Minnesota Teachers Fight New Education Standards

Teachers and policy experts are pushing back after the state of Minnesota's education licensing board voted to overhaul their standards and require new teachers to adopt core aspects of critical race theory and gender ideology.

According to the updated "Standards of Effective Practice," promulgated by Minnesota's Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), educators are required to commit to affirming various and "diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, sexual identity, ability," etc. in the classroom to be licensed educators.

The new passages added to existing standards with several multiple passages suggesting teachers need to affirm "students' background and identities" to acquire a teaching license in the state. The rules will go into effect by 2025.

Rebecca Friedrichs, a twenty-eight-year public school teacher and the founder of "For Kids and Country," told Fox News Digital that every single "buzzword" from the far-left political agenda is listed in the new standards.

"We are hired to educate children, not push a political agenda. And we are hired to serve children and their parents and work in connection with them," she said.

The document states that teachers must cultivate "opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities" and mold their students to become "agents of social change to promote equity."

In addition, teachers are told to learn and understand the impacts of "systemic trauma" and how racism and "micro and macro aggressions" contribute to adverse learning outcomes.

"We're being told by a teaching licensing board, and by a union that claims to represent us, and by legislators that claim to represent we the people—that we're forced to do this," Friedrichs said.

She added that teachers in the state are "trapped" and must choose to either lose their jobs or do things against their own conscience or even common sense and science.

Friedrichs also claimed that many of the problems in Minnesota and schools across the country are the fault of teachers' unions. She described a system in which unions and their friends put into office the people the unions choose, not necessarily the people that teachers or citizens want.

In Minnesota, governors can appoint the governing boards that come up with the teachers' licensing standards.

Teachers' unions in the state spend millions on glossy flyers with "cleverly written language" to confuse people to vote against their values and get the governor of their choice into office, according to Friedrichs.

She claimed that the entire board that came up with this Minnesota teacher licensing is politicized, being funded and promoted and lobbied by the very people that put them into office or put into office the people who appointed them, while teachers are ignored.

"This is called bullying. These are mafia tactics. This is being run by a cartel," Friedrichs said.

Catrin Wigfall, a Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, told Fox News Digital that the new rule changes will affect any aspiring teacher in the state, whether they work for public or private schools. It will also impact teachers getting a license through teacher prep providers, those completing an initial T3 license, including adult learners who do not go through traditional additional preparation programs.... (Read more)

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