Parents must take school districts to court to uncover critical race theory and anti-American curriculum

Originally Published on The Washington Examiner

As parents across the country become increasingly savvy at exposing the radical direction of their children’s schools, school administrators and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants are now putting up significant roadblocks to keep instructional and teacher training materials hidden from the public. It's time to call their bluff and take them to court.

The examples of education officials stymieing parents are numerous. In Michigan, parents were told to pay Forest Hills Public Schools nearly $400,000 for a Freedom of Information Act request on school materials related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. In Rhode Island, a teachers union sued a mother and a school district to block the release of documents after she filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking lesson plans related to critical race theory, gender theory, and transgender rights. And in Loudoun County, Virginia, the school division demanded parents sign a nondisclosure agreement before they could view curriculum materials inspired by critical race theory.

Another example, however, is even more alarming. At the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District in the Berwyn, Pennsylvania, area, administrators actively worked with its diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, the Pacific Educational Group , to block the disclosure of materials used to train teachers. When a concerned parent tried to uncover what was happening, they were completely shut down.

The Pacific Educational Group, which actively promotes the intersection of "critical race theory" with K-12 education, encourages teachers to give children “white privilege” quizzes, criticizes what it calls “white individualism,” and questions teachers on their “white culture,” began a partnership in 2018 with the district to “enhance practices around racial equity” and train faculty, administrators, support staff, and school board members.

In September 2020, the district released its Equity Guiding Principles , which required “inclusive, culturally responsive, and anti-racist curriculum and instruction at all grade levels,” the elimination of “systemic barriers that result in racial disparities in standardized testing, academic outcomes, and co-curricular participation at all levels,” and the development of “anti-racist leadership among students, faculty, staff, administrators, and parents.”

On June 14, 2021, at the first in-person school board meeting in over a year, parents packed the meeting to protest the injection of critical race theory at the district, citing the Pacific Educational Group’s equity training, the $400,000 paid to the group since 2018 , and a survey distributed at Conestoga High School the previous year in which students were required to evaluate their level of racial privilege.

Following that meeting, parents sought to review the curriculum and were told by the school administration that it would not provide the materials because “it constitutes information proprietary to Pacific Educational Group, or is otherwise subject to copyright restrictions, and therefore cannot be sent to you without legally exposing the District to copyright violations.”

A short time later, on July 14, 2021, Wendy Towle, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction, staff development, and planning, began a series of emails with the Pacific Educational Group discussing how to rely on the “proprietary nature” of training materials to continue blocking their release. This discussion was in response to a request sent on behalf of a parent by America First Legal , pursuant to the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and Pennsylvania’s Right to Know law.

On Jan. 19, Benjamin Auslander, a taxpayer and parent with children that attend the district, sent a Right to Know request to the district to inspect “all records, lesson plans and materials given by [the Pacific Educational Group] to T/E teachers.”

Auslander was allowed to inspect the records for a two-hour period on Feb. 7. He discovered that the terms “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “whiteness as property,” “white fragility,” etc., were indeed present throughout the training materials…