Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.

“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).

Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.

[It’s hard to believe that Minnesota schools could get *worse* in this regard, but this does look bad. Unfortunately, the state has taken a deep dive into radical-progressive politics since the George Floyd riots, and so far there doesn’t seem to be an effective opposition to that trend. I’m happy to take note of this from central Texas rather than the Twin Cities suburbs, but a lot of very good and rational people are essentially trapped in a radical regime. — Ed]