DEI and social justice in our academic standards

The school board replaced longstanding requirements like precise language and standard English with liberal priorities

Jul 30, 2023

“Equity”-centric approach to education in the approved standards

This month the Sheboygan Falls school board approved academic standards without the previous standards’ requirements for precise language and standard English. The new standards embrace DEI, prioritize “social justice”, and include 30 instances where teachers must incorporate “power in inequitable practices” and use students’ “home languages and dialects”. Also gone is analysis of “works of exceptional craft and thought” and foundational U.S. documents such as the Declaration of Independence.

English Language Arts

The school board approved the DPI’s recent update to the standards for English Language Arts, which dropped requirements for use of precise language in high school; analysis of foundational U.S. documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address; “works of exceptional craft and thought”; and “the timeless dramas of Shakespeare.”1

Instead, it added “culturally-sustaining” requirements, which it defines as involving “facilitating students’ use of home languages and dialects”; “develop[ing] understandings of how inequitable power relationships have shaped the histories of particular discourses, including Standardized English”; and “including home languages and dialects in both high stakes and low stakes writing and helping them understand the way discourses have been associated with power in inequitable practices.”2

The MacIver Institute reported that the DPI funded a program to leverage the new WI ELA standards to encourage teachers to become “Arbiters of Black Linguistic Justice” and teach “Black Language in all classrooms.”

As wonderful as is the rich diversity of world languages and dialects, We Must Help Students Master Standard English, as a Chronicle of Higher Education article declares in its title. Among its reasoning, “Standard American English is no better or worse than any other language or dialect, but it is the one by which educated Americans (and, increasingly, people in other parts of the world) communicate in the workplace…. Students, then, have a vested interest in mastering SAE: It literally pays off for them, as those who are more proficient tend to be more easily hired and more successful on the job.”

Precise use of standard English is extremely valuable to the industriousness of our nation. Seminal U.S. documents provide a fertile training ground. Meanwhile, they reinforce civics at a time when half of Americans can’t name the three branches of government.

The core of the standards is Section III, which contains the tables of what to teach, including the problems described above. The other sections are more philosophical and have additional problems. Section I embraces the DPI’s Equitable Multi-Level Systems of Supports, which “attends to equitable access, opportunity, and outcomes” (page 4). Equal access and opportunity are good, but attending to equal outcomes is a problem. Each student is unique, with different gifts, potential, and expectations for best-case outcomes. Per our district’s mission statement, we aspire to inspire “each student to reach his or her full potential.” Our mission cannot be reconciled with DPI’s equal outcome goal.

The standards also call for making “texts reflect the most current social justice issues” a budget priority.3 Standing at the vanguard of the latest hot political topics is not a priority for taxpayer dollars.

Mathematics

The academic standards for Mathematics approved by the school board further highlight the importance of exercising independent judgment when considering DPI standards. The standards cite4 Living Mathematx: Towards a Vision for the Future, a radical “Equity and Diversity” paper touting “mathematx”, a political statement “in the sense of Malcolm X” about teaching math using “Indigenous knowledge”. It calls for teaching how “our choice to destroy the planet” to serve our “capitalistic” needs “is a form of settler colonialism that perpetuates violence”, and that “plants, animals and rocks suffer the same treatment as Indigenous peoples” because “a Western worldview” does not consider “rocks as living beings”.

The paper’s author explores, “what might teaching and learning look life [sic] if mathematx were embraced?” She describes mathematx as a “worldview” in which she contrasts with the “coercive” status quo (“the math teacher as the credentialed professional [] who is inserted into the child’s life in a coercive relationship”). According to the paper, “breaking with a human/non-human binary” is consistent with “queer theory”, which “recognizes the violence that is justified” based on a target’s viewpoint. The author says, “I am calling for a radical reimagination of mathematics, a version that embraces the body, emotions, and harmony.”

The author chooses to “privilege the view of a Nepantlerx—seeing the interconnectedness between Indignenous [sic] and Whitestream knowledge of mathematics.” She seeks to “decenter the notion of ‘tics’ (technologies), which, for me, do not capture the body/spirit (feminine) and the ways we move through the world in the same metaphysical manner”. On several occasions, she makes sweeping generalizations based on race and ethnicity, for example, “an Indigenous production of knowledge to benefit others is in opposition to knowledge production as performance that benefits mainly oneself and that is seen in most White institutions or places that value Western thought.”

The district should not put itself in a position of even implicitly affirming a paper so full of fluff and unsupported claims. Additionally, outside the core Section III, the Mathematics standards share problems similar to those of the non-core English Language Arts sections, such as embracing equity of outcomes.

Options

The standards for Science and Social Studies do not pose a problem. A large portion of the ELA and Mathematics standards are also sound. Since only Section III in each is required for the Board to specify standards, the other sections can be excluded. In the core sections, the culturally-sustaining requirements can be redefined to include standard English and a balanced approach to civil rights analysis, or omitted entirely due to its redundancy with social studies standards. The dropped standards related to foundational U.S. documents and content quality can be individually re-included.

Another option is adopting older standards, but since the amendments are of manageable scope, we can use the latest DPI standards in amended form, which helps with internal continuity and alignment with other districts, our CESA, and the DPI.

Recommended action

Accept the WI academic standards in the areas of English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. The English Language Arts standards are amended such that only Section III is included, the References subsection is excluded, all references to “culturally-sustaining” are excluded, and the following portions of the 2010 WI English Language Arts standards are added: from Section 3, for grades 9–10 students, standards RI.9 (page 66) and W.2 (page 71), and for grades 11–12 students, standards RI.8-9 (page 66); and from Section 4, the “Note on range and content of student reading” (page 91). The Mathematics standards are amended such that only Section III is included and the References subsection and all citations are excluded.