Opponents of culturally responsive teaching hit setback

[June 22, 2021]  By Zeta Cross

(The Center Square) – In February, the Illinois Board of Education adopted the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards to direct teachers to assess how their biases may affect their teaching practices.

The new guidelines will not be implemented until 2025. However, on May 27, both the Senate and House chambers passed Senate Bill 814 – a teacher mentoring bill that includes language that requires new teacher training to align with the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.

That means that the new standards will be used in the mentoring of new teachers as soon as this summer, Right to Life and Pro-Family lobbyist Ralph Rivera said.

Rivera said Right to Life Action and the Pro-Family Alliance have no problems with 90 percent of SB 814. What his members oppose is the requirement that the content of the new mentoring programs must align with the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.

“Under the standards, new teachers would learn from the mentor that they have to ‘embrace, encourage and affirm’ viewpoints of students. But they do not explain what those are,” Rivera said. “They could be things that a teacher would object to.”

For example, if a student has a pro-abortion position, a teacher with a pro-life religious belief cannot be expected to “embrace and affirm” the student’s pro-abortion position, Rivera argued.

Rivera said the standards are unconstitutional. He said the only remedy is for teachers to seek redress from the courts.

PCHS-NJROTC | Wikimedia via Creative Commons

The new standards were developed by the Diverse and Learner Ready Teacher Network, a group that works to recruit and support minority teachers in ten states, including Illinois.

The Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards direct teachers to examine the personal biases and perceptions that affect their teaching practices. The idea behind the standards is to train new teachers to make their instruction more inclusive and relevant to students of different cultural backgrounds, sexual identities and gender identities.

Rivera said that the language of the standards is vague and worrisome for conservatives.

Republican lawmakers and religious conservatives have opposed the adoption of the standards since they were introduced.

“Now that SB 814 has passed, new teachers and mentors will have to abide by the rule, and we are concerned that they can’t do that,” Rivera said.