Public school districts have begun to screen teaching candidates on the basis of woke ideology, according to a report in Education Week.
School districts have long relied upon outside agencies to do their HR work, including hiring and developing personnel policy, and these agencies have always been dominated by the woke.
Lauren Dachille, founder and CEO of the hiring-software company, Nimble, which works with more than 500 school districts, told Education Week that “after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the nation last year, districts seem to be putting even more of a focus on how applicants think and talk about race in the classroom.”
Companies like Nimble have adopted the Critical Race Theory-inspired views contained in Ibram X. Kendi‘s 2019 book, How to Be an Antiracist, and actively seek out teachers willing serve as “anti-racist activists, who will reject equal treatment of all students in favor of discrimination against some (whites) for the supposed benefit of others (racial minorities),” according to the Federalist.
The Education Week article includes numerous examples of the kind of questions these firms ask teaching candidates:
- Sometimes, there is a belief that a commitment to diversity conflicts with a commitment to excellence. How would you describe the relationship between diversity and excellence?
- Why do you think that low-income students predictably perform lower on standardized tests than their more-affluent peers?
- How do you incorporate gender diversity and the different racial and cultural backgrounds of your students and families into your daily instruction and classroom environment?
- How do you ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation?
The article claimed that questions of this sort will allow schools to retain teachers because they create “a more inclusive school culture.”
For example, Education Week reported that “the Indianapolis school system has effectively closed the gap between the retention rates of teachers of color and white teachers.”
Based on the Education Week analysis, however, it is clear that this effect is accomplished when schools do not retain white teachers.
