DEI Must Die for Students to Succeed
Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are destroying American education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)’s recently released scores from the Department of Education reveal that since 2019, American students regressed four to five points in math and reading assessments.
A dismal 30% of eighth graders are reading at “NAEP Proficient” and 31% of fourth graders are proficient in math. These paltry scores expose the disheartening reality that the American education system is failing the children it purports to serve.
To understand why the K-12 system as a whole has been so poor at teaching children to read, write, do math, and understand science, look no further than the priorities set out and funded by leadership over the last couple years – destructive psychological fads, race-conscious practices and discipline programs, and training teachers to be social justice activists.
For starters, the Biden Department of Education handed out over $1 billion in grants to universities, K-12 school districts, and nonprofits with the explicit focus of advancing equity and equity-based programming in K-12.
While a small amount of those dollars may have been used to address vital skills such as reading or math, the vast majority of grant funding went to advancing far-left policies and ideologies such as equity, race-based hiring initiatives, and race-based discipline practices.
For example, Montgomery County Schools in North Carolina received over $21 million in grant funding for a program that focuses on hiring and retaining teachers based on race, advancing diversity by offering race-based affinity groups for teachers, and other “equity-driven strategies such as restorative justice.”
The district’s grant programming glaringly omitted any insights on how to effectively improve student reading and math.
While some universities had the chance to jump on the Biden Department of Education gravy train, other colleges of education contributed to the colossal failure by choosing to prioritize teacher preparation programs to focus on social justice activism.
For instance, Tim Walz’s alma mater Minnesota State University Mankato’s College of Education states that its vision is to prepare race-conscious, antiracist, social justice-focused teachers. Future teachers are required to “recognize Whiteness as a decisive factor in educational structures” and to focus on critical race theory, antiracism, and affirming student identities.
Portland State University’s College of Education also prioritizes training future educators to be anti-racist, social justice activists through courses that inundate students with divisive content such as white privilege and white supremacy culture.
What happens in the colleges of education does not stay in the colleges of education. What is learned in teacher preparation courses filters into K-12 classrooms and negatively impacts the learning environment.
Restorative justice, for example, is hailed as a “best practice” intended to reduce discipline disparities between racial groups. In fact, Biden’s Department of Justice handed out over $100 million in grants to advance restorative justice in K-12 districts.
On paper, restorative justice sounds wonderful. In application, it fails to remove highly disruptive students from the learning environment, leaving the classroom distracted, or worse – unsafe.
According to research, disruptions and distractions that occur during the initial learning process can result in a 46%-59% decline in information retention. Additionally, disruptions and distractions during the assessment phase can lead to a learning loss of 9%-26%.
Currently, the system allows a small minority of individuals to make their behavioral issues everyone else’s problem.
Unfortunately, poor scores and a lack of proficiency in academic skills create a lot of self-doubt, anxiety, and frustration in young learners. Enter Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).
Heralded as “best practice,” SEL is sold to districts and educators as a means of combating mental health issues. Yet, hidden inside premade curriculums are lessons on transgenderism, pronoun use, white privilege, and other far-left programming which polling shows is not popular amongst parents.
During the last four years, Biden’s Department of Education disbursed over $150 million in grants to further the implementation of SEL. What you incentivize, you get more of.
What is the path forward in light of the current NAEP scores?
Take little steps that make today better than yesterday. One degree of change will make a big difference.
Schools need to prioritize stable, disruption-free classroom environments. Remove the 5%-10% of students who disrupt the learning process while finding those individuals an alternative setting that gives them the support they need.
Additionally, the colleges of education need to return to preparing highly competent teachers who have strong classroom management skills and are very effective at teaching the core skills.
If districts, teachers, and parents truly want to change the lives of American children for the better, they must end the virtue signaling, activism, and far-left policies and teach the kids to read and do math.