This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.

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The United States has entered a “learning recession,” according to a new Education Scorecard report. Nationally, eighth-grade reading scores now stand at their lowest point since 1990, and fourth-grade reading has fallen back to pre-2003 levels. Only 31% of U.S. students are proficient.

California’s results were similarly dismal. Yet this news doesn’t seem to be ringing any alarm bells in Sacramento. As the school year wrapped up, the state’s Department of Education was busy sponsoring a training for K–12 teachers that encouraged them to “take action” to transform schools into “liberatory systems.”

Such training is no aberration. Activism and ideology, not student performance, are priorities not just in California but also in many other states.

After the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act gave states more control over school accountability and teacher quality, states used that authority to embed “culturally responsive education,” or CRE, into the rules and expectations for educators. From teaching standards and program approval to licensing requirements and professional development, the result has been a bureaucratic system that pushes teachers to incorporate activism into classroom activities.

CRE isn’t as benign as its name suggests. Many parents assume it means that teachers should understand and make reasonable accommodations for students’ differing backgrounds or give a full and honest account of our nation’s history, warts and all. But in many state frameworks, CRE goes much further. CRE rules and standards direct teachers to view society through the lens of an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, to treat institutions (including their own schools) as inherently racist or sexist, and to encourage students to engage in activism.

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These frameworks often apply across subjects and grade levels. In some states, they begin with children as young as three or four. In many states — including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and California — teachers must demonstrate mastery of CRE as a professional competency to earn or keep a teaching license. Teacher preparation programs also must conform to the same expectations to receive state approval.

With CRE built into the regulatory code and standards that set the rules for teaching, the entire teacher pipeline — from teachers’ colleges to licensure to ongoing professional development — is structured to help teachers push activist education into classrooms.

State lawmakers built this system. They should dismantle it. The first step: examine licensure requirements, teacher-preparation standards, professional-development mandates, teaching standards, and agency guidance. These are the channels through which ideological requirements entered the profession.

But rollback is not enough. States should also establish a new core competency for teacher licensure and program approval: the ability to teach controversial issues professionally and responsibly. Most teachers receive little training in leading discussions on thorny issues, presenting competing viewpoints, or helping students think through contentious subjects. Many avoid these topics altogether, while the most ideological teachers are often the most willing to teach them. That leaves students with either silence or advocacy, neither of which prepares them for citizenship in a free society.

Instead of requiring teachers to promote activism, states should insist that they create classrooms where students encounter multiple perspectives, weigh evidence, and disagree constructively. By tying that requirement to license renewal and program approval, states can make responsible teaching on controversial issues a condition of entering the profession.

With a growing number of young people believing that political violence can sometimes be justified, schools have a heightened responsibility to prepare them for civil disagreement. They can’t do that if teachers are trained as activists.

State lawmakers created the problem of politicized classrooms. They have the ability and the responsibility to fix it.

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This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found here.

Dana Stangel-Plowe is the chief program officer at North American Values Institute.

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The Reason Behind The Rise Of Activist Teachers — And Our Classrooms