TOPEKA — A state education official told lawmakers Wednesday they need to “stop calling everything under the sun” critical race theory if they want to work together to improve student achievement.
Ann Mah, a Democrat on the Kansas State Board of Education and former state representative, clashed with Republicans during a hearing on how CRT may be infiltrating classrooms in public schools. Mah said CRT has been co-opted for any complaint relating to public schools.
“You can’t just say, ‘Oh my God, they mentioned race, so it must be CRT.’ No, you need to really look at it,” Mah said. “CRT is a graduate level study of institutional racism in the legal system. It has nothing to do with sex. It is what it is. And we’re not teaching it. We are doing, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion. We’re doing social emotional growth. We’re not teaching graduate level legal courses.”
Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican in charge of the committee, said lawmakers “have heard that definition over and over.”
“And I think that we’re all little bit tired of that academic definition that does not in any way conclude that CRT application is not being used,” Williams said.
Republicans and parents throughout the hearing used the politically convenient term to describe concerns dealing with sexuality, gender, diversity, history and communism.
Rep. Adam Thomas, an Olathe Republican, said his daughter was given an assignment involving a “gender unicorn,” which “pretty much tells kids that are questioning their identity to either out themselves or just pound it into these kids’ head.”
“I wonder what they’re going to call that next, while we’re changing the names of certain ideal ideologies here,” Thomas said.
Mah said CRT is about the legal system, not sexual identity.
“So whatever assignment your daughter had had nothing to do with CRT,” Mah said. “It may be something you want to complain about and have a local discussion. But it’s not critical race theory.”
Four suppositions
Rep. Patrick Penn, a Wichita Republican, used a fish tank as a metaphor for how CRT has influenced the public school system.
CRT is not the fish, food, water or rocks, he said. It is the air in the air filter.
Penn blamed the teachers union for pushing dangerous ideas, and he described “four key suppositions” of CRT.
“When you start hearing, reading or seeing things in our academic sphere, you measure them up against this and you know that you are in the land of CRT,” Penn said.
