2021 Education magazine

Page 22 2021 Education Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS February 18, 2021 for all Illinois educators, seems to emanate from the 1619 Project. It mandates that all teachers integrate the exploration of racial backgrounds especially those of repressed races and hold discussions of those children’s experiences of such repression. The ISBE Part 24 section “‘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 stated reasons for this 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.” IllinoisPolicy.org said in their article on this subject that “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.” The Part 24 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.” Critics of this change have expressed concerns that this will increase Illinois’ already critical shortage of licensed teachers as more educators will either leave the profession or move to other states in order to escape these new liberal teaching mandates. Critics also cite that pushing these new regulations on Continued p