Dear Colleagues:


With the Biden administration increasing its support for initiatives grounded in Critical Race Theory <[link removed]>, including a new proposed rule <[link removed]> that would prioritize civics grants for applicants that focus on CRT, it is now up to state officials to prevent this radical ideology from further infecting K-12 education.

In a new report, State Education Officials Must Restore a Sense of
National Character in Public Schools <[link removed]>, Heritage senior fellow Mike Gonzalez and Jonathan Butcher explain that “legislatures and governors are currently considering the impact of CRT’s Marxist roots and intolerance of other ideas on
K–12 curricula.” As they explain, “State education officials must resist the ever-increasing application of CRT in public schools in order to restore a sense of national character.”

Specifically, governors and state legislatures should determine whether public school officials are violating existing federal law when they, among other things, teach that “social disadvantage is assigned at birth and cannot be disproven through success in later in life,” or teach that “all disparities in outcomes between
individuals from different ethnicities are evidence of systemic racism,” etc. As they summarize in an oped for the Daily Signal <[link removed]>:
“… any reasonable interpretation of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 means that implementing critical race theory in the manner described in the examples cited violates existing laws. The Civil Rights Act specifically prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, or national origin.”

As noted above, the Biden administration has just released a proposed rule that would further entangle Critical Race Theory into K-12 education. As Jonathan explains <[link removed]> in the Daily Signal, "The
agency’s new rule would ingrain critical theory in [the Elementary and Secondary Education Act] ESEA, the law governing federal actions on K12 schools. DC is bringing critical theory’s prejudice to your child’s classroom. We should reject the notion that the next generation should be trained in bigotry."

In Case You Missed It


- This letter from Paul Rossi <[link removed]>, a school teacher at a private school in New York City, is worth your time. Rossi walks through how his school has implemented “antiracist” teachings and how those teachings are impacting children – and his job is in jeopardy as a result. As he explains, CRT and its calls to “undo history” “lacks any kind of limiting principle and pairs any allegation of bigotry with a priori guilt.”




- Read a related note from Brearley parent <[link removed]> Andrew Gutmann. Brearly is a $54,000-per-year private school, which now requires parents to sign an “antiracism pledge” prior to admission. Mr. Gutmann recently pulled his daughter from the school, and penned a scathing letter on the pernicious nature of Critical Race Theory. As he writes, “I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs.”
Warmly,



Lindsey Burke
Director
Center for Education Policy
Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
The Heritage Foundation

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