harvard edcast the state of critical race theory in education

As education in the United States has evolved over the years, one consistent – and significant – factor has been anti-Black racism.   Centuries of slavery and oppression led to a dual school system in which Black Americans were systematically denied access to quality education. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, famously declared that “separate is not equal,” but generations of Black Americans both before and after this decision were forced to defy laws and structural barriers to receive an education even close to equal.

  Between 1740 and 1867, anti-literacy laws in the United States prohibited enslaved, and sometimes free, Black Americans from learning to read or write. White elites viewed Black literacy as a threat to the institution of slavery – it facilitated escape, uprisings, and the sharing of information and ideas among enslaved people. Indeed, literacy undermined the false foundation slavery was built on: the intellectual inferiority and inhumanity of African-descended people.   The small percentage of enslaved people who became literate did so at great risk – those who were caught were often violently punished, sold, or even killed. Because of the danger, enslaved people had to be strategic and resourceful in learning to read and write. They attended secret informal schools taught by free Blacks at night, covertly learned from white enslavers’ children, or found opportunities when enslavers were away.   Northern states were little better. Black education was generally viewed with suspicion and suppressed through legislation and threat of violence. For instance, when white schoolteacher Prudence Crandall opened a boarding school for Black girls in 1832 Connecticut, the state promptly passed a law requiring written permission from town officials for anyone seeking to teach Black students from other states. This empowered anti-Black racism on a local level and, facing escalating harassment and vandalism, Crandall closed the school after only two years.   After the Civil War, emancipated Black Americans who’d been denied educational access for centuries made learning a priority. They established schools at their own expense and advocated for universal public education. The development of Southern public schools for students of all races is indebted to Black voters and legislators of the Reconstruction era. Education was embraced as a safeguard of Black liberation, self-determination, and rights as citizens.  

Unfortunately, strides made during this era were cut short by racism and white supremacy.

Southern schoolhouses and teachers, regardless of race, were targets of racist violence. Between 1864 and 1876, over 630 southern Black schools were significantly damaged or destroyed. Black Americans who moved to Northern urban centers, meanwhile, were segregated by anti-Black laws, policies, and cultural practices that denied them equitable access to schools.  

  Across the country, state governments used their power to reinforce school segregation and to fund white schools at the expense of Black ones. Black students were left with dilapidated school buildings, fewer teachers and programs, and limited curriculum options. Facing these injustices, Black educators countered by receiving exceptional academic credentials to provide Black students with quality education.   Although Brown v. Board of Education ended legal segregation in public schools, it did not end racial inequality in education. Freedom of Choice plans, private school vouchers, and white flight into suburbs perpetuated segregation and further concentrated wealth and school resources into predominantly white areas. In addition, many federal rulings after the Brown decision dismantled desegregation policies and strategies, and public schools today remain highly segregated by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.   Black students face an uphill battle against a system built on centuries of racism, divestment, and denied opportunities. Improved educational outcomes for Black students today can only be achieved by addressing these historic, race-based inequities.

Explore a curated sample of Harvard research and resources related to anti-Black racism in education below.

Fugitive pedagogy: carter g. woodson and the art of black teaching (harvard key only).

African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence in a tradition of “fugitive pedagogy.” This book examines this tradition through the efforts of educator, historian, and Black History Month founder Carter G. Woodson.

Teaching White supremacy: America's democratic ordeal and the forging of our national identity (Harvard Key Only)

This book explores white supremacy's deep-seated roots in the U.S. education system through an in-depth examination of American textbooks and the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture.

Teaching the Hard Histories of Racism

This article outlines five principles to guide educators in teaching difficult topics, such as racism and colonialism, to students of all ages.

Three Essays on Educational Policy and Equity

The systematic oppression of Black people throughout U.S. history has resulted in persistent unequal access to opportunity but decades of educational reform have not meaningfully reduced racial differences in standardized test performance, college going, or adult outcomes. This doctoral dissertation leverages rigorous quantitative research methods to contribute to and build on existing efforts to address racial inequalities through educational policy.

The Lingering Legacy of Redlining on School Funding, Diversity, and Performance

Between 1935-1940 the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) assigned A (minimal risk) to D (hazardous) grades to neighborhoods that reflected their lending risk from previously issued loans and visualized these grades on color-coded maps, which arguably influenced banks and other mortgage lenders to provide or deny home loans within residential neighborhoods. This working paper leverages a spatial analysis of 144 HOLC-graded core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) to understand how HOLC maps relate to current patterns of school and district funding, school racial diversity, and school performance.

The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime

Schools face important policy tradeoffs in monitoring and managing student behavior. Strict discipline policies may stigmatize suspended students and expose them to the criminal justice system at a young age. This working paper estimates the net impact of school discipline on student achievement, educational attainment and adult criminal activity and finds that the negative impacts of attending a high suspension school are largest for males and minorities.

United States District Court (Massachusetts) National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.) Tallulah Morgan et al. v. James W. Hennigan et al. Case File. 1972-1995

In 1972 fifteen parents filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the Boston School Committee violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by a deliberate policy of racial segregation in Boston Public Schools. In 1974 Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. found the Boston School Committee had intentionally carried out a program of segregation in the Boston Public Schools.This digitized archival collection is a facsimile of the civil action case file for Tallulah Morgan et al. v. James W. Hennigan et al. It contains documents related to the class action lawsuit, Garrity's decision, and implementation of court-ordered desegregation in Boston Public Schools.

Papers of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, 1900-1961

Educator Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown was founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, and active in the National Council of Negro Women and the North Carolina Teachers Association. She was the first Black woman to serve on the national board of the YWCA. She lectured and wrote about Black women, education, and race relations. This archival collection provides information about Charlotte Hawkins Brown's life and activities, the Palmer Memorial Institute, and Brown's continuing struggle to enlarge the school, the financial problems she encountered, and her constant fundraising efforts.

Education Now: Navigating Tensions Over Teaching Race and Racism

How can schools, educators, and families navigate the continued politicization and tensions around teaching and talking about race, racism, diversity, and equity? In this webinar panelists discuss what educators and families can do to make sure students are supported, learning, and prepared with the knowledge they need to understand their own histories and the diverse and global society they’ll enter.

Donald Yacovone, 'Teaching White Supremacy'

In this seminar historian Donald Yacovone discusses his book "Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity" which explores white supremacy's deep-seated roots in the U.S. education system through an in-depth examination of American textbooks and the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture.

Harvard EdCast: The State of Critical Race Theory in Education

In this podcast educational researcher and pedagogical theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings discusses how she adapted Critical Race Theory from law to explain inequities in education, the current politicization and tension around teaching about race in the classroom, and offers a path forward for educators eager to engage in work that deals with the truth about America’s history.

Harvard EdCast: Fugitive Pedagogy in Black Education

The history of Black education is complex and rich, but often remains untold. In this podcast interdisciplinary historian Jarvis Givens explains how Black educators worked together to push back against oppressive school structures in a tradition of “fugitive pedagogy” that was passed down from generation to generation of Black educators.

Harvard EdCast: Schooling for Critical Consciousness

What is the role of schools in teaching students, especially students of color, how to face oppression and develop political agency? In this podcast Daren Graves and Scott Seider, authors of "Schooling for Critical Consciousness" (2020), share the ways that educators and school leaders can help young people better understand and challenge racial injustices.

Citations for Section Overview

• Anderson, James D. 2010. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 . Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. http://muse.jhu.edu/book/43951 .
• Ansalone, George. 2009. “Tracking, Schooling and the Equality of Educational Opportunity.” Race, Gender & Class 16 (3/4): 174–84.
• Caldera, Altheria. 2020. “Eradicating Anti-Black Racism in U.S. Schools: A Call-to-Action for School Leaders.” Diversity, Social Justice, and the Educational Leader 4 (1). https://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/dsjel/vol4/iss1/3 .
• Dumas, Michael J. 2014. “Contesting White Accumulation in Seattle: Toward a Materialist Antiracist Analysis of School Desegregation.” In The Pursuit of Racial and Ethnic Equality in American Public Schools . Michigan State University Press. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1mdq5o5/TN_cdi_jstor_books_j_ctt13x0p5t_24 .
• Dumas, Michael J. 2016. “Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse.” Theory Into Practice 55 (1): 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2016.1116852 .
• Erickson, Ansley T., and Ernest Morrell. 2019. Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community . New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/eric18220 .
• Feagin, Joe R, and Bernice McNair Barnett. 2004. “Success and Failure: How Systemic Racism Trumped the Brown V. Board of Education Decision.” UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW 2004 (5): 32.
• Fenwick, Leslie T. 2022. Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership . Race and Education Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
• Givens, Jarvis R. 2021. Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
• Perrillo, Jonna. 2012. Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rasmussen, Birgit Brander. 2010. “‘Attended with Great Inconveniences’: Slave Literacy and the 1740 South Carolina Negro Act.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 125 (1): 201–3. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2010.125.1.201 .
• Rose, Deondra. 2022. “Race, Post-Reconstruction Politics, and the Birth of Federal Support for Black Colleges.” Journal of Policy History 34 (1): 25–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030621000270 .
• Scribner, Campbell F. 2020. “Surveying the Destruction of African American Schoolhouses in the South, 1864–1876.” Journal of the Civil War Era 10 (4): 469–94.
• Span, Christopher M. 2015. “Post-Slavery? Post-Segregation? Post-Racial? A History of the Impact of Slavery, Segregation, and Racism on the Education of African Americans.” Teachers College Record 117 (14): 53–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811511701404 .
• Wasserman, Marni. 2014. Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown V. Board of Education . Driftless Connecticut Series Books. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
• Watkins, William H. 2001. The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865-1954 . Teaching for Social Justice Series. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Williams, Heather Andrea. 2005. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom . 1st ed. The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture Ser. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Citations for Images

• Students and teachers in a Boston public school classroom, circa 1973 | Unidentified artist. Part of Ruth Batson Papers, 1919-2003. Folder: #2.10. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute MC590-2.11-25. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/images/olvwork491021/catalog
• African-American school children playing outdoors, 1932-1933 | Unidentified artist. Part of Ethel Sturges Dummer Papers. Folder: "Professional" papers of ESD by topic: Education: Chicago Schools: Joint Committee on Education - composed of representatives of number of Chicago women's clubs "formed to arouse an intelligent interest in our public schools": Chicago Woman's Club: Miscellaneous material relating to Chicago schools. Educational organizations and schools outside of Chicago. RLG collection level record MHVW85-A165. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute MC590-2.11-25. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/via/olvgroup1004968/catalog
• Group portrait of Sedalia Public School’s graduating class of 1938-1939, circa 1938-1939 | Unidentified artist. Group portrait, outside, of graduating class, Sedalia Public School. Part of Charlotte Hawkins Brown Papers. Folder: Photographs: Students, events, buildings, n.d. Sedalia Public School, 1938-39, n.d. HOLLIS collection level record 000605309 . RLG collection level record MHVW85-A64. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute A146-69-9. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/via/olvwork20013567/catalog

On The Site

Curriculum is the Answer to Questions about CRT 

September 29, 2021 | Brittany Nicolaysen | Harvard Education Press Authors , Voices in Education

By Evan C. Gutierrez

Some governing bodies are working vigorously to ensure that every student has space in their classrooms to discuss race. Several states are working towards ethnic studies (and similar programs) as mandated curricular offerings. Others are moving forward legislation that will dramatically change whether (and how) teachers are able to discuss race in their classrooms at all. There is a well-coordinated, national political campaign, the aim of which seems to be turning Critical Race Theory (CRT) first into a red herring, a powerful wedge issue second. How strange that our national culture wars would metastasize on the curriculum.    I find this surprising because the subject of race in the curriculum has been sidelined for decades. In April I published a book on race in the curriculum. I raise this not to toot a horn, but because it appears to be the first text of its kind. As a field, we have been reticent in getting to brass tacks on race in the curriculum. Both where policies are moving towards racial equity and seeking to shut those efforts down, the current rhetorical debate will have a negative effect on teachers. Lack of clarity and resources will leave teachers unsure of how to move forward. 

Critical Race Theory as a Red Herring  

A red herring fallacy is “something used to mislead, distract or divert attention from the real issue by instead focusing on an issue having only surface level relevance to the first.”  1   The press have thoroughly explained the origins of CRT as a framework, as well as its current role and relationship to K12 education (mainly, that there isn’t one). It’s difficult to find evidence that CRT is taught below the graduate level. No one seems to be confused about these facts, including those advancing anti-CRT legislation. In March, Christopher Rufo stated that:    “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”    There doesn’t seem to be real concern about the content being presented to children. Where broad claims are made about the curriculum, there’s little evidence to support them. If the goal is to decodify a term for political ends, teachers and students will pay the price. Most educators understand that the traditional curriculum is insufficient, and that their students benefit from seeing themselves in the curriculum . Educators working to close gaps are describing the ‘ chilling effect ’ that recent political efforts are having. Because the discourse is muddy and the legislation is so mismatched to K12 realities, teachers are understandably confused about how to move forward.    Where racially affirming academic programs are making progress, many questions remain unanswered. California and Minnesota have both established frameworks and guidelines for ethnic studies. But lacking a curriculum or clear articulation of what will be taught, educators are open to scrutiny and opposition . Below, I have identified areas where schools can support educators who center equity in the classroom, and thus re-focus attention on the needs of students. 

Curriculum  

Anti-CRT legislation and opposition to racially affirming programs thrive on ideological debate. I am not a policy wonk. But I have been in a number of school board meetings where the content of the curriculum is hotly debated. Temperatures fall when boards are presented with actual teaching materials.  “This is the curriculum. Students will read these specific texts, in order to engage in discourse framed this way, in order to complete this task. Which parts of these materials are most concerning?”   While I don’t advocate for community review of lesson plans, sometimes the concrete examples can bring focus back to the substance of this issue—what teachers and students are doing together. 

Clarity  

While we must be clear that CRT is not being taught in the K12 curriculum, we can acknowledge that there is just cause for confusion. Educators are informed by scholarship on racial inequity, and these do impact practice. The seminal scholar (Gloria Ladson-Billings) on CRT in education also coined the term “culturally relevant pedagogy,” which remains a guidepost in educational research and practice. This connection does not mean that the practices are the same, nor does it mean there is reason for parents and communities to be concerned about the curriculum. We owe educators clear language around what research and frameworks do inform our practices. Authors like Bryan Brown and Lorena Germán give voice to how research can impact daily practice, and do so with purpose. If opposing forces have set out to decodify our language, educators need to claim and speak to our content with conviction. 

Moving Forward  

Both of the topics above suggest that organizations (funders, non-profits, school districts) need to allocate resources to building curriculum that centers their students’ identities and experiences. This process produces the clarity and the materials our students and teachers need, which should be our shared focus. 

  1 “Red Herring.” Texas State University. May 15, 2019.  https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Red-Herring.html . 

About the Author

Evan C. Gutierrez serves as the Vice President for Curriculum & Instruction for Newsela. He is the author of A New Canon: Designing Culturally Sustaining Humanities Curriculum (Harvard Education Press, 2021). 

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What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

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Education Week is the #1 source of high-quality news and insights on K-12 education. Sign up for our EdWeek Update newsletter to get stories like this delivered to your inbox daily.

Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.

The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom.

In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on what the government’s role should be in righting these past wrongs. Add children and schooling into the mix and the debate becomes especially volatile.

School boards, superintendents, even principals and teachers are already facing questions about critical race theory, and there are significant disagreements even among experts about its precise definition as well as how its tenets should inform K-12 policy and practice. This explainer is meant only as a starting point to help educators grasp core aspects of the current debate.

Just what is critical race theory anyway?

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blind policies, like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods and, thus, stymies racial desegregation efforts.

CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.

This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics—often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups; and urges intolerance.

Thus, there is a good deal of confusion over what CRT means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like “anti-racism” and “social justice,” with which it is often conflated.

To an extent, the term “critical race theory” is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it’s actually informed those programs.

One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT , including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed.

(A good parallel here is how popular ideas of the common core learning standards grew to encompass far more than what those standards said on paper.)

Does critical race theory say all white people are racist? Isn’t that racist, too?

The theory says that racism is part of everyday life, so people—white or nonwhite—who don’t intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism.

Some critics claim that the theory advocates discriminating against white people in order to achieve equity. They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account. (The writer Ibram X. Kendi, whose recent popular book How to Be An Antiracist suggests that discrimination that creates equity can be considered anti-racist, is often cited in this context.)

Fundamentally, though, the disagreement springs from different conceptions of racism. CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals’ own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified. Among lawyers, teachers, policymakers, and the general public, there are many disagreements about how precisely to do those things, and to what extent race should be explicitly appealed to or referred to in the process.

Here’s a helpful illustration to keep in mind in understanding this complex idea. In a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court school-assignment case on whether race could be a factor in maintaining diversity in K-12 schools, Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion famously concluded: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” But during oral arguments, then-justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “It’s very hard for me to see how you can have a racial objective but a nonracial means to get there.”

All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

What does any of this have to do with K-12 education?

Scholars who study critical race theory in education look at how policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, and advocate for ways to change them. Among the topics they’ve studied: racially segregated schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students, barriers to gifted programs and selective-admission high schools, and curricula that reinforce racist ideas.

Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students’ ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it’s related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives.

Many educators support, to one degree or another, culturally relevant teaching and other strategies to make schools feel safe and supportive for Black students and other underserved populations. (Students of color make up the majority of school-aged children.) But they don’t necessarily identify these activities as CRT-related.

As one teacher-educator put it: “The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: ‘Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?’ That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers.” Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment.

An emerging subtext among some critics is that curricular excellence can’t coexist alongside culturally responsive teaching or anti-racist work. Their argument goes that efforts to change grading practice s or make the curriculum less Eurocentric will ultimately harm Black students, or hold them to a less high standard.

As with CRT in general, its popular representation in schools has been far less nuanced. A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that “white people are inherently privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized”; that “achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness”; and that “the United States was founded on racism.”

Thus much of the current debate appears to spring not from the academic texts, but from fear among critics that students—especially white students—will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas.

While some district officials have issued mission statements, resolutions, or spoken about changes in their policies using some of the discourse of CRT, it’s not clear to what degree educators are explicitly teaching the concepts, or even using curriculum materials or other methods that implicitly draw on them. For one thing, scholars say, much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers.

What is going on with these proposals to ban critical race theory in schools?

As of mid-May, legislation purporting to outlaw CRT in schools has passed in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and have been proposed in various other statehouses.

The bills are so vaguely written that it’s unclear what they will affirmatively cover.

Could a teacher who wants to talk about a factual instance of state-sponsored racism—like the establishment of Jim Crow, the series of laws that prevented Black Americans from voting or holding office and separated them from white people in public spaces—be considered in violation of these laws?

It’s also unclear whether these new bills are constitutional, or whether they impermissibly restrict free speech.

It would be extremely difficult, in any case, to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. But social studies educators fear that such laws could have a chilling effect on teachers who might self-censor their own lessons out of concern for parent or administrator complaints.

As English teacher Mike Stein told Chalkbeat Tennessee about the new law : “History teachers can not adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because many of them mention racism to various extents.”

The laws could also become a tool to attack other pieces of the curriculum, including ethnic studies and “action civics”—an approach to civics education that asks students to research local civic problems and propose solutions.

How is this related to other debates over what’s taught in the classroom amid K-12 culture wars?

The charge that schools are indoctrinating students in a harmful theory or political mindset is a longstanding one, historians note. CRT appears to be the latest salvo in this ongoing debate.

In the early and mid-20th century, the concern was about socialism or Marxism . The conservative American Legion, beginning in the 1930s, sought to rid schools of progressive-minded textbooks that encouraged students to consider economic inequality; two decades later the John Birch Society raised similar criticisms about school materials. As with CRT criticisms, the fear was that students would be somehow harmed by exposure to these ideas.

As the school-aged population became more diverse, these debates have been inflected through the lens of race and ethnic representation, including disagreements over multiculturalism and ethnic studies, the ongoing “canon wars” over which texts should make up the English curriculum, and the so-called “ebonics” debates over the status of Black vernacular English in schools.

In history, the debates have focused on the balance among patriotism and American exceptionalism, on one hand, and the country’s history of exclusion and violence towards Indigenous people and the enslavement of African Americans on the other—between its ideals and its practices. Those tensions led to the implosion of a 1994 attempt to set national history standards.

A current example that has fueled much of the recent round of CRT criticism is the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which sought to put the history and effects of enslavement—as well as Black Americans’ contributions to democratic reforms—at the center of American history.

The culture wars are always, at some level, battled out within schools, historians say.

“It’s because they’re nervous about broad social things, but they’re talking in the language of school and school curriculum,” said one historian of education. “That’s the vocabulary, but the actual grammar is anxiety about shifting social power relations.”

Education Issues, Explained

The literature on critical race theory is vast. Here are some starting points to learn more about it, culturally relevant teaching, and the conservative backlash to CRT.

Brittany Aronson & Judson Laughter. “The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas.” Review of Educational Research March 2016, Vol. 86 No. 1. (2016); Kimberlé Crenshaw, ed. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press. (1996); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal Vol. 32 No. 3. (1995); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Vol 11. No. 1. (1998); Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez. “Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America.” Heritage Foundation. (2020); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York, NY: New York University Press. (2017); Shelly Brown-Jeffy & Jewell E. Cooper, “Toward a Conceptual Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: An Overview of the Conceptual and Theoretical Literature.” Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2011.

A version of this article appeared in the June 02, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

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What is critical race theory, and why do Republicans oppose teaching it in schools?

• Lawmakers in a growing number of states have introduced bills that would prohibit schools from teaching 'divisive,' 'racist' or 'sexist' concepts.
• Proponents see critical race theory as a framework to examine how the taint of racism still affects Black Americans and other people of color.
• Many conservatives view critical race theory as portraying the U.S. as a racist country and they believe teaching the theory seeks to make white people feel guilty about their race.

Idaho's governor last month  signed into law a bill whose purpose, at face value, is noncontroversial. The law prohibits public schools and colleges from teaching that "any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior." 

The catch? Baked into the legislation is an effort to stamp out conversations about race and equity. Lawmakers in a growing number of states — including Kentucky, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia – have introduced bills that would prohibit schools from teaching "divisive," "racist" or "sexist" concepts. 

Critics warn these measures are part of a larger movement to draw America’s culture wars into classrooms, centering on a once-obscure legal theory about how the legacy of slavery continues to permeate American society today.

What is critical race theory?

“Critical race theory” goes beyond advocating for civil rights or banning discrimination. Proponents see it as a framework to examine how the taint of racism still affects Black Americans and other people of color.

The effects of racism, they say, range from who gets bank loans and admission into elite universities to how suspects are treated by police. 

What is systemic racism?  Here's what it means and how you can help dismantle it

Why is there controversy over teaching it in schools?

Detractors dismiss critical race theory as a method for “teaching kids to hate their country” or to promote “ public school wokeness .”  

But while such talking points play well among conservative media circles, political and legal experts contend they obscure more meaningful discussion about the role systemic racism plays in the American experience.

The bills seeking to prohibit the instruction of “divisive concepts” seldom mention critical race theory directly, but in many cases legislators have cited it as a driving force behind the measures.

In an April Facebook post promoting a bill  in Rhode Island that has since stalled in committee, state Rep. Patricia Morgan, a co-sponsor, wrote, "Our state must reject the neo-racism and race-shaming of Critical Race Theory. We have no time to waste in rooting out this disturbing, divisive and false ideology."

While discussing a new civics education initiative in Florida's public schools , Gov. Ron DeSantis said, "There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money." 

The bills' language reflects many conservatives' view that critical race theory portrays the United States as a racist country, that certain people are "inherently oppressive" and that those people are accountable for the sins committed by their predecessors.

In their interpretation, the theory seeks to make particular individuals – namely, white people – feel uncomfortable and guilty about their race.

More: Denying '1619 Project' founder Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure will have 'dire repercussions' for UNC, faculty warn

When did critical race theory get its start?

The ideas behind critical race theory were developed in the 1970s by a group of legal scholars. "Anti-discrimination law wasn’t addressing the persistent inequalities they were seeing,” said Adrienne Dixson, a professor of critical race theory and education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Interest in the topic has grown over the past year, fueled in part by Black Lives Matter activism following the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.  Google search trends show a spike this spring.

In some states, political debates have erupted over the role and design of racial justice-minded education. In March, activists launched the national,   largely conservative grassroots organization Parents Defending Education, aimed at resisting what members believe are activists and ideologues "pumping divisive, polarizing ideas into classrooms," according to the group's literature.

Much of the group's advocacy focuses on challenging curricula based on the 1619 Project , a series of stories by The New York Times in 2019 that frames U.S. history within the context of slavery. (A separate series of state bills have also sought to punish schools for incorporating the project into lesson plans.)

1619 Searching for Answers: How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States

A recent poll by Parents Defending Education found more than two-thirds of respondents "opposed schools teaching that America was founded on racism and is structurally racist." Close to 3 in 4 respondents said schools shouldn't teach students that white people are inherently privileged and people of color inherently oppressed.

The group has taken to filing federal civil rights complaints against districts that say structural racism plays a role in schools. The complaints in cities such as Columbus, Ohio; Hopkins, Minnesota; Webster Groves, Missouri; and Hillsborough, North Carolina, contend such admissions amount to districts violating federal anti-discrimination law, which should void their federal funding.

Hundreds of thousands of Africans were enslaved in America . Wanda Tucker believes her relatives were the first.

Is it possible to outlaw critical race theory?

Educators who study critical race theory see value in teaching about America's history with slavery and discrimination. But Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Fordham Institute, is concerned about the growing trend of “anti-racism” lessons in schools.

Pondiscio doesn’t oppose the founding principles of critical race theory. But he says teachers can better combat systemic racism by setting high expectations for all students, using a rigorous and rich curriculum and focusing on literacy – not ideologies. 

“Whenever you have a phenomenon like this that people don’t fully understand, it’ll be ripe for demagoguery,” he said in an interview.

Legislation targeting critical race theory isn’t the answer, he added.

“People make the assumption that you can pass a law and it changes what gets taught,” he said. “That's not how it works.”

The legislation also raises free-speech concerns, said Emerson Sykes, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

"The underlying impetus for these bills is antithetical to the free-speech values that many of these legislators claim to hold dear," he said. The ACLU is in the process of evaluating its litigation options in response to the bills, he said.

Inserting schools into  controversial political debates and mandating that teachers take a side,  Sykes said,  is "hugely problematic."   

Will the anti-critical race theory bills pass?

The pushback has received its own pushback, prompting some of the bills – including New Hampshire's – to stall or die in committee. Others are proceeding at full speed.

Iowa's Department of Education had to postpone a conference related to social justice and equity in schools in anticipation of that state's bill being signed into law, Iowa Public Radio reported . Officials decided to put off the event until the fall.

In Idaho, Republican representatives said they wouldn't support a bill related to educators' salaries unless it also included lines reflecting the state's critical race theory-related legislation and banned schools from incorporating social justice into their teaching. 

Outside of statehouses, opposition to critical race theory has become a rallying cry for conservative politicos – such as in Dallas this spring.

It all started when the Carroll Independent School District sought to soothe feelings after a TikTok video showed a group of white teens shouting racial slurs.

School board meetings grew heated after the district created a diversity council that drafted  a plan aimed at making its classrooms anti-racist. At one meeting, a Black student and member of the new diversity council was booed after testifying "my life matters," according to the Dallas Morning News.

Last month, opponents of the plan  won a handful of seats – including the mayor's office and positions on the school board – in an election that garnered record-high voter turnout.

Their victory was described by The Federalist, a conservative online magazine, as a harbinger of "a new cultural Tea Party." It marks "an escalating movement to reclaim K-12 schools infected by the racism of critical race theory," the publication wrote. 

In that kind of political climate, critical race theory has become a rallying cry   to stoke conservative voters' fears, said the University of Illinois’ Dixson — even though the theory was originally intended to advocate for the same principles the legislation attacking it purports to promote.

“What critical race theory doesn’t do is indict entire races of people and blame the inequality on all white people,” Dixson said. “I don’t know that any school teaches critical race theory in the way that these (legislators) interpret it.”

Contributing: Jessica Guynn

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Critical Race Theory in Education

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Book Review: Critical Race Theory in Education: A Scholar's Journey. Gloria Ladson-Billings. Teachers College Press, 2021, 233 pp.

David A. Harnish, Illinois State University

The aptly chosen title for this book points the reader to what they will encounter as they read Gloria Ladson-Billings' compilation of writings on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education. Ladson-Billings provides nine writings that give the reader a sense of the main areas of scholarship, challenges, and applications to the study of education. Through reading her previously published works across nearly three decades, it is easy to see the development of ideas and evolving applications of CRT by Ladson-Billings and other scholars. Many things have changed in the United States since Ladson-Billings began her journey with CRT in the early 1990s.

However, CRT is as relevant to the field of education now as it was when she first called for its application nearly three decades ago. It continues to offer a useful lens through which to analyze significant political and social developments in an educational context—whether in making sense of the political trajectory of the United States that saw the election of Barack Obama followed by Donald Trump or the current spate of laws passed to prohibit discussing racism in the classroom. And as Ladson-Billings makes clear throughout her compiled writings, it is certain to remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

Ladson-Billings organizes the book into three parts, sorting the writings thematically rather than chronologically. This decision makes sense conceptually, as chapter one begins with her seminal writing with William Tate IV, "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education," from 1995. This is followed by chapter two, her 2013 article "Critical Race Theory--What It Is Not!", which critiques some of the scholarships that emerged in the two decades following her call for applying CRT to education. This organization allows the reader to understand her initial scholarly aims and the challenges that followed in seeking to use a new theoretical framework in the field of educational research.

The book's second section is titled "Issues of Inequality" and explores how Critical Race Theory sheds light on inequalities within the American education system. The writings in this section are from 2006, 2012, 2003, and 2004, respectively, offering significant insight into Ladson-Billings' thoughts roughly one decade into bringing CRT into educational research. Chapter three takes on the deficit-minded thinking surrounding the "achievement gap" and proposes a new framing of educational inequity.

Chapter four explores the many ways in which race shapes educational outcomes and experiences. Chapter five critiques multicultural education and offers a framework for how it can use CRT to analyze educational issues. Chapter six, the final one in this section, analyzes an often underexplored issue in American education, the costs of the ruling in Brown v. Board. By applying a CRT lens, Ladson-Billings identifies how despite the good intentions of many involved in the decision, the ruling in Brown was based on several racist assumptions and motivated in no small part by geopolitical concerns. She also details how the hopes of the ruling were betrayed due to recalcitrance by racist White Americans, actions that have shaped (and continue to shape) the state of education for Black students.

The third and final section of the book explores epistemology and methodology, with chapter seven focusing on how CRT can help educational researchers respond to dehumanizing attitudes and practices routinely found in mainstream scholarship and American culture writ large. Chapter eight addresses how CRT remains as relevant as ever, despite the claims of many people that America is now in a "post-racial" existence. Ladson-Billings illustrates how racial inequity has morphed but not disappeared, continuing to hamper Black students' opportunities for success. Throughout this section, she offers a compelling exploration of how CRT can be applied to research and to making sense of the larger society in which Americans live.

The book closes with a postscript, "The Social Funding of Race: The Role of Schooling," originally published in 2018, in which Ladson-Billings traces the many ways in which race is learned and reinforced in American culture broadly and schools in particular. This is often found in the assumptions teachers make about their students, blind spots they have in how they discuss topics surrounding race, and how the curriculum is structured. The postscript concludes with a call for teachers to apply the principles of CRT in service of working to bring about a culture that "although never intended to extend to non-whites, women, or poor people, belongs to them just the same" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 279).

This compilation of Ladson-Billings' writings vividly demonstrates the varied applications of CRT in the field of education and how it offers a useful framework for making sense of ongoing challenges and inequities. Exploring her ideas and applications of CRT across multiple decades will help readers understand her scholarly journey. However, this book offers little new insight, explicit connection, or commentary on her past ideas. The fifteen-page introduction is the only new material; everything that follows, including the postscript, was previously published. As a result, chapters sometimes feel somewhat disjointed, and the reader will need to fill in missing context due to the original dates of chapters varying by a decade or more. Another challenge inherent to the compilation format of the book is the repetitive nature of certain anecdotes and ideas.

A reader well-versed in the tenets of CRT will find portions of some chapters redundant, as it is clear that the article in its original form was written assuming it needed to explain the central precepts of CRT for the first time. Another example is the repetitive use of the O.J. Simpson trial to illustrate the salience of race in American culture, which is used in chapters two, five, and seven. While each reference fits well within the structure of the original article, by the third instance, the reader is likely able to skim ahead due to the previous discussions from the two earlier chapters.

The quality of Ladson-Billings' scholarship and communication is evident throughout this book. Her ideas come through clearly in each chapter. Upon finishing the book, the reader should come away with a deeper understanding of her scholarly aims and hopes for how CRT might be applied to the field of education to bring about a more equitable and just world. This text offers a useful sample of essential writings by an incredibly skilled and influential scholar. Anyone unfamiliar with the scholarship surrounding CRT and education would be well served by reading this book. The only substantive critique that can be made is that the reader gets too little of Ladson-Billings' reflections, limited only to a brief introduction. Despite this limitation, the book should be a meaningful resource to many scholars seeking to better understand CRT's origins, goals, and applications and how an influential and foundational academic researcher has conceptualized the scholarship surrounding it.

Articles in this Volume

[tid]: building a dissertation conceptual and theoretical framework: a recent doctoral graduate narrates behind the curtain development, [tid]: family income status in early childhood and implications for remote learning, [tid]: the theater of equity, [tid]: including students with emotional and behavioral disorders: case management work protocol, [tid]: loving the questions: encouraging critical practitioner inquiry into reading instruction, [tid]: supporting the future: mentoring pre-service teachers in urban middle schools, [tid]: embracing diversity: immersing culturally responsive pedagogy in our school systems, [tid]: college promise programs: additive to student loan debt cancellation, [tid]: book review: critical race theory in education: a scholar's journey. gloria ladson-billings. teachers college press, 2021, 233 pp., [tid]: inclusion census: how do inclusion rates in american public schools measure up, [tid]: in pursuit of revolutionary rest: liberatory retooling for black women principals, [tid]: “this community is home for me”: retaining highly qualified teachers in marginalized school communities, [tid]: a conceptual proposition to if and how immigrants' volunteering influences their integration into host societies.

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When Gloria Ladson-Billings set out in the 1990s to adapt critical race theory from law to education, she couldn’t have predicted that it would become the focus of heated school debates today.

In recent years, the scrutiny of critical race theory – a theory she pioneered to help explain racial inequities in education – has become heavily-politicized in school communities and by legislators. She says it has been grossly misunderstood and used as a lump term about many things that are not actually critical race theory. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor discusses the current politicization and tension around teaching about race in the classroom and offers a path forward for educators eager to engage in work that deals with the truth about America’s history.

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What is Happening with Critical Race Theory in Education?

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A classroom conversation in Denver, Colorado, in April 2021. (Eli Imadali for Chalkbeat)

CRT Map: Efforts to restrict teaching racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S.

Officials nationwide have raced to enact new laws and introduce new policies meant to shape how students discuss the nation’s past — and its present. Many of these efforts have attempted to ban critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism. 

In some states, lawmakers have tried to restrict antiracism training or the teaching of what they call “divisive concepts.” But on the opposite end, other states are adding ethnic studies courses or incorporating more about people of color into their learning standards.

The map you see here depicts the depth and breadth of these ongoing efforts to both restrict and expand how a core aspect of American life is taught in our classrooms. So far, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. With 2022 state legislative sessions underway, new legislation is in the pipeline. 

Our map also documents actions taken by state boards of education and executive branches of state governments. In states that haven’t taken such concrete steps, we have spotlighted comments from public officials and other developments to give readers a sense of how the debate is playing out.  

The impact of these discussions on classrooms is being felt . This map provides a snapshot of this turning point in American history and education. We’ve also created a timeline of key events and documents that trace the critical race theory backlash from its beginnings during the administration of President Donald Trump.

Chalkbeat is committed to continued coverage of these actions. If you have information about bills, policies, or anything else relevant from your state or hometown, please email us at [email protected] .

Reporting by Cathryn Stout and graphics by Thomas Wilburn.

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Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education

DOI link for Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education

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This handbook illustrates how education scholars employ Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to bring attention to issues of race and racism in education. It is the first authoritative reference work to provide a truly comprehensive description and analysis of the topic, from the defining conceptual principles of CRT in Law that gave shape to its radical underpinnings to the political and social implications of the field today. It is divided into six sections, covering innovations in educational research, policy and practice in both schools and in higher education, and the increasing interdisciplinary nature of critical race research. New chapters broaden the scope of theoretical lenses to include LatCrit, AsianCrit and Critical Race Feminism, as well as coverage of Discrit Studies, Research Methods, and other recent updates to the field. This handbook remains the definitive statement on the state of critical race theory in education and on its possibilities for the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 5  pages, introduction, section section i | 83  pages, foundations of critical race theory and critical race theory in education, chapter 1 | 13  pages, the history and conceptual elements of critical race theory, chapter 2 | 10  pages, discerning critical moments, chapter 3 | 12  pages, critical race theory—what it is not, chapter 4 | 18  pages, critical race theory's intellectual roots, chapter 5 | 17  pages, w.e.b. du bois's contributions to critical race studies in education, chapter 6 | 11  pages, scholar activism in critical race theory in education, section section ii | 158  pages, intersectional frameworks, chapter 7 | 15  pages, chapter 8 | 17  pages, critical race theory offshoots, chapter 9 | 11  pages, the inclusion and representation of asian americans and pacific islanders in america's equity agenda in higher education, chapter 10 | 17  pages, examining black male identity through a prismed lens, chapter 11 | 13  pages, other kids' teachers, chapter 12 | 13  pages, the last plantation, chapter 13 | 12  pages, doing class in critical race analysis in education, chapter 14 | 12  pages, tribal critical race theory, chapter 15 | 18  pages, “straight, no chaser”, chapter 16 | 15  pages, utilities of counterstorytelling in exposing racism within higher education, chapter 17 | 13  pages, a discrit abolitionist imaginary, section section iii | 94  pages, methods/praxis, chapter 18 | 17  pages, blurring boundaries, chapter 19 | 11  pages, no longer just a qualitative methodology, chapter 20 | 17  pages, critical race quantitative intersectionality, chapter 21 | 12  pages, confronting our own complicity, chapter 22 | 13  pages, still “fightin' the devil 24/7”, chapter 23 | 9  pages, countering they schools, chapter 24 | 13  pages, critical race theory and education history, section section iv | 97  pages, critical race policy analysis, chapter 25 | 10  pages, the policy of inequity, chapter 26 | 9  pages, a call to “do justice”, chapter 27 | 15  pages, critical race theory, teacher education, and the “new” focus on racial justice, chapter 28 | 15  pages, let's be for real, chapter 29 | 10  pages, a critical race policy analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline for chicanos, chapter 30 | 13  pages, badges of inferiority, chapter 31 | 10  pages, racial failure normalized as correlational racism, chapter 32 | 13  pages, a movement in two acts.

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