Prairie State Wire

A conservative national public interest law firm says it will challenge what it characterizes as vague and progressive new teaching standards set for approval by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) on Wednesday.

The language in the “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” is loaded with potential constitutional violations and violations of conscience, according to the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, which is working with pro-family groups against the new standards.

“Mandating acceptance and endorsement of values that may be inconsistent with one’s own deeply held religious beliefs is unnecessary and unconstitutional,” Thomas More Vice President and Senior Counsel Thomas Olp said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for ISBE, Jackie Matthews, told Prairie State Wire that it “stands by” the proposed changes.

“The reality is that Illinois’ students are increasingly diverse – with more than 52% identifying as students of color, and English learners making up the fastest-growing student population – while our teachers remain overwhelmingly white and female,” Matthews wrote in an email. “The ability to reach students from different cultural backgrounds is an essential skill to succeed as a teacher in Illinois today.”

Pro-family groups in the state have denounced the proposed changes, with Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute writing that the standards are intended to “infuse the assumptions of critical race theory [the law is inherently racist], identity politics, Black Lives Matter and the 1619 Project into all teacher-training programs/education majors, all professional education licensing (PEL), and all public school classrooms. The proposed standards are called ‘culturally responsive teaching and leading standards’–translated [to] leftist responsive indoctrinating diktats.”

In October the Pro-Family Alliance sent a letter to the ISBE listing its objections to the proposed changes.

“The proposed standards add a layer of expectations to the current competency standards,” the letter stated. “But unlike those standards, which are couched in terms of ‘knowledge indicators’ and ‘performance indicators,’ the proposed standards largely articulate expectancies in vague and undefined terms, which do not permit an objective assessment of teacher compliance.”

The standards, the Pro-Family Alliance says, also “co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.”

“Teachers [described also as 'leaders'] are expected to 'create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy' and to 'hold high expectations' for students to participate and lead as 'advocates and activists,'” it said.

Approved standards will go before the Illinois General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules for final approval.