Minnesota school district prioritizes White teachers for layoffs
Upper Midwest Law Center's James Dickey said the school district's policy is a violation of the 14th Amendment.
Teachers in Minnesota may be facing new licensing requirements, with an emphasis placed on racial consciousness.
The Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is considering new rules for teacher licensing for the first time in two decades, replacing the ten existing "Standards of Effective Practice" with eight new ones, including one standard on "Racial consciousness and reflection."
The other standards – student learning, learning environments, assessment, planning for instruction, instructional strategies, professional responsibilities and collaboration and leadership – all include subsections focused on racism, cultural differences or bias.
A subsection under "learning environments" says teachers should foster "an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into learning."
Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is considering new rules for teacher licensing for the first time in two decades. (iStock, File)
A subsection under "planning for instruction" says teachers should choose "anti-racist, culturally relevant" instructional strategies and resources.
A subsection of "professional responsibilities" requires teachers to assess "how their biases, perceptions, and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems."
The process of updating the standards began in 2021, and included a lengthy public comment period, as well as a public hearing Wednesday with hundreds in attendance online.
The Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board this month released a document responding to public comment, maintaining that the Standards of Effective Practice "are needed and reasonable to ensure Minnesota’s teachers have the necessary foundation of knowledge and skills to be effective in the classroom."
Students walking on their first day of school. (istock )
Catrin Wigfall, a policy fellow at the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment, is one of many who spoke in opposition to the proposed licensing requirements at yesterday’s seven-hour hearing.
"The proposed changes to Minnesota’s licensing standards would require the state’s aspiring educators to ‘demonstrate’ ideologically driven content to obtain their teaching license," Wigfall told Fox News Digital. "The new standards are dripping with critical race theory, gender ideology, and identity politics."
Residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, have helped make critical race theory a national conversation in 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
Wigfall, and others, raised concern that the new standards would further exacerbate the state’s already declining academic performance.
Minnesota’s reading and math proficiency has dropped for the fifth year in a row, reported the Pioneer Press Thursday, with just 42% of students who were tested proficient in math, and 49% proficient in reading.
"The bottom line is that if these licensing changes are approved, any educator who wishes to be licensed in Minnesota — even to teach in a private school — will have to demonstrate a racist, ideologically driven worldview," Wigfall added.
The Minneapolis Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the state, came under fire last week for an agreement between the district and the teachers union which would provide protections for persons of color from seniority-based layoffs.
Both the teachers union and the district stood by the agreement, saying it was designed to remedy past discrimination on the part of the school system.
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Elements of the proposed Minnesota standard about racial consciousness and reflection require teachers to understand "multiple theories of race and ethnicity," "how ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity," and "that knowledge creation, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages."