The Biden administration’s education “equity” initiative is doubling down on cramming Critical Race Theory into the minds of American students – all with the help of “clueless” establishment Republicans, wrote Jane Robbins Wednesday at Townhall.
The Biden Department of Education’s “Equity Plan,” states in its first paragraph:
[O]ur nation’s education system must reckon with and address the long-standing disparities that students from underserved communities face in achieving equal education opportunity.
The plan has been touted by the agency as aligning with Biden’s executive order, signed on the day of his inauguration, to advance racial equity. It goes on to say that, in order to achieve “educational excellence” and ensure “equal access,” the federal government “must embed equity throughout its operations and mission to meet the needs of every learner.”
As part of the new equity plan, ED will:
– Prioritize access to & completion of an education beyond high school
– Ensure equitable ARP funding for K-12 students
– Invest in resources to advance civil rights [2/4]— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) April 14, 2022
Under Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the department states it “has established strategic priorities” to ensure “equity” is the main focus of all education initiatives.
Attorney and education researcher Robbins wrote at Townhall the education department’s “priorities” insist on attempting to convince Americans that “equity” is the equivalent of “equality,” and that the “underserved” are not students from “poor” or “minority” communities, but those “who can only engage with education if it is delivered through a Critical Theory lens,” namely, that “the U.S. is systematically racist/sexist/homophobic and generally oppressive.”
“So by decreeing that the government must devote itself to ‘equity’ and ‘support for underserved communities,’ the Biden administration is announcing that all federal activities will be shaped to comply with hard-left dogma,” she explained.
To meet its ends, Robbins added, the education department has a plan to “hire a platoon of new peer reviewers to scrutinize grant compliance with the woke standard.”
“In other words, the myriad education activities financed with federal money will now have to serve the cause of politicized indoctrination rather than genuine education,” she wrote. “The goal will be to equalize outcomes among racial and sexual identity groups.”
This radical indoctrination initiative would appear to be championed solely by the far-left, elitist political class, but, as Robbins observed, it turns out some “clueless” Republicans are also offering their support, a dangerous situation about which Stanley Kurtz has already warned at National Review.
For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Representative Tom Cole (R-OK-04) are two of the leading sponsors of the Civics Secures Democracy (CSD) Act, a measure that would award $6 billion in grants to states that “prioritize funding for ‘media literacy,’ ‘evidence-based practices,’ and to ‘improve knowledge and engagement … [among] traditionally underserved students.”
In April 2021, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) observed the CSD “does anything but secure democracy,” and, instead, “is more an attempt to smuggle activist training into American K-12 classrooms than it is a good-faith effort to improve civic literacy.”
“One primary way it does this is through its emphasis on ‘civic engagement,’” NAS noted, a term that is often also called “action civics,” whereby students can earn academic credit for helping to organize a Black Lives Matter protest or volunteering to escort girls and women into Planned Parenthood for their abortions.
Robbins observed the “clueless” Republicans apparently refused to see the light:
Responding to conservative warnings that CSD is a Trojan horse for radical indoctrination, Cornyn seems to misunderstand his own bill by claiming it would prohibit what it manifestly enables and funds. Cole promises to “closely monitor” how Biden educrats implement the CSD grants.
“Good luck with that,” she asserted, explaining that, under the Biden education department’s new “equity” plan, “those grants would be awarded only to state applicants that swear fealty to ‘equity’ for the ‘underserved.’”
“The newly hired apparatchiks would make sure any state education department that gets money will follow orders to push civics curricula and programs further and further to the left,” she observed.
“Together, we must take bold action to ensure our nation’s schools are defined not by disparities, but by equity and excellence, especially as we recover from the pandemic and reemerge stronger than before.” – @SecCardona [4/4]
— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) April 14, 2022
“Thus would civics curricula be politicized – along with anything else in public education that benefits from federal money,” Robbins concluded. “Republican politicians should be fighting this development every step of the way rather than joining forces with the leftist aggressors.”
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
