Calling for a focus on civics and history in public schools, a House of Representatives education subcommittee on Wednesday laid the groundwork of what could be a Republican Party focus when it controls both chambers of Congress and the White House in January—taking aim, in part, at teaching about racism and gender and sexuality, while eyeing an expansion of private school choice.
The hearing—held by the subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education—highlighted continued priorities for the GOP that have played out for years now at the state level, with many Republican-controlled states restricting how teachers can talk about race, racism, gender, sexuality, and what policymakers have deemed controversial topics.
With Republicans taking control of the Senate and retaining control of the House—and internal skeptics of President-elect Donald Trump largely out of the way—it becomes a question of whether there will be a federal appetite for such measures, in addition to efforts to kill the U.S. Department of Education and potentially expand private school access with public funds.
Democrats said the hearing was outside of the panel’s purview, arguing that federal lawmakers have no role in determining curriculum.
“This was once a noncontroversial bipartisan value, and I find it interesting that many of my colleagues view school curriculum as a state and local issue only when schools are teaching topics in a way they agree with,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat.
Republicans shied away from saying the federal government should have any involvement in curriculum. Rather, the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., said the hearing was meant to “sound the alarm” about the state of public education.
“The alarm is there. We’re mediocre in the world, and the world is a dangerous place, and we need bright minds to compete in tomorrow’s segment,” Bean said. “We don’t have the role—but state leaders, maybe.”
Here’s where the subcommittee and its witnesses focused their attention.
A years-old debate ensues about whether schools teach critical race theory
For more than three years, debates have raged at the state level over “critical race theory”—an academic framework that examines systemic racism. Lawmakers have penned bills banning the concept from being taught while there’s little evidence that public schools are directly teaching the concept that’s been more common in academia.
Republicans repeatedly asked witnesses—who represented a conservative-leaning think tank, a civics-focused educational nonprofit, a union representing skilled laborers, and a university’s school of civic life—to confirm whether CRT was being taught in schools.
Ian Rowe, a senior fellow for the public policy think tank American Enterprise Institute and founder of the New York charter school Vertex Partnership Academies, said that you “won’t hear [the legal concept] in the 1st grade,” but argued that there are “specific practices undergirded by the ideology driving critical race theory.”
“Of course, we don’t have, in K-12 schools, a class called CRT,” said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., but he argued the “dogma” still “permeates” schools.
Democrats dismissed the assertion that critical race theory is taught in schools.
“Calling every mention of race ‘CRT’ is absurd,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said.
Nationally, there was a surge in laws that restricted classroom conversations on racism, gender, and sexuality after President Joe Biden took office in 2021. Trump’s rhetoric, and efforts to empower the states, gave Republican state lawmakers the ability to advance those measures. Though Trump didn’t have federal support at the time, he found ideological allies in Republican-controlled states.
Both parties agree on the importance of teaching civics
In the years since the 2020 election, states have rolled out bills that restrict discussion of “divisive concepts,” which include conversations on inferring that anyone is, because of their race or sex, “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” As a byproduct, the policies have made some educators hesitant to discuss fraught subjects, like the presidential election. Many teachers this past year said they wouldn’t address the topic at all, with some saying they didn’t think their students would discuss it in a respectful manner and others saying such discussions would spark parent complaints.
Students themselves have also shown a greater hesitancy to discuss politics than in previous election cycles.
Michael Weiser, chairman of the board for the Jack Miller Center, a nonprofit group that promotes civics education, said teachers are limited in their ability to teach about politics due to insufficient professional development.
“Political campaigns and national issues are crucial opportunities for teachers to engage students in the democratic process and teach them to become thoughtful citizens,” Weiser said. “Yes, there are teachers who have taken it upon themselves to teach their personal politics, but many more teachers, I believe, understand their critical role and simply lack the confidence to lead their students in political discussions.”
Students come to college unprepared to have “conversations across difference,” said Jed Atkins, the director and dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The good news is, the desire for them to have conversation across difference is very high, but their own assessment of their preparedness is very low,” Atkins added.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee agreed that teaching civics was important. But Bonamici again pushed back on the legislators’ focus on curriculum, saying that Congress should instead prioritize what they do have oversight on—like funding professional development.
“We have professional development. Let’s fund Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” she said.
In Trump’s first term, he repeatedly proposed eliminating the $2.2 billion Title II program, which helps districts and states pay for efforts to recruit, prepare, and support teachers, although those proposals never came to fruition.
School choice gets a nod as a way to help parents enroll their children in ‘a great school today’
State programs that allow parents to use public funds to pay private school tuition have proliferated and expanded in recent years in Republican states, even though voters opposed private school choice measures on three state ballots in November’s election. Despite the rejection, the Trump administration has shown an interest in pushing it at the federal level.
The topic briefly came up during Wednesday’s hearing, with Rowe, from the American Enterprise Institute, saying that the larger conversation at the hearing about curriculum “has to be intertwined with the importance of school choice.”
“If you’re a 22-year-old mom who has a 5-year-old kid, and you want the best for your child, you don’t have time to waste to wait for all these magical improvements to occur,” he said. “You want the ability to send your kid to a great school today.”
