Education Week - July 14, 2021 - 10

Why the Critical Race Theory Fight Is Harder
for Educators Than the Common Core Battle
By Andrew Ujifusa
Roughly a decade before Republicans
nationwide made critical race
theory a cudgel in their attack on
teaching and curricula they deem biased
and divisive, the common core
was the education world's political
crucible.
It was a concrete set of K-12 academic
standards launched by the nation's
governors and schools chiefs,
not-like critical race theory- a broad
lens to analyze the lasting impact of
racism in American society. But that
didn't insulate the Common Core
State Standards from an ideological
firestorm.
Supporters and critics fought over
the standards' quality and implementation,
with some critiques more based
in fact than others. State lawmakers
and school officials, feeling the heat,
rushed to dump the common core-or
at least pantomimed doing so. Even
defining what the standards were and
weren't could prompt fierce debate.
It was a moment when K-12 education-often
ignored at the national
level-moved further into the realm
of " general-purpose politics, " in the
words of one education scholar, even
embedding itself in Republican campaign
rhetoric. How educators felt,
and what they did, was often left out
of the debate.
Now it's critical race theory's turn.
The term itself has been commandeered
by conservative critics,
who've stretched it to cover various
ways in which schools address issues
like racism and sexism. Angry encounters
about the issue roil school
board meetings. Districts' strategic
plans or classroom lessons that deal
with race rapidly make the rounds on
social media. Political action committees
opposing critical race theory
supersede anti-common-core PACs
of past years. State lawmakers target
it as part of sweeping new restrictions
on teaching " divisive concepts. " Political
actors probe for the best way to
leverage the issue, with an eye toward
looming elections.
The political playbook might be
similar. But the fundamental differences
between the two issues also
show how the hub of education politics
has shifted.
Tension about the common core
stemmed largely from disputes about
the federal role in schools, and how
teachers teach math. It represented
perhaps the most prominent moment
for an education policy community
that for decades has focused
on standards, accountability, and
assessments. But it didn't touch on
profound divisions over American
history and identity.
Now, however, the divide in how
people think about the role of race in
America's past and present, driven by
events like the 2020 murder of George
Floyd by a police officer, is reflected in
might hear the same words in very different
ways, " said Michael Petrilli, the
president of the conservative Thomas
B. Fordham Institute, who's supported
the common core and opposes the
ways he believes critical race theory is
influencing some schools.
Neal McCluskey, the director of the
Center for Education Freedom at the
libertarian Cato Institute, said he's
concerned that new state laws dealing
with racism and sexism might
wrongly place certain topics off limits.
But he is also skeptical of people
who casually and unfairly dismiss
concerns from members of the public
the struggle over how schools should
address racism as well as issues like
sexism. The issue is more personal
and profound than any government
white paper or policy decision, and
schools are grappling with it once
again in a heated and fragmented political
culture. Partisans, in turn, have
used it to push schools farther into the
national political spotlight.
Conservative criticisms about how
schools are addressing these issues
are " more tied to broader cultural
critiques " than what goes on in classrooms
and how it's measured, said Jay
Barth, a former member of Arkansas'
state board of education.
Once again, those in charge of
schools and classrooms are forced to
navigate between instructional imperatives
and the political and cultural
battles raging around them.
Genelle Faulkner, a middle school
science teacher in the Boston public
schools, said she teaches students
about how her subject area was used
in the past to uphold ugly rationales
for enslavement and belief that Black
people were inferior.
She said debates over issues like
critical race theory and the common
core can inflame rather than inform.
But she sees a long road ahead for
schools trying to focus on equity and
social justice.
" I think this will be a harder battle
than the common core, " Faulkner
said.
The common core fight did not involve
the same sort of fundamental
tensions as critical race theory and all
it has come to represent, said Jason
Glass, Kentucky's education commissioner,
who previously served as
Iowa's chief state school officer and as
a district superintendent.
But he said conservatives who
feared the way the federal government
supported the common core
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 14, 2021 | www.edweek.org
should remember those concerns
before demanding official sanctions
for teachers for how they teach about
racism, or the micromanagement of
classrooms.
Addressing " misinformation and
political hot air directly, but in a nonconfrontational
way, " as the conversations
about the common core
sometimes required, should also
drive school leaders' approach in the
current debate, he said.
" We're not the legal defense team
for critical race theory. But we are advancing
equity, and that's not the same
as critical race theory, " said Glass.
As experts battle critics, educators
are caught in the middle
Sandy Boyd, a former official at
Achieve, an education nonprofit that
helped develop the common-core
standards, said some of the same tactics
used by common-core opponents
are being used today by those who are
politicizing policy to achieve tangible
outcomes outside classrooms.
" Teachers, parents, students and
school board members need to know
how to talk about this stuff because
it does have day-to-day impacts on
teaching and learning. ... But fundamentally
this is a political issue, " said
Boyd, who's now the CEO of Seek
Common Ground, a group that seeks
to engage communities in state and
local education decision-making.
" And the people who've ginned it up,
they've got political goals, just as the
Tea Party did during the common
core days. "
Those who oppose what they see as
the encroachment of critical race theory
and damaging discussions of race
in classrooms say the public deserves
to know what it means when their
local schools commit to things like
addressing systemic racism. They've
used tactics like official information
requests and federal civil rights complaints
as part of their strategy.
" Social media, as it does with many
other things, played a role with the
common core, but it's grown even
more, " said Chip Slaven, the chief advocacy
officer at the National School
Boards Association, who is hearing
more questions and concerns from
members recently about critical race
theory and related issues. " You can
have people in the field sometimes
explaining what something is, and
people will not believe them. "
But discussing the common core
was straightforward in a way talking
about critical race theory is not.
The common core, a set of math
and English/language arts standards,
had high-profile official supporters
when it was unveiled in 2010,
from government officials to business
executives. At its height, it was
adopted by all but four states. It is
still widely used.
Meanwhile, whether schools are
even using or influenced by critical
race theory is the subject of disagreement
and vitriol. Educators and others
who flatly deny critical race theory
is taught in schools, for example,
are met with suspicion from those
who see initiatives focused on things
like equity as inextricably tied to the
concept.
To combat misinformation or misunderstanding,
Slaven stressed that
local officials should emphasize in
public forums what schools are not
doing, such as clarifying that critical
race theory is not used in schools, as
well as what they are doing.
Others aren't so sure that those kind
of technical explanations will calm the
waters.
" Different sides are claiming different
definitions of what it means, and
so it becomes harder. Different tribes
about the topic.
" The critical race theory debate
has quickly gotten marked by accusations
that one side or the other doesn't
know what they're talking about. This
is the same thing that happened with
the common core debate, " he said.
Parents who are concerned about
how their schools are addressing topics
like white supremacy, McCluskey
said, shouldn't be scorned by those
who rely on denials that teachers are
using critical race theory in classrooms,
he said.
He said he saw the same sort of
hairsplitting arguments from supporters
of the common core. In both
instances, a gulf defined the discourse
that wasn't strictly about policy or
practice
" It's a problem whenever experts
try to sit in judgment of nonexperts, "
McCluskey said.
More broadly, regardless of how
politicians and commentators like Fox
News' Tucker Carlson have exploited
the issue, it would be " a mistake for
anyone to view this as just a case of
Astroturf, " Petrilli said, referring to
groups that are presented as grassroots
efforts but are actually run by
professional political operatives.
" You can't get this kind of reaction
from the grassroots if there's not some
there there, " he said.
Opposition was driven by different
political considerations
Also notable: Critical race theory
and common core don't share all of
the same enemies.
A significant share of the backlash
to the common core came from people
critical of the tests that assessment
groups developed in alignment with
the standards. This also evolved into
a protest, backed by teachers' unions
as well as some who identified as
progressives, against federally mandated
standardized tests themselves,
a requirement that predated the common
core.
Since those battles played out,
education levels as well as race have
increasingly determined partisan
affiliation. While not all skeptics of
concepts like critical race theory are
conservatives, virtually all the official
backlash to it in the context of
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Education Week - July 14, 2021

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