There are new questions for Wisconsin’s state superintendent of schools about critical race theory, politics, and a webinar for teachers in the state.
Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, on Monday released an open letter to State Superintendent Jill Underly that asks her a series of questions about a February webinar featuring activist and author Charlene Carruthers.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7 into law Friday, the first bill in the nation that bans “corporate wokeness” and Critical Race Theory from being used or taught in the workplace and public classrooms.
The bill includes provisions to prevent discriminatory instruction in the workplace and in public schools and defines individual freedoms “based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights,” the governor’s office said.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Friday to strip Walt Disney World’s special status that granted the amusement park broad powers to self-govern.
The old agreement, which took place in 1967, has permitted the venue to work as a quasi-governmental agency and maintain the same authority as a county government.
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A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma is sounding the alarm on what he says is just the “wicked woke stepsister of” Critical Race Theory.
Oklahoma state Senator Shane Jett has proposed legislation to prohibit the teaching of so-called Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in K-12 public schools. The Oklahoma State Department of Education (DOE) is using the seemingly nice sounding name “Social and Emotional Learning” to implement the curriculum as a loophole in a state law that restricts teaching concepts like CRT, according to Jett.
Jett believes his bill, if passed, would shut that loophole and keep SEL out of public schools.
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Friday morning on Always Right with Bob Frantz, weekday mornings on AM 1420 The Answer, host Frantz welcomed Dr. Carol M. Swain and author of Black Eye for America on the show to describe how Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory are being used with K-12 public and independent school students.
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A bill targeting “divisive concepts” that specifically names Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other far-left agendas in schools has been introduced in the Ohio General Assembly.
“The school district board shall not select any textbook, instructional material, or academic curriculum that promotes any divisive or inherently racist concept…” the text of HB 616 says.
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The campaign manager for former congressman James B. “Jim” Renacci told The Star News Network that the March 28-conducted Harris poll of 1,342 Ohio Republican voters showed Renacci leading Gov. R. Michael DeWine with 46 percent support compared to the governor’s 30 percent, just over a month before the May 3 GOP primary.
“That recent Harris poll actually corroborates some massive internal data that we’ve collected over the last week or so with our phone banking operations,” said Tom Weyand, who is helming the former congressman’s campaign.
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Students in Cobb County schools protested at the district’s board meeting on Thursday, demanding tougher punishments for students who allegedly partake in hate speech.
The group claimed that schools have not punished students that displayed racist, sexist, and homophobic speech or behavior. In order to address this, the students argue the code of conduct must be updated.
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In less than six months, a private college has allegedly enforced racial segregation, prohibited a student group from opposing critical race theory, and punished the same group for privately raising travel funds to avoid the college’s COVID-19 rules.
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A Wisconsin school district claimed state and federal non-discrimination laws do not apply to white students because they are not part of a protected class, according to the response a student’s parents received after they filed a complaint alleging their child was racially discriminated against.
Assistant Superintendent Tanya Fredrich of Elmbrook Schools investigated the complaint and asserted “that the student is not a member of any class that is legally protected from discrimination by state or federal law” in a Nov. 17 statement obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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A Washington State school board has adopted a revised “culturally responsive” student discipline policy that weighs a student’s race before deciding on consequences for inappropriate behavior.
Conservative radio host Jason Rantz reported at MyNorthwest this week the Clover Park School Board adopted the new policy by a vote of 3-2 after contentious debate.
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A new documentary exposes Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the “hidden agenda in America’s schools,” as it also emphasizes the “corrupting influence of teachers’ unions” and urges a return to the true education of American children.
Fathom Events, the film’s distributor, notes on its website Whose Children Are They? seeks to “pull back the curtain about what is truly happening in our public schools today.”
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A Tennessee bill that would, among other things, mandate that public universities stop teaching “divisive concepts” to students will be voted upon next week.
“I believe the bill will pass,” the bill’s sponsor, State Sen. Mike Bell (R-Athens) told The Tennessee Star Tuesday. “It was rolled last night only because the house had added an amendment and I needed a little more time to consider whether to accept the House amendment or to go forward with the Senate version.”
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State Rep. Barbara Gleim (R-PA-Carlisle) announced to fellow lawmakers on Monday that she will soon introduce a measure to bar Pennsylvania teachers from championing their personal political convictions in the classroom.
Gleim stated that her proposal is an important step toward reaffirming anti-discrimination principles as outlined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, religion or sex in education.
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The Georgia Senate passed a bill Friday requiring that school curricula only teach kindergarten through high school students that all races are equal, banning the concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT) that teach students that races in America are inherently unequal.
SB 377 says schools cannot teach “divisive concepts” to school children. It mandates the same for government agencies.
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A nonprofit is making progress in Ohio in facilitating the exit of public sector union employees from those unions.
“For some reason, the First Amendment right for people to leave public sector is the best kept secret,” Freedom Foundation Ohio State Director Lauren Bowen told The Ohio Star. “Their hard earned money does not have to be directed to union coffers via union dues.”
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Video has surfaced from late August of prominent Critical Race Theory (CRT) activist and Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who said she fears the left is losing the “language war” against anti-CRT parents and their advocates, and that the radical left-wing ideology will ultimately go the way of ACORN.
“I think that when we’re caught in a ‘Is it CRT or not CRT [debate],’ they win,” Crenshaw said as she headlined an event at Oak Bluffs Union Chapel in Martha’s Vineyard, American Wire News reported. “That’s the whole point of throwing this in.”
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A Vanderbilt University professor recently said that parents who oppose Critical Race Theory (CRT) are “ignorant racist[s].”
“Meanwhile, ignorant racist [sic] are worried about scaring their kids w CRT,” Gilman Whiting tweeted last month after a bomb threat against Howard University, an historically Black college in Washington, DC.
Earlier the same day, Whiting tweeted, “[S]chool boards across the country are banning teaching history while ignorantly calling it CRT.”
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A civil liberties legal group is suing the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) over ostensibly “discriminatory” behavior toward an employee who objected to mandatory trainings saturated with critical race theory (CRT) and “gender identity” politics.
Last Friday the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota DHS and Commissioner Jodi Harpstead on behalf of former employee Joseph Norgren, who worked as a security counselor at the Minnesota Security Hospital.
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Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Friday followed through on his first official initiative after taking office in January to review, then rescind what his considers “inherently divisive concepts including Critical Race Theory” in commonwealth public school curricula.
Youngkin announced the move in a 19-page report in which he states: “Executive Order One charged the [commonwealth’s] superintendent of Public Instruction to begin the work of identifying and addressing inherently divisive concepts including ‘Critical Race Theory. … This interim report rescinds certain policies, programs and resources that promote discriminatory and divisive concepts as directed by Executive Order One.”
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Higher education’s push for Critical Race Theory influences not just college campuses, but also American society and media.
Earlier this year, Campus Reform reported on a Jan. 20 speaking event at the University of Pittsburgh where three scholars used the Critical Race Theory framework to examine three controversial court cases decided in Nov. 2021.
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Republican lawmakers blasted a federally funded education program that trains researchers and teachers in critical race theory after The Center Square’s investigation broke news of the program. Now, one Florida U.S. Congressman is calling for an investigation into whether the program violates state law.
Newly uncovered Department of Education grant documents show that the department awarded $1,020,800 in a 2017 grant and $1,498,620 in a 2021 grant to a Florida-based program called Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education (PURPOSE).
The taxpayer-funded program – led by Florida State University, which has partnered with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University – offers participants one-year fellowships. Participants receive training in a range of issues, including critical race theory, during the fellowships.
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Virginia’s new education administration has removed many of the equity training materials that used to be on the Virginia Department of Education website, according to a report from Superintendent of Public Education Jillian Balow. The removals and the report were ordered by Governor Glenn Youngkin in his first executive order, aimed at removing “inherently divisive concepts” from public education. That was a measure to fulfill a campaign promise to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT), but the order and subsequent actions go beyond material that explicitly references CRT.
“This interim report rescinds certain policies, programs, and resources that promote discriminatory and divisive concepts as directed by Executive Order One. It also contains a sampling of critical race theory-based materials,” Balow wrote in a letter accompanying the report.
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Newly uncovered federal grant documents show that the U.S. Department of Education awarded roughly $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars to a Florida-based education program that trains future teachers and other professionals in, among other things, critical race theory.
The funding came through two grants, one in 2017 and another in 2021. Both grants went to faculty at Florida State University, which has partnered with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
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In his Gettysburg Address at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pointed out that the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “Now,” he continued, “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Thankfully, we are not in a civil war today – and, one hopes, never will be again. We are, however, in a battle for the soul of our country.
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As school districts start dropping the mask mandates, removing pornographic books from their libraries, and explicitly prohibiting critical race theory, it’s clear that the parent protests are working. School boards, even in progressive bastions like San Francisco, are currently being cleaned out and replaced by more pro-parent members. Moreover, politicians like the governor of Oklahoma are openly instituting a school choice model that would allow for different schooling models and have education dollars follow the student, not automatically go to the school.
Naturally, these developments invite more pushback (sometimes literally so) from those who believe they’re supporting public education. It was fine in the past to let various kooky parents carry on about the evils of teaching Harry Potter or sex ed; school boards and district leaders could simply yawn and carry on as before. However, now that it actually threatens their authority and influence, they can no longer ignore parents’ concerns..
In general, opponents of protesting parents make the same points over and over. They deny that public schools have problems, play semantic games with critical race theory (“it’s just an abstract legal theory taught in law school,” etc.), and accuse angry parents of being misguided racists. In their view, parents who demand a more wholesome and academic experience for their children are actually demanding an exclusively white and privileged experience. And for good measure, they will add an anecdote about a heroic public school teacher changing lives, proving beyond any doubt that public schools are still doing noble work and are essential for a healthy, diverse society.
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A report by an organization that tracks Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools says that 23 of the top 25 medical schools at universities across the countries have some form of CRT program.
The University of Michigan Medical School is among them.
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A Wason Center/Christopher Newport University Poll found Governor Glenn Youngkin’s current job approval trailing slightly, with 41 percent approval and 43 percent disapproval. Forty-five percent of voters polled said Virginia is heading in the right direction, and 41 percent say it is headed in the wrong direction. Both results are within the poll’s plus-or-minus 4.2 percent margin of error. The Center reported that those results fall largely along partisan lines — 80 percent of Republicans say Virginia is going in the right direction, while only 22 percent of Democrats said the same. Key Republican initiatives got mixed results.
“In this highly polarized environment, we see partisans running to their corners on how they view the direction of the Commonwealth and the job of the governor,” Academic Director of the Wason Center Quentin Kidd said in a press release. “Youngkin’s approval numbers are certainly lower than those of recent governors in Wason Center polling early in their term.”
“These polls were wrong during the campaign and are wrong now,” Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter said in a statement. “Virginians endorsed Governor Youngkin’s grocery tax plan so overwhelmingly that outgoing Governor Northam included it in his budget proposal. Governor Youngkin’s initiatives have received bipartisan support and he looks forward to delivering on more promises that he made during the campaign.”
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As backlash grows against so-called “diversity” programs in public schools, some districts throughout the country have been canceling plans to implement such programs.
According to ABC News, one such program was in Colorado Springs School District 11, a district that serves over 26,000 students. In May of 2020, shortly after the accidental fentanyl overdose death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, the district was among the first in the nation to push for an “equity policy.”
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Arizona State Representative Walt Blackman (R) hammered proponents of Critical Race Theory (CRT) Thursday for their hypocrisy in ignoring the “racism” and “oppression” experienced by the hundreds of black babies who are aborted each day.
In a floor speech prior to his vote of approval for a measure that would place on the ballot an amendment to the state constitution to prohibit the teaching of the concepts of CRT and ban any preferential treatment based upon race, Blackman asserted the “whole truth doesn’t come out” when the arguments about CRT are made.
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A candidate for North Carolina’s State House of Representatives blasted the Cabarrus County School Board (CCSB) for its support of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools.
“As a parent, and I speak to other parents, and there’s a few things we don’t want,” Brian Echevarria said at a CCSB meeting Monday. “I’m biracial, I’m bilingual, I’m multicultural. The fact is, in America, in North Carolina, I can do anything I want, and I teach that to my children. And the person that tells my little pecan-colored kids that they’re somehow oppressed based on the color of their skin would be absolutely wrong and absolutely at war with me.”
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A group dedicated to studying what it calls “viewpoint diversity” in public universities issued a Monday press release and report saying that while conservative views are smothered on Tennessee’s college campuses, far-left ideologies are thriving.
“Academics and administrators are no longer merely pushing progressive politics but transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and indoctrinating students into a hateful ideology. We call this ideological bent, Critical Social Justice [CSJ],” according to a report published by Velocity Convergence.
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A petition by teachers nationwide pledging to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) to students regardless of whether states pass laws against the practice has reached more than 8,000 signatures.
“From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression,” the Zinn Education Project’s petition page says. “To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them.”
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Robin Steenman of Moms for Liberty-Williamson County to comment upon the recent Washington Post article and upcoming school board elections.
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The Washington Post published an article this week that focused on Tennessee and said liberal mothers will attend more public-school board meetings to speak out against and attempt to defeat conservative groups like Moms for Liberty. The newspaper said these ‘Blue suburban moms’ are mobilizing. The report also said those mothers are about to go on offense against anyone who attends public school board meetings to speak out against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and COVID-19 masks.
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The University of Minnesota is looking to hire an assistant professor of elementary literacy education with “knowledge of” and “commitment to” critical race theory (CRT), climate literacy, and other related areas.
The job posting appears in the U of M’s “Career” database, with the Center of the American Experiment first reporting on it Tuesday.
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The chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) School Board has a long history of using Critical Race Theory (CRT) talking points on her TikTok page.
“I want to first acknowledge the land of the indigenous people,” Dr. Tarese Johnson said in a TikTok video last October. “I want to say to you all that Gwinnett County is the land of the Muskogee Creek and the [inaudible] Cherokee people.”
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Friday vetoed a bill passed by the Wisconsin state legislature that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools in the state.
In his reasoning for rejecting the potential law, the Democrat called the measure “censorship.”
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Staff at the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) are teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Marxism to their Advanced Placement language and research combination classes. This, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Action, a right-of-center grassroots network.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed State Representative Mark White to the newsmakers line to discuss the importance of BEP and fixing CRT legislation in the state.
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A source inside the Virginia Capitol Thursday spoke exclusively to The Virginia Star about Wednesday’s tiff between Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Del. Don Scott (D-Portsmouth), who claimed in an interview with the Washington Post that the Governor was not comporting himself in a manner consistent with his Christian faith.
At the time of Washington Post’s publication, Scott was expecting the governor to meet with him in his office.
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RICHMOND, Virginia — The Senate Education and Health Public Education Subcommittee recommended killing two bills from Senator Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach): SB 766 which would ban transgender girls from playing girls’ sports, and SB 570, which would codify Governor Glenn Youngkin’s “inherently divisive concept” ban. In its Thursday afternoon meeting the subcommittee also recommended killing Senator Travis Hackworth’s (R-Tazewell) SB 20 to eliminate a requirement that school boards adopt policies for the treatment of transgender students.
Kiggans, who is running for Congress, told the subcommittee that she was carrying SB 570 on behalf of the Youngkin administration.
“I said yes to carry this bill because I heard the voices of parents that spoke in November. You know, I was one of those parents as well,” Kiggans said, noting that Youngkin frequently talked about teaching kids how to think, not what to think.
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The office of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) responded Wednesday to criticism it has drawn over an email Critical Race Theory (CRT) tip line it has made available to Virginia’s parents.
“The governor’s office set up [email protected] as a resource for parents, teachers, and students to relay any questions or concerns,” Youngkin spokesperson Macauley Porter told The Virginia Star. “Governor Youngkin was elected to serve all Virginians and has utilized a customary constituent service, to hear from Virginians and solicit feedback.”
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A state plan to abolish teaching advanced math in public schools that was seen as a means of implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT) was canceled Monday, according to a parents group.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDoE) has shut down the Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI), according to a message that flashed briefly on the website before taking people to the main mathematics instruction page on the VDoE site, Parents Defending Education said.
“The Virginia Department of Education has ended the Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI) project. Please see the Mathematics Instruction page, if your browser does not refresh,” the message on the site reads.
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Of late, Fox News has been hosting a series called “The MisEducation of America” featuring gatherings of critical race theory’s critics—such as Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University—focusing on the danger of teaching racially divisive versions of American history. According to Swain, a black professor of political science at Vanderbilt, forcing kids to do things like play games called “privilege bingo” are “a prime example of how CRT, has seeped down to K-12 education, and it disturbs students.” Further: “All of these critical theories with Marxist roots are destroying American education, and parents have to save their children. But they also have to work to save other people’s children.”
Although the media and our universities may choose to ignore Swain’s complaint, she is actually understating the problem she and “MisEducation” host Pete Hegseth are featuring. I’m not sure I see “the Marxist roots” of the crusade against white people and their history in quite the same way Swain and Hegseth see it. We are indeed witnessing class warfare but not of the kind that Marx foresaw. It is a war being waged by white elites against the “basket of deplorables,” the predominantly white, working-class, and small-town Americans whom these elites hate and want to divest of human dignity. Similar conflicts are going on simultaneously in other Western countries, featuring equivalent social conflict.
In none of these cases do we find Marx’s appeals to the proletariat to rise up against those who control the means of production. In fact, we are witnessing exactly the opposite. An alliance of corporate capitalists, feminists, the LGBT lobby, and black race hustlers are directing their fire on the working class, which seems to be the least affected by the hegemonic ideology of wokeness. If anything, we are now looking at what Pedro Gonzalez has characterized as “the counterrevolution of the ruling class.” If Marxist theory, which supposedly is “seeping in” has any application, it would be as an analysis of how our elites are suppressing those they are stepping on and trying through increasingly vicious hate speech to isolate.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin is changing the focus of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, created by former Governor Ralph Northam in the wake of his 2019 blackface scandal. Youngkin issued his tenth executive order Wednesday and announced his desire for the General Assembly to change the office name to Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion Office. He also named former Heritage Foundation official Angela Sailor to head the office, moves that Democrats saw as direct efforts to gut the office of its core purpose.
“The people of Virginia elected the most diverse leadership in the Commonwealth’s history. Virginia is big enough for the hopes and dreams of a diverse people. Angela Sailor’s experience in government, nonprofits and the private sector will guide us as we ensure that the government is working for all Virginians across our diverse Commonwealth, especially when it comes to economic opportunity for all Virginians,” Youngkin said in a press release.
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A parents group claims that a Minnesota school district is indoctrinating toddlers about pride and other “equity” agenda items.
Saint Paul Public Schools is partnering with two organizations, AMAZE and OutFront Minnesota, to purportedly push materials discussing gender identity on children as young as three, according to a release by Parents Defending Education (PDE).
One document released by PDE from AMAZE included books aimed at preschool-age children, including “When Aidan Became a Brother,” “I Love My Colorful Nails” and “My Princess Boy.”
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RICHMOND, Virginia – The General Assembly continues to debate Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order One banning Critical Race Theory and “inherently divisive concepts.” On Wednesday, legislators debated the policy in the House Education Committee, on the House floor, and on the Senate floor. The newly-Republican-controlled House of Delegates has been slow to hear bills in committee, which generated another House floor back-and-forth, but although key anti-CRT bills haven’t been heard in the Education Committee yet, delegates got a jump-start on debating the topic when interviewing Youngkin nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow.
Balow previously served as Wyoming’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, where she supported anti-CRT legislation.
“I share Governor Youngkin’s priorities for education,” Balow said.
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Parents trying to recall members of a northern Virginia school board were accused of racism for these actions by a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on Tuesday.
Michelle Thomas, a pastor and president of the Loudoun, Virginia, branch of the NAACP called the recall effort “a Jim Crow-esque effort of 2022 to suppress votes, and to silence the will of the people,” according to the Loudoun Times-Mirror. Thomas was announcing an effort to join the legal battle seeking to remove school board members Brenda Sheridan and Atoosa Reaser when she made the comment.
Thomas took aim at Fight for Schools, the parents group behind the recall effort, which began after a secret Facebook group targeting parents who opposed Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) came to light.
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If criticism of two Republican members of the Missouri House of Representatives is any indication, a bill to ban critical race theory (CRT) will face challenges.
More than a thousand people filed digital testimony forms on the bill and the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee’s hearing lasted more than four hours.
State Rep. Nick Schroer, R-O’Fallon and a candidate for the term-limited Senate seat of Bob Onder, R-St. Charles, testified on HB1474 on Tuesday. State Rep. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, joined Schroer as they teamed to combine the banning of critical race theory with Richey’s “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” HB1995.
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