(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Among growing concerns of the politicization in schools and the increased teaching of topics such as critical race theory and gender ideology, state education groups are taking aim at teacher licensure rules with hopes to stymie the woke teacher pipeline.
The advocacy effort dates back to 2005, when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression was challenged by the “commitment to social justice” graduation requirement introduced by schools of education, Just the News reported.
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education is one of the organizations that helps prepare teachers for careers in K-12 education, and implemented guidelines for “social justice” and “diversity.” These guidelines determined whether or not an aspiring educator would be allowed to teach.
In these programs, teachers and administrators have also been trained to seek out students’ gender identities, playing a role in the recent explosion of trans and non-binary identifying students.
David Randall, the National Association of Scholars’s director of research, introduced the Model Education Licensure Code, which would scale back all of the requirements organizations like NCATE have implemented throughout the years.
“Radical activists use education schools and licensure requirements as their central means to gain power over America’s classrooms,” Randall said when debuting the Model Education Licensure Code.
The code is split into three separate bills.
The Nondiscrimination Act would prohibit the State Board of Education from training teachers to teach or affirm a belief in the “systemic nature of racism … multiplicity or fluidity of gender identities,” or “any ideology or pedagogy that classifies individuals within identity groups.”
It would also ban teaching materials that have to do with any type of social or public policy advocacy.
The Review Act requires current teaching methods, materials and trainings of education students to be submitted to legislatures and governors for review and possible veto.
The final part, the Certificate Act, would reduce course requirements down to the minimum number of required undergraduate courses for an education degree and a standardized test, both of which would focus on the necessary material.
The bill does not have sponsors yet, but it is expected that lawmakers will work within the boundaries of their own state laws to pass the bill successfully.
