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 The COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered schools throughout
Illinois, with 1.2 million of the state’s 1.9 million students still fully
remote as of Dec. 18. In Chicago Public Schools, Illinois’ largest school
district, the teachers union is in a showdown with the district’s CEO and
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot over the district’s plan to reopen schools for
elementary school students.
Against this tension-filled backdrop stands another controversial education
issue: in December, the Illinois State Board of Education, or ISBE, passed a new
rule that would require culturally responsive teaching and leading standards to
be incorporated in all Illinois teacher preparation programs and professional
development programs. Critics of the proposed standards have said they require
educators to embrace left-leaning ideology and prioritize political and social
activism in classrooms at a time when Illinois students are underperforming on
basic skills tests.
 Unless the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, which consists of
12 lawmakers from the General Assembly, votes to suspend the rule at its meeting
Feb. 16, these standards will apply to all Illinois professional educator
licenses endorsed in teaching, school support personnel and administrative
fields.
What is the proposed rule change and what would it do?
The proposed rule would amend the section of the Illinois Administrative Code
that governs standards for Illinois teachers to require all teacher training and
continuing education programs in the state to adopt a set of “culturally
responsive teaching and leading” provisions. As all public school teachers in
Illinois must be licensed, and many private schools prefer their teachers to
have licenses, the rule would affect training and continuing professional
education for the vast majority of the state’s primary and secondary school
teachers.
The stated reasons for the new standard are to: “prepare future educators to
teach diverse students [and] to foster classroom and school environments in
which every student feels that they belong.” Dr. Ivette M. Dubiel, a member of
the Diverse and Learner Ready Teacher Network, which developed the standard for
ISBE, also noted the provisions “emphasize the responsibility of PreK-12
education institutions to affirm, validate, leverage, support, and listen to
students’ backgrounds and lived experiences … [and] challenge us to be
anti-bias, anti-racist, mindful, and inclusive of our most marginalized
populations.”
The rule replaces existing guidelines aimed at training teachers to engage with
children from diverse backgrounds. Provisions that define the competent teacher
as one who “understands cultural and community diversity … and how to learn
about and incorporate students’ experiences, cultures and community resources
into instruction” as well as “facilitates a learning community in which
individual differences are respected” will be replaced by the new rules.
The standards are broken into sections that address: educators’ “self-awareness
and relationship to others,” “systems of oppression,” “students as individuals,”
“students as co-creators,” “leveraging student advocacy,” “family and community
collaboration,” “content selections in all curricula” and “student
representation in the learning environment.”
Unless eight of the 12 members on JCAR vote to suspend the rule, it will become
effective in October 2021 for new programs, and previously approved programs
will have to conform to the requirements by October 2025. JCAR is composed of
six Republican and six Democratic members of the General Assembly.
Rule draws increasing criticism
Many provisions in the rule are not controversial and do not differ
significantly from existing guidelines that acknowledge the need for educators
to engage with and appreciate the families and communities from which Illinois’
diverse student population comes.
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But other provisions have increasingly raised
concerns since the rule was first proposed in fall 2020.
Wirepoints has noted that, as a procedural matter,
it is concerning a rule with such wide-ranging effects on Illinois’
students, education professionals and schools should be promulgated
by an unelected administrative body through rule-making, rather than
passed through legislation by elected officials after debate in the
General Assembly.
Critics have pointed out that the requirements essentially impose an
ideological litmus test on educators, making any teacher who does
not espouse certain views unwelcome in Illinois schools. In their
original form, the provisions were explicitly left-leaning, and
educators were required to “embrace and encourage progressive
viewpoints and perspectives.” After opponents of the new rule
brought public attention to the language, the word “progressive” was
replaced with “inclusive,” but this has not alleviated the concern
that the standard is aimed at pushing a political agenda on Illinois
educators and schools.
Given Illinois’ teacher shortage, imposing ideological requirements
through teacher training programs could drive still more people away
from the profession. ISBE reports nearly 4,500 unfilled positions in
school districts across the state in 2021, and in a 2019 survey by
the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, 85%
of Illinois school districts reported a “major or minor problem with
teacher shortages in their schools.”
Critics of the new rule have also expressed concern that at a time
when so many Illinois students are failing to achieve basic
competency in reading and math – exacerbated by pandemic-related
learning loss – pushing regulations on “politically-charged topics,
including race, gender identity and the role of power, privilege and
student activism” is not the proper focus of Illinois’ education
establishment. As of 2019, only 38% of Illinois students in grades 3
through 8 met or exceeded Illinois Assessment of Readiness standards
for English language arts, according to ISBE, and a mere 32% of
students met or exceeded standards in math.
Similarly, “leveraging student advocacy” is not necessarily a
commonly accepted purpose of PreK-12 education among parents of
schoolchildren, particularly when basic reading and computational
skills are not being uniformly transmitted. The original version
used the term “activism” rather than “advocacy” in this section, but
“advocacy” is used as a synonym for activism elsewhere – for
example, where the rule admonishes educators to be “aware of the
effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and
social action.”
Nor are most parents likely aware that under the rule, teachers
would be called on to “curate the curriculum” and work with students
to “co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant
culture.” The standard further directseducators to “implement and
integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the
curriculum” but does not provide specifics to give parents an
indication of what this might mean for their children’s instruction.
The vagueness of the mandates will also make it difficult for
teachers to know whether they are meeting the new standards. What
should a teacher do to overcome his or her “biases and perceptions”
such as “unearned privilege [and] Eurocentrism”? What does it mean
to “know and understand how a system of inequity reinforces certain
truths as the norm”? The rules do not specify.
Illinoisans concerned about this proposed rule can contact members
of JCAR to ask them to suspend the imposition of the rule
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