his/her children to NAIS schools.
Lincoln knew the school room could fundamentally change the core systems, values, and future trajectory of our country. When American governance and culture are controlled by an increasingly smaller group of people educated in elite NAIS schools, what is taught at these schools is vital to understand. These NAIS schools form our ruling classes’ ideas, ideologies, and identities and thus shape society’s policy and culture. I recall a concerted push towards the precursors of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and global activism in my NAIS school thirty years ago. Today, I see the push to condition my children into one narrow path of thinking beginning at a much earlier age at their NAIS school.
NAIS leaders and headmasters openly discuss how they view NAIS schools as laboratories to actualize their theories of transformational pedagogy on our children. In addition to radical Marxist pedagogy that includes dumbing down academics, eliminating merit, and infusing race, gender, and sex ideology into the school experience, NAIS schools are at the forefront of data mining our children. Using tools like questionnaires and surveys under the guise of “wellness,” NAIS schools track information on our children and partner with universities, foundations, and organizations including Planned Parenthood, Gender Spectrum, and the Klingenstein Center to capture and store data. Some NAIS schools have gone so far as to put physical trackers on their students under the guise of Covid exposure tracing. NAIS and NAIS schools have been using sophisticated law firms like Venable and Holland & Knight and crisis communications firms like The Jane Group to manage and purge parents who are viewed as the enemy. NAIS was far ahead of Merrick Garland’s DOJ Memo labeling parents as domestic terrorists. Once NAIS schools are infected with cancerous agenda, it filters to public schools throughout the country.
When the question isn’t whether any influential Americans attended or sent their children to elite private schools but instead whether there are any influential Americans who are not connected to NAIS schools, the power concentrated in these schools cannot be denied. We must reclaim and save our elite private schools because they are institutions vital to the foundation of America. If we simply give up and leave, these institutions will continue operating and change the core of what America becomes. We are already in the midst of this transformative stage and must turn it around for the sake of all Americans trying to live the American Dream.
Thank you Guest Undercover Mother, and thank you to all Undercover Mothers (and Fathers)!!
