by Neeraja Deshpande
The National Educators Association, the largest teachers union in America, is “fired up” for Kamala Harris’s VP nominee, Tim Walz. “Gov. Walz is known as the ‘Education Governor,’” wrote NEA President Becky Pringle, “because he has been an unwavering champion for public school students and educators, and an ally for working families and unions. As a high school teacher and NEA member, Walz is committed to uplifting our public schools.”
The NEA’s endorsement should be worrisome for Americans who are actually concerned about the state of education in this country: for years, the NEA has put radical politics above children.
Unfortunately, so has Tim Walz.
During the pandemic, Walz, in lockstep with teachers unions, kept schools closed for extended periods of time. “As Governor, Tim Walz chose teachers union money over putting students first and the results have been disastrous,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) to the New York Post.
Indeed, when Walz took office as governor of Minnesota in 2019, 59.2% of Minnesota students were proficient in reading and 55% were proficient in math. Four years later, in 2023, those numbers fell to 49.9% and 45.5%, respectively. Over that same time period under Walz, Minnesota’s chronic absenteeism rate more than doubled, from 14% to 30%. In 2018, before Walz took office, Minnesota’s schools were ranked 5th in the nation; five years later, in 2024, they are ranked 17th. With such disastrous numbers, one would expect Walz to focus on getting back to the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic.
But, with the exception of passing an act in 2023 to mandate evidence-based reading methods in schools, Walz’s education agenda has had little to do with actual education.
Instead, Walz has spent much of his time in office fear-mongering about so-called conservative book bans, which have been debunked repeatedly. In May of this year, Walz signed into law a bill that “prohibits banning, removing, or otherwise restricting access to an otherwise age-appropriate book or other material from a school library based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” In practice, this means that teachers and librarians in Minnesota can expose children to explicit books without accountability.
Moreover, after Minnesota erupted in riots following the death of George Floyd, Walz sought to expand ethnic studies education. In November 2021, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) proposed a radical K-12 ethnic studies curriculum, infused with critical race theory.
This new curriculum, which will be part of Minnesota students’ social studies requirements beginning in the 2026-27 school year, is divided into three subcategories: “Identity,” “Resistance,” and “Ways of Knowing.” Among other subjects, Minnesota students will be forced to learn about “the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and apply lessons from the past that could eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.” That is all to say that this educational mandate will inject activism into Minnesota schools.
This is no wonder, given that the Minnesota Department of Education under Walz took its directive for this curriculum from the Minnesota chapter of the radical Education for Liberation Network, which states on its website that its mission is “to be a political force in the state of MN to contend with the status quo of colonial education that prioritizes Eurocentric curricula.” In other words, students will not learn American history so much as they will learn a progressive subversion of it.
Make no mistake: Minnesota’s radical curriculum and education policy failures are a direct reflection of Walz’s priorities and judgments. If he is elected alongside Kamala Harris in November, Minnesota’s educational problems will be sure to spread across the nation.
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Neeraja Deshpande is the Education Freedom Center engagement coordinator at the Independent Women’s Forum.
Photo “Tim Walz” by Tim Walz.
