The party that wants to keep politics out of the classroom sure is funneling its politics into the state’s education board.

The party that wants to keep politics out of the classroom sure is funneling its politics into the state’s education board.


Tulsa Public Schools — the largest school district in the state — had its accreditation downgraded to “accredited with warning” after a “teacher from Memorial High School in Tulsa complained to the Oklahoma Department of Education in February that a staff training from August 2021 violated state law HB1775, which restricts conversations on race and racism. (HB1775 is sometimes known as the anti-critical race theory law.) The law wasn’t in place at the time of the training,” Education Week reported.


Their infraction, according to Education Week, was in part that training included unpleasant (but uncontested) facts like Black students were suspended two and three times more than white students “and that teachers hold lower expectations (explicitly or implicitly) for Black and Latino children as compared to White peers.”


Mustang Public Schools received the same treatment after it told on itself.


“The incident in question involved a middle school teacher conducting a Cross-the-Line activity, which allows students to see the ways they’re similar to and different from each other by taking a step back or forward depending on how they respond to questions. The larger the gap, the bigger the difference. The question that Mustang deemed unlawful was ‘If you have ever been called names regarding your race, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation, or physical/learning disability and felt uncomfortable, take one step back,’” Education Week reported.


If there’s one thing that shouldn’t be taught in schools, it’s empathy, a quality that administrators ruling over school districts with an iron fist also seem to lack.


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