Teacher training materials in Virginia provide instructions for incorporating critical race theory into the classroom, and the state’s education department website specifically recommends books promoting the framework — contradicting claims from prominent Democrats that it isn’t taught in schools.
Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings is on a list of recommended reading for the Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Equity and Community Engagement, which designed the department’s “EdEquityVA” initiative. The recommendation is just one of several for integrating critical race theory and related concepts into education.
Democratic politicians, pundits, and progressive activists have repeatedly insisted that critical race theory, which claims U.S. culture and institutions are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities, is not taught in public schools.
“EdEquityVA” is one of many educator resources on the Virginia Department of Education website, awash with links that include language often associated with critical race theory. For example, the site says it will enact “culturally responsible teaching” to make the commonwealth’s schools “equitable.” It also directs educators to numerous external resources that discuss concepts such as “systems of oppression” and “taking action on racial equity and justice.”
The website further promotes “anti-racism in education” and insists that “schools … create and enforce racial meanings.”
Conservatives view “anti-racism” and “oppressor” language to be within the purview of critical race theory because it connects to the main themes of the academic framework, namely that white people passively or actively oppress blacks through the cultural customs and institutions of America, which critical race theorists deem systemically racist.
The term “anti-racism” was coined by controversial author and Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi, a prominent promoter of critical race theory listed as a source for the Virginia materials.
According to Kendi, anti-racism is crucial to dismantling systemic racism in U.S. institutions completely.
Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist, is among those recommended by the Department of Education’s Office of Equity and Community Engagement. It also recommends Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.
Freire’s book has helped define “critical pedagogy,” a branch of critical theory, according to Jonathan Butcher, a researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“When this material is so commonly found in teacher training programs, it is only natural that we would see the ideas in the classrooms to which these teachers are going once they enter the teaching workforce,” he said.
The recommended reading site includes the disclaimer, “Some of the links on the #EdEquityVA pages lead you to websites not associated with the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Education. VDOE does not necessarily endorse the views expressed or the data and facts presented on these external sites.”
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The “EdEquityVA” plan says educators should implement “strategic planning around racial equity” and that failing to “include systemic analysis of racism helps to maintain systems of oppression.”
“Systemic racism impacts student learning — resulting in disparate educational outcomes — but it also has a significant impact on students’ social-emotional wellbeing,” the website reads.
The website says its goal is to increase the “cultural proficiency of Virginia’s educator workforce” and eliminate racially disparate achievement gaps to “increase opportunity, and decrease disproportionality in student outcomes.”
Ian Prior, executive director of the political action committee Fight for Schools, told the Washington Examiner that “critical race theory is not taught as a subject in school but is rather a lens through which children are taught to view American institutions, cultures, language, and society as systemically racist.”
“This is done primarily through teacher trainings and by providing those teachers with suggested resources to develop lesson plans,” Prior said. “Those resources are solidly grounded in critical race theory. In much the way that meritocracy is not taught as a subject in schools but is applied in practice, critical race theory is also not taught as a subject but is applied in how schools now educate.”
Included in the educator training materials is a letter to “Virginia educators” by James Lane, state superintendent of public instruction, who wrote that “for far too long, students in our communities of color and especially African-American students have faced systemic racism in our public schools.”
The website’s educator resources aren’t the only example of critical race theory-linked materials in teacher training in Virginia.
In May, Prior’s PAC revealed Loudoun County public schools contracted educator training with the consulting group Equity Collaborative, which expressly includes instruction on critical race theory in its materials. Equity Collaborative makes its materials available to educators and schools nationwide.
The presentation titled “Introduction to Critical Race Theory” includes a slide on the “permanence of racism,” which “suggests that racism controls the political, social, and economic realms of U.S. society.” Another slide claims white people were the “primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.”
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The final slide of materials asks educators to discuss in breakout sessions how to “use CRT to identify and address systemic oppression in your school, district or organization.”
