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A Maryland faculty district paid an “antiracist” consulting agency almost $1 million to ask dad and mom if their six-year-old kids have been being taught sufficient about racism.
The survey, a duplicate of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, offers Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) dad and mom an opportunity to charge the district’s “antiracism” curricula. The survey asks dad and mom in the event that they imagine their kids are being “taught about the negative effects of racism in their classes” and whether or not faculty libraries “represent people of diverse races, skin colors, ethnicities, and cultures.”
The survey is the newest results of a years’ lengthy partnership between MCPS and the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC), a outstanding “antiracist” consulting group. Since 2020, MCPS has diverted almost $1 million of taxpayer funds to the agency to spice up its “antiracist” credentials, in response to paperwork obtained by Parents Defending Education.
Some Montgomery County dad and mom assume the district has the incorrect priorities.
“They’re spending so much funding on this, and test scores are down,” stated former Montgomery County faculty administrator Dee Reuben. “Parents are livid. I hear this every day—parents are afraid to speak out because they’re afraid of the repercussions that will happen to their kids. Academics is going down the tube, and I think that is a shame considering we were one of the top school systems around—it breaks my heart.”
Montgomery County literacy readiness in 2021 plummeted between 30 and 40 % relying on grade degree. Only 54 % of MCPS highschool college students take a look at at or above the proficient degree.
Reuben leads United Against Racism in Education, a bunch made up of Montgomery County dad and mom, lecturers, and group leaders who’re involved with the district’s misuse of taxpayer funds to advertise essential race principle. United Against Racism in Education is one in every of a number of teams throughout the nation that need faculties to spend much less time pushing “equity” and extra time on training.
MCPS says on its web site that it doesn’t train essential race principle in the classroom. But Byron Johns, the chairman of the NAACP Maryland chapter’s Education Committee, hosted a web based webinar in November titled “Eliminating Institutional Bias: How New MCPS Data and Critical Race Theory Could Help.” MCPS superintendent Monifa McKnight was scheduled to look at the occasion however backed out at the final minute. Reuben, who attended the assembly, says it proves the district’s hypocrisy.
“One minute they’re saying they’re not teaching critical race theory in schools, and the next minute they’re doing a Zoom presentation on the benefits of eliminating bias through critical race theory,” she stated. “You can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth.”
Following nationwide protests of police remedy of black Americans, McKnight in November 2020 introduced that the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium would audit the district’s curricula and assist it undertake extra “antiracist” options. As a part of the audit, the district final week launched a complete, district-wide survey that asks, “To what extent does MCPS support racial equity and disrupt systemic racism through its policies, procedures, structures, and practices?” The survey was despatched by way of electronic mail to each guardian in the district.
The survey additionally asks dad and mom in the event that they “believe my child should be taught to recognize, understand, and interrupt racism” and if the “content of my child’s coursework reflects the experiences and contributions of people from my child’s racial, ethnic, and/or cultural background.” In an electronic mail to oldsters distributing the survey, MCPS supplied supplemental paperwork that tout the district’s “antiracism” initiative as an effort to “ensure racial justice by identifying, interrupting, and dismantling racist practices, policies, and attitudes that disproportionately harm communities of color.”
Max Eden, a analysis fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, instructed the Free Beacon that the MCPS survey is “a transparent pretext for the school district to further implement critical race theory ideology as its operating system.”
“This survey is designed to ascertain, ‘Is the school district woke enough?'” Eden stated, including that “the answer will obviously be ‘No. The school district is not woke enough.'” According to Eden, MCPS will use the survey outcomes to justify paying “vendors who are making a killing off of pushing critical race theory into classes” whereas claiming that such “culturally responsive education … has nothing to do with critical race theory.”
Montgomery County has already poured loads of assets into equity-based studying. In November, the county introduced a particular $750,000 appropriation to the 2021 price range to maintain “restorative justice training” for educators and faculty employees. In June 2021, the county paid “antiracist” writer Jason Reynolds $6,500 for a Zoom name to Cabin John Middle School college students. The faculty district additionally dropped $14,500 to buy a duplicate of the guide Stamped, by Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, for each pupil and employees member at the faculty.
The findings of the audit are set to be launched in June. Students as younger as eight will likely be given the same “antiracist” survey this month.
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