The Florida universities are being proposed to be banned for diversity and inclusion initiatives
What Do Teachers Tell Us About Race and Classification? An Analysis of the 2018 CNN Opinion Series “America’s Future Starts Now”
Editor’s Note: This roundup is part of the CNN Opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now,” in which people share how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts offer their proposed solutions. The opinions expressed in these commentaries are of their own. Read more opinion at CNN.
Many parents delegate part of the teaching task to schools, in an act of trust. Too many schools decided that it was their job to get children away from their parents aggressive views of them.
“When schools tell you that we aren’t teaching critical race theory, it means one thing: Go away and look into our affairs no further,” he says in the video. “It isn’t about transparency, it isn’t about cultural relevance, it’s race essentialism painted to look like the district cares about students of color.”
There is a set of concepts to explain the structural underpinning of inequality and racism in the United States. But the term has been attacked by its critics as unfairly pinning blame on White Americans for some of society’s most pernicious ills.
It began with the lockdowns in 2020. For the first time, a lot of parents were able to see what their children were being taught thanks to online conferencing apps. And they didn’t like it: Toxic and divisive ideas about race – disguised as lessons on slavery and racism – contradicted the belief in racial equality that most Americans – whatever their politics – shared with civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Legislation was passed in Florida last year to ban instruction that suggests anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color.
White parents and state lawmakers believed that White kids were being made to feel bad about being White because of critical race theory. Is there proof that teachers are doing this? They weren’t in a widespread fashion.
With no credible evidence of an actual problem and no opportunity to vote on the issue, citizens who recognize the value of teaching our children the truth about America’s racial past and present won’t have a voice in the upcoming election.
This fall, voters in at least one state will decide what is taught in the classroom. The Education Accountability Amendment will be put to a vote in West Virginia and will amend the state’s constitution to give the majority-Republican legislature more control over public schools.
Those who care about the advancement of our democracy should insist that their full truth be taught. Unfortunately, we may have to wait a while before that discussion resumes in our public schools.
Dr Shaun Harper: Protecting Equality, Diversity, and Diversity in Public Workplaces. A Social Studies Teacher’s Perspective on New Hampshire HB2
Shaun Harper is a professor at the Rossier School of Education and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. The research he does is focused on race, gender, and equity in the workplace. He tweets @DrShaunHarper.
I’m a middle school social studies teacher in New Hampshire and an avid supporter of public education. Having taught for over 20 years, my greatest joy is participating in a democratic institution that is for everyone.
I commit myself to continuous learning and growth for my students. I continue to update instructional strategies, let go of old projects that no longer serve my current students and adapt my curriculum and language to ensure my approaches are culturally sensitive.
Because I teach social studies, I’ve developed a healthy resilience around complex conversations and divergent opinions. My entire career has been centered around navigating one tricky topic or another. I’ve mediated dialogues around presidential elections, the events of September 11, different wars and conflicts, and facilitated a variety of debates.
That’s why it was so disheartening to see laws like House Bill 2 (sometimes referred to as the “divisive concepts” law) pass in New Hampshire. The disrespect and lack of trust it communicates to the hundreds of honorable educators I know and work with cannot be overstated.
The measure, formally known as the Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education bill, was written with the mistaken idea that discrimination is somehow endorsed or practiced in public spaces and classrooms.
Legislation like HB2 and similar laws in other states are obstacles to growth, student well-being and compassionate practices. HB2 prohibits schools in New Hampshire from creating mandatory equity training for faculty because someone might “feel bad.”
What was the point at which we decided it was too divisive to take a stance on cruel and dehumanizing activities? Who are we harming by taking a hardline on the concept of slavery? Our silence is an endorsement. That is our ethical crisis. That is what fear-mongering yields.
Fixing Problems in Public Schools: Why Children Need Teachers? What Children Need to Know About Their Schools, Their Families, Their Communities and Their Schools
Shame and blame have been imposed upon teachers, a profession filled with loving, compassionate and principled people. Choosing a career in education is always driven by a desire to make a difference. I have never encountered a teacher in four districts, two states and 22 years who displayed devious political intentions.
Future voters need to understand that disagreement is healthy and normal. Changing your mind in light of new evidence is logical and admirable. There is nothing more American, patriotic or democratic than trying for a better society.
I want my students to feel comfortable when they experience growth and learning. Critical thinking and analysis can be taught by asking students to wrestle with challenging ideas. We feel uneasy with a lack of safety. There is a big difference.
Poorly constructed laws were made to stop good, productive work and have resulted in the oppression of free thought and children. I’m aware we can do better.
My message to lawmakers? Trust the teachers. Asking them to be thoughtful, sensitive and inclusive is always reasonable. You’ll find that’s what they generally already are.
Public schools face challenges with diversity. The battles over the Bible, gender identity, prayer and more are examples of how public school fights always pits different types of people against each other.
Following the murder of George Floyd, many public school officials targeted systemic racism, and conservatives demanded an emphasis on America’s basic goodness. There was differing accusations of ‘hate’ and ‘indoctrination’ for books on topics such as ‘Gender Queer’ and depictions of sexual activity.
The population in the US in 2000 was mostly white. By 2020 that was down to about 42%. Gay marriage support skyrocketed from 27% of Americans in 1996 to 77% in 2021, while the share of people belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque plummeted from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/opinions/fixing-problems-public-schools-culture-wars-roundup/index.html
Why parents should feel the pressure to act before they feel the need: Long-term strategies to improve public education for all students, including children from disadvantaged backgrounds
It should come as no surprise that parents have been fighting for their rights so vociferously when it comes to public education. They’re fighting because they sense that those rights are under attack.
Giving parents more say does nothing to change a system that forces diverse people, including parents, to fund – and fight to control – government-run schools.
Freedom is the answer: Attach money to students – as many other countries do – and let families choose among diverse options. Universal education savings accounts can be used to accomplish this.
Students and teachers want safe schools that show the diversity of their families. They can be best supported through policy making that increases equity and understanding in our school systems by supporting their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, not denying them.
Assessments can only measure the impact on children. The alarm over the steep dip in NAEP scores is expected to createur pressure to address the conditions that contributed to the decline.
Some critics see this as a chance to point fingers and to use kids as political pawns. We see it as an urgent call to institute short-term and long-term investments and proven strategies to support students’ emotional development and to accelerate learning, especially for Black and Latino students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who were underserved and behind their peers prior to the pandemic.
We cannot allow bad-faith battles on bathroom access and participation on sports teams to distract us from the real goal of ensuring every student receives a good education and supports needed to thrive academically and socially.
There are interventions that can help students right now, even though both our organizations are engaged in longer-term strategies.
Intensive tutoring can have positive effects on reading and math. Recent studies have shown that para professional, AmeriCorps and other trained helpers can be just as effective when tutoring one on one or in small groups as teachers are.
Many states are using state and federal funds to invest in strategies to increase the diversity of the workforce. Access to a racially and culturally diverse teacher workforce is beneficial for all pre-K-12 students, particularly for students of color, who often thrive in classrooms led by teachers who share their racial and cultural background.
Safety was required to return to in-person teaching and learning. Now is the time to double down on proven strategies, using the resources we are fortunate to have, to deliver on a promise the US has not yet fulfilled—providing every child access to a high quality public education, without exception.
Putting the MAGA Agenda to the Test: How Reforms in Public Schools Can Save Our Children, Their Children, and Our Nation’s Future
But critical race theory is far less shocking than the radical gender ideology that seems to have overtaken our nation’s schools. It teaches children that many people are both male and female, but only some of them are either, or somewhere in between.
When parents come to school board meetings to complain, far too many are met with silence or risible accusations that they are politicizing education. Parents have the primary right and responsibility to raise and teach their children.
Jay Richards is also the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, which is at the Heritage Foundation.
While parents are working with teachers and librarians to ensure that every child is acknowledged in school curricula and has a chance to thrive in school, regardless of who they are or where they live, far-right MAGA extremists are increasingly running for vacant school board seats or for reelection to gain control and power over decision-making at all levels of government.
We can try to improve these issues by increasing teacher pay, creating financial incentives for good teachers to teach in low-income schools, expanding student loan forgiveness for teachers, and ensuring teachers have sufficient resources.
Rather than addressing the real challenges facing teachers, many MAGA extremists have taken aim at books, racial and gender inclusion and more. Defunding the Department of Education, an ongoing federal level tactic among other changes in public school funding, should not be a topic of debate. However, it has also been central to MAGA Republicans’ federal policy agenda and could have devastating consequences for students nationwide.
It has made America more inclusive, improving the outcomes for people of all races and abilities. bipartisan support for public schools has grown over the course of generations.
“A Nation at Risk,” a major report on education released by the Reagan administration in 1983, used fear-based arguments to argue that reading and math test scores were essential for national security. This logic eventually transformed test scores from one critical indicator (which they are) to the very purpose of public schools (which they are not).
The early accountability reforms led to gains for low-income students and students of color, but progress waned over the last decade. Test-and-accountability reforms are no longer supported by broad bipartisan support.
State leaders should talk about the future of the state and the role public education plays in realizing that future. Unspent federal Covid-19 relief can be a perfect catalyst for this work. Stakeholders can be supported in articulateing what they care about their public schools through grants to community-based organizations. Universities, chambers of commerce and other civic organizations can use their own resources to sponsor similar inquiries.
They want to retain their mental health as well as financial stability, but they are deterred by the teaching profession’s low pay and structures that challenge work-life balance, and many other professions offer flexible schedules and remote work options. This disconnect affects the profession at large, which has been struggling for years. The number of graduates from traditional teacher education programs fell between 2008 and 2019.
Redefining learning opens the way for a diverse set of adult leaders to work alongside school personnel and students: professionals in various fields who can support the development of students at work, college students who can support digital literacy and community leaders who can support.
It’s possible for expert teachers to teach more classes using technology, while a colleague who’s expert in creating productive learning spaces focuses on the students. Many teachers excel at both roles – we just don’t have enough of them to staff every classroom in our country. The shift is about positioning teachers to further develop their areas of greatest expertise, and it also involves making teachers jobs more sustainable.
A woman is the chief executive of Teach For America which is dedicated to improving educational access, opportunity and outcomes for young people in low-income communities. She put the name of the person on her Tweet.
In the spring of 2020, James Whitfield had just become the first African American to be named principal at Colleyville Heritage High School, located in a predominantly white Dallas-Fort Worth suburb.
When the students came back in the fall, it was expected that there would be big challenges. The teacher shortage was about to become even worse because of the new H1N1 swine flu.
In the days after Floyd’s death, he couldn’t sleep and sent an email to his friends and colleagues. What could be done to stop systemic racism?
At first, Whitfield says, “I got nothing but positive responses … from people in the community, parents, family members [and] staff members.” Pressure on him increased as internet chatter heated up that conservatives were trying to take over school boards in Texas. There were some aspersions made about his marriage.
Florida is the epicenter of the debate on how to teach about race in public schools. CNN previously reported that the state banned teaching of critical race theory in June of 2021. Scholars who have studied critical race theory say it explores the ways in which a history of inequality and racism in the United States has continued to impact American society.
A year after his email and weeks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning CRT in K-12 public school classrooms, Whitfield was accused at a school board meeting of promoting the concept. After denying the accusation, the board decided not to renew his contract. Whitfield is on paid administrative leave.
When contacted, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District referred NPR to a statement issued nearly a year ago that says, “the District and Dr. Whitfield each strongly believe they are in the right.”
Teacher Black Holes, Principal Harassment and the Education of Minority Students in Palm Beach County: The Problem of Protecting Students’ Fundamental Rights
“This whole teacher and staff shortage is not just people not coming into the profession, which is an issue, but it is a mass exodus of people in some cases with, you know, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years or more of experience,” Spar says.
Further, in a survey published by the Rand Corp. earlier this year, more than a third of teachers and 60% of principals reported being harassed during the 2021-2022 school year “because of their school’s policies on COVID-19 safety measures or for teaching about race, racism, or bias.”
The situation has a negative impact on students too, says Lindsay Marshall, a former teacher who is now a history professor at the University of Oklahoma.
“It was very clear to me in the classroom that I was not only engaging with my students, I was engaging with their whole world,” Marshall says. She says that politics breaks down the relationship between teachers, students and parents.
“The law is clear, and simple: educators are prohibited from instructing students on matters of gender identity or sexuality in grades K-3,” DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin wrote in statement to NPR. “Florida’s education will be focused on the fundamentals: reading, writing, math, civics, and other core subjects – not politically motivated indoctrination.”
Micheal Woods has been a teacher at Santaluces Community High School in Palm Beach County for nearly three decades. He is an activist for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans individuals and helped organize local Pride events. But “I don’t openly discuss it with kids,” he says.
Woods says he doesn’t understand the charge by some parents and politicians that teachers are trying to “indoctrinate” students into some sort of liberal ideology. He joked that if he could bring a pencil to class he would make kids do their homework.
The new law could result in the revocation of an educator’s teaching certificate if they are found in violation, “bypassing all the safeguards that we’ve had for decades and decades that were guaranteed by law,” Woods says.
The issue can affect both ways. Some educators have recently made headlines for going public on their way out the door in protest of their schools’ alleged use of critical race theory or sensitivity to LGBTQ issues.
The Misleading Case of Frank McCormick and the Supremo at a Waukegan, Ill., High School
Among them is Frank McCormick, who taught history for 11 years in a Waukegan, Ill., high school before calling it quits midway through the 2021-2022 academic year.
He says he “started off pretty progressive, politically,” but that he gradually became disillusioned after witnessing what he describes as a “very dysfunctional, very toxic” environment at the school.
Over the years, McCormick says he witnessed “increasing politicization” and an ever-bolder liberal ideological agenda among administrators and fellow teachers, especially after the 2016 election. He went to the local school board meeting last year and said that the Supremo was a member of a class of fraudulent people who enriched themselves at the expense of an impoverished community.
McCormick resigned in January, just a few months after Tony Kinnett, a now-former STEM coordinator and head instructional coach for the Indianapolis Public Schools, posted similar criticisms of his school in a video on Twitter.
Kinnett used to work on education policy in the office of former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Since his departure, Kinnett has appeared on Fox News and become a regular contributor to The Daily Caller and the conservative magazine National Review. He also started his own website, Chalkboard Review, which says it promotes “diverse perspectives in education.”
Matthew Hawn lost his job as a chemistry teacher at Sullivan Central High School in northeast Tennessee, after he was involved in a debate over race theory.
According to him, during a discussion about Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager armed with an rifle who shot and killed two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin, made the statement that white privilege is a fact.
At the time, the school — which has since become a middle school as part of a consolidation — was in the midst of hybrid learning due to COVID-19. An angry parent contacted school officials when a video of a discussion was accidentally uploaded to the wrong class. He immediately took down the video.
It would prove to be a challenge to teach contemporary issues at a time of massive polarization, as Hawn says, but he was just sick over what happened.
Months later, when the topic of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol came up in Hawn’s contemporary issues class, Hawn assigned an essay from The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates titled “The First White President,” a critique of the presidency of Donald Trump as, among other things, “the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/13/1131872280/teacher-shortage-culture-wars-critical-race-theory
“I’m afraid you can’t complain”: Analyzing the Pedophile and Groomer’s Phenomenology
“I love the courses I teach because they are controversial,” he says. The most controversial ideas are the ones that are intellectually stimulating and fun to teach.
Some students said that the Capitol violence was not protected speech. Others talked about the issue of the election being stolen. Generally speaking though, “kids are a lot better about talking about politics than adults,” he says.
“I’ve heard the things that are said about educators,” he says. When he once defended LGBTQ students, he was publicly berated by members of the community as a “pedophile and a groomer.”
Since Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law went into effect, Ingram says he’s “very aware of what the punishment can be right now, which is me losing my certification as well as the civil case against me.”
He says that the job is more important than it has ever been. It’s not right for me to say that I’m content here.
The 1619 Project: A Collaborative Story of America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century, directed by Peniel E. Joseph
The founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy is Peniel E. Joseph who is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.” The views expressed here are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.
The first two episodes of “The 1619 Project,” a documentary series which premiered on Hulu on Thursday, brings to life the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times multimedia project created by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
The first two episodes of The 1619 Project show that the Black people would help make Wall Street and New York City the financial capital of the world.
At the same time, these episodes also reveal how Black folks represent American democracy’s beating heart; that heart has helped fuel the imagination and social transformation that has helped uplift not only African Americans, but also women, other people of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants and the disabled.
The documentary series gives more depth and character to the original New York Times Sunday Magazine special issue, multimedia educational social media supporting materials and bestselling anthology.
America has been trapped in historical amber since the 160th anniversary of the release of the Slaves, who perpetuated racial division and violence.
Hannah-Jones characterizes the first episode of The 1619 Project as being about the challenges for democracy ahead and saying a full story of American history is needed. Her framing puts voter suppression tactics that involve denying voters food and water on long lines to allow anyone to object or challenge their ballot in states like Georgia in important historical context, which links past and present.
Nowhere are these juxtapositions more present than during the Reconstruction period and the decades following. Black Americans created new schools, churches, universities, political groups and organizations during the 19th century. The use of convict-lease systems that racially profiled African Americans, and the rise of racial terror were some of the things that took place in those years.
The second episode of the series looks at the way the race and gender hierarchy are displayed between Hannah-Jones’ White maternal grandfather and her Black paternal grandmother.
We are listed as racial on our birth and death certificates. They serve as markers of destiny and signifiers of prosperity, punishment and premature death for some.
Forced reproduction laboring in unspeakable work conditions resulted in precarious Black pregnancies, where Black women were forced to give numerous births against the backdrop of high rates of infant mortality and generational trauma. Maternal mortality today and infant mortality are connected to challenges that women had giving birth during slavery, as historian Daina Ramey Berry observes in the episode.
This is an incredibly painful history to confront – and one that is more necessary in our own time than ever. It also may help to explain how a Black woman as rich and famous as Serena Williams almost died from complications after giving birth to her daughter Olympia.
Our only way forward is by looking back at not so much what we sometimes refer to as “legacies” but through confronting a history that actively marginalizes Black life and in so doing represents an existential threat to America’s democratic future.
The state’s education department characterized the move as a rejection of “‘woke’ diversity, equity and inclusion [and] critical race theory ideologies.”
The proposal is a top priority for DeSantis’ higher education agenda this year, which also includes giving politically appointed presidents and university boards of trustees more power over hiring and firing at universities and urging schools to focus their missions on Florida’s future workforce needs. The rising popularity of Ron DeSantis’ stance on hot-button cultural and education issues have seen his standing among conservatives shoot up nationwide.
The purpose of diversity, equity and inclusion programs is to promote multiculturalism and encourage students of all races and background to feel comfortable on a campus. The University of Florida has an office for accessibility and gender equity, as well as a Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement.
Tuesday’s announcement was foreshadowed in December when the governor’s office asked all state universities to account for all of their spending on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory.
New College of Florida is a public liberal arts college in a 15-minute drive from the town of Bradenton where the higher education agenda was announced. He said the budget would contain fifteen million dollars to restructure New College and hire faculty.
Eddie Speir wrote in an online post that he would propose to the board that all of the contracts should be terminated and that those who fit in the new finances should be rehired.
The African American Studies Course: Overview, Credit, Placement, and the Academic Canvas in the Context of the College Board’s First Exam
The framework includes details about the course content, how high school students will be tested, and an overview of college credit and placement. The first African American Studies exam would be administered by the College Board in the spring of 2025.
In recent months, the multidisciplinary course has been praised by academics and historians, all while becoming a target for lawmakers aiming to restrict how topics like racism and history are being taught in public schools.
The achievements of the Black artists and inventors whose successes have come to light, the black women and men who played pivotal roles in the Civil Rights movements, and the people of faith who contributed to the antislavery and Civil Rights causes are all included in this course. Coleman said in a statement everyone is seen.
The new course was blocked by the state because it included a study about gays in politics and advocated for the abolition of prisons.
The African American studies course is divided into four units: origins of the African diaspora; freedom, enslavement and resistance; the practice of freedom; and movements and debates.
The topics are divided in four major units: “Origins of the African Diaspora,” “Freedom, Enslavement and Resistance,” “The Practice of Freedom,” and “Movements and Debates.”
The framework for the African American studies course was developed with the assistance of more than 300 professors of African American studies, according to the organization.
The organization has said that a version of the course is being offered in sixty high schools as a pilot and will expand to hundreds more schools next school year. The course is expected to be available to all schools in the 2024-25 school year, according to the College Board website.
“No states or districts have seen the official framework that is released, much less provided feedback on it,” the College Board said in its announcement on Monday. The course was shaped by the input of experts and long-standing AP practices.
The College Board made mistakes in the course framework that are being exploited according to a lengthy statement published Saturday. The board disputed how Florida officials – who have asked that the course be resubmitted for consideration after initially rejecting it – have characterized their dialogue and influence with the testing non-profit.
CNN was told there were concerns about some topics of study in an 81-page document that appears to be a preview of the course framework. The document, dated February 22, 2022, was shared with CNN last month.
The topics of gay life and expression in Black communities and the debate on the subject of black history are not included in a list of examples that students can pick for research projects.
These topics are not part of the course framework that the states use to define the exam. This list is a partial one for illustrative purposes and can be refined by states and districts,” the College Board said in the framework.
The education department said it had concerns about six topics of study in the yearlong course, such as the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations. The inclusion of texts from Black thought leaders and history teachers, which the administration feels violate state laws, caused many objections.
Ron DeSantis says that he thinks that CRT teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. He said that it has no place in Florida schools.
The Black History of the United States: AP Curriculum Development and the College Board, Superintendent Emmett Glynn, and Malina Ouyang
The course is currently being tested at 60 schools around the U.S., and will be expanded to hundreds of additional high schools within the next academic year as part of the official framework. Several historically Black institutions were consulted by the developers of AP courses, according to the College Board.
The College Board has been taking input also from teachers running the pilot classes as the draft curriculum has gone through several revisions over the last year.
David Johns of the National Black Justice Coalition said it was “infuriating” to wake up on the first day of Black History Month to news of white men in positions of privilege horse trading essential and inextricably linked parts of Black History. The lives, contributions, and stories of people of different races should not be diminished or erased.
The course has been popular among students in schools where it has been introduced. Emmitt Glynn is teaching two classes instead of one at Baton Rouge Magnet High School because there are so many students who are interested.
Earlier this week, his students read selections of “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon, which deals with the violence inherent in colonial societies. Students had learned about the conflict between colonizers and Native Americans and the police violence in Tennessee during their discussion of the text.
“We’ve been covering the gamut from the shores of Africa to where we are now in the 1930s, and we will continue on through history,” Glynn said. He said he was proud to see the connections his students were making between the past and now.
For Malina Ouyang, 17, taking the class helped fill gaps in what she has been taught. I realized how much is not said in other classes, she said.
“Black history isn’t important to just Black people, it is important to everyone,” Simmons said. “It is the fabric of the country … For us to try to wipe that away or to negate the importance of it causes angst in our community. It’s not just the AP course. It is the whitewashing of African American history in this country. The treatment of AfricanAmericans is inequitable across the board.
The college board offers AP courses in math, science, social studies, foreign languages and fine arts. The courses are optional. Students who score well on the final exam will usually get course credit at their university.
In Malcolm Reed’s classroom at St. Amant High School in Louisiana, where he teaches the AP class, he tries to be mindful of how the material and discussions can affect students.
“I give them the information and I’ve seen light bulbs go off. I ask them how it affects them. How do you feel about learning this?’ ” he said. “It’s also new for me, and I’m just taking it in stride. We’re not just learning history, but we’re making history.”
Bringing graduate-level concepts into high schools can prove politically dicey even in progressive contexts. There was outrage when the state of California released a draft curriculum for ethnic studies that focused mostly on four groups considered part of university ethnic studies departments: African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. The revision was made by the state.
A unit on the black feminist movement and womanism has been renamed in order to better reflect the 20th century. The concept of intersectionality has been avoided, but there is still a similar one under “Overlapping of Black Life.” The new framework discusses Gwendolyn Brooks and Mari Evans as writers whose work explored gender and class alongside race. The group that is in the framework is the Combahee River Collective.
Still, groundbreaking Black female writers and leftist activists such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis and Alice Walker, who were included in the 2022 draft, have since been excised.
Mr. Packer of the College Board noted that the work of less controversial African American Studies scholars, such as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates Jr., had also been left out of the final framework, because of the decision to move the course away from prescribing present-day secondary sources.
The College Board disagreed with the New York Times’ claims that it removed all references to Black feminism or the gay experience from its curriculum.
Haynie said in a statement issued by the College Board Wednesday that they reject any claim that their work is either inimical to students or politically expedient.
The nonprofit acknowledged a decrease in the “breadth” of the new framework, though it claimed it did not “purge” the curriculum of black feminism and gay Black Americans.
With these revisions, the works of scholars like Ferguson are no longer included in the curriculum.
“This ‘culture war’ targeting intellectuals, artists, and academics has a long, distressing history,” Ferguson wrote in an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, connecting the Florida criticism to his removal before the revisions were made public.
Tension between the College Board and the administration caused the changes to the AP course. The Commissioner of Education in Florida said that the course was “woke indoctrination masquerading as education”.
“Too often politics interferes with education, which is exactly what DeSantis attempted here,” Weingarten tweeted on Wednesday. “Despite this rewrite, we maintain our conviction that AP African American Studies should be available to every high school student nationwide.”
The pilot program for the original version of the course was part of what made Mr. Williams-Clark excited to teach at the beginning of the school year. Williams-Clark would be teaching the class at a high school in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.
The Marching Rights of the Black: Revisiting the State’s Rejection of a New Advanced Placement Course on African American Studies
He toldNPR that there might be some topics in which he had to be careful with how he spoke about them. I can’t lead conversations.
Hundreds of marchers, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists, held a rally outside Florida’s state Capitol on Wednesday to protest Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration’s rejection of a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies.
Sharpton said historical inflections points on racism and bigotry in the US always involved education, from slavery through Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement.
We need our children to know the whole story about how bad you were but also how strong they are. They come from a people that fought from the back of the bus to the front of the White House.”
“Make note that we are all marching together,” said Sharpton, noting that the crowd included members of the LGBTQ, Native American and Latinx communities. “You should have left us alone. You have brought us all together.
They chanted, “hey, hey, ho, ho, Ron DeSantis has got to go!” and “I’m Black and I’m proud!” Some carried signs with messages such as “Save our history” and “We will not be silenced.”
Shaia Simmons, a former teacher at the march, called the state’s rejection of the new course a “gross injustice” and a “slap in the face to all Americans.”
The testing organization behind the new course accused the state Education Department of spreading misinformation for political gain last weekend.
A new bill overhauling Florida universities to match Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vision for higher education would shift power at state schools into the hands of the Republican leader’s political appointees and ban gender studies as a field of study.
General education courses at state colleges and universities would have to promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic and cannot define American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. It would not allow general courses to have a curriculum with unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.
The bill would put all hiring decisions in the hands of each universities’ board of trustees, a body selected entirely by the governor and his appointees, with input from the school’s president. A board of trustee member could also call for the review of any faculty member’s tenure.
A public comment on the 2022-2023 school year that bans or bans black history, and how to make sure it is complied with state laws
Studies Weekly, a publisher that provides educational periodicals for Florida’s K-6 grades, revised one of their lesson plans for the 2022-2023 school year to take out race as the reason Rosa Parks was told to change her bus seat and why she was subsequently arrested.
Studies Weekly says they have taken corrective action and put in place safeguards to make sure nothing like this doesn’t happen again.
The publisher does not defend the omission or altering of historical facts. “Those unapproved changes have already been removed from our curriculum.”
However, Stephana Ferrell, a parent and activist with the Florida Freedom to Read Project, tells CNN she was able to easily access the Rosa Parks lesson plan with the omissions online along with several other Black history lessons as late as the end of January while serving as a guest reviewer for Florida’s Department of Education.
Any parent who was a guest reviewer would be able to see the lessons that had been submitted to the state for inclusion in the 22nd century curriculum.
Studies Weekly said in a statement to CNN that Florida’s Department of Education had not provided guidance on how the law applies to the publisher’s existing texts. They had to decipher how to comply with the legislation.
“It is our duty to follow the directives provided by each state Department of Education,” and that its texts are aligned with state standards, it continued.
The Department of Education told Studies Weekly that their text was not used in the current school year but could be used in the future.
Ferrell, who has two elementary-age children, says she became involved in opposing the state’s book bans and teaching restrictions on race after attending a school board hearing and witnessing firsthand the “censorship” of historical facts.
“We noticed that it was an attack on Black and brown, Hispanic, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ voices in particular; those were the folks that they were going after,” Ferrell said, adding that “we wanted to make sure that we were putting more and more of these voices into our schools.”
The state requires teaching of Black History, said DeSantis in February. According to the state board, most schools only cover the topic during Black History month in February. African American History courses in the state were historically under-funded.
