“As controversy swirls around the debate over the Edina public schools that Center of the American Experiment has launched, some charge the Center with exaggerating the political indoctrination going on in the district’s schools. They also say we fail to draw a connection between Edina district leaders’ embrace of an agenda based on racial identity politics and the district’s declining academic performance.
Those who read Edina English teacher Jackie Roehl’s account of the hidden agenda of the high school’s notorious “Pre-AP English 10” course—written in an unguarded moment—can judge for themselves. The account is linked here.
“Welcome to Pre-AP English 10, an innovative, challenging, and engaging course that we expect will prepare you for success at Edina High School and beyond.”
With this fanfare, Edina High School (EHS) announced the launch—in the 2012-13 school year—of a new required course for all tenth-grade students.
Why a new approach to teaching English literature? In a course description provided to students and parents, EHS listed several reasons. They included the following: “To ensure that all students get the high-quality curriculum and instruction they need to be successful;” to expand access to Advanced Placement courses; and to “provid[e] a common experience” for sophomores that “will facilitate a smoother transition from middle school to high school.”
But a far more candid—and startlingly different—version of the course’s genesis and purpose was written around the same time by one of its principal designers: EHS English teacher Jackie Roehl.
Roehl’s account reveals that Pre-AP English 10 is, and was intended to be, a year-long exercise in indoctrination in racial identity politics and “critical race theory.” The course teaches an extremist view of race that emphatically rejects the American ideal of color-blindness put forward by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Instead, it promotes an obsession with “white privilege” and an effort to blame any academic challenge that minority students may have on institutional racial bias at Edina High School.
The Edina High School “happy talk” document that introduced the course to students and parents concealed this ideological agenda. In fact, the way EHS has conducted the course is a textbook example of political propaganda. Propagandists attempt to manipulate people to achieve their ends by disguising their real agenda.
Here’s another troubling allegation about Pre-AP English 10: A new analysis of the grade-level reading difficulty of the books listed on the web sites of teachers who teach the course finds that the books used have an average measure of reading difficulty (or lexile range) at approximately the fifth-grade level.
This analysis was performed by a group of Edina residents who consulted an independent source to determine the reading level of the books, and then averaged the lexiles of core and “choice” books in a way that reflected their potential use in the course. (Given the seriousness of the charge, we are working to independently verify the data.)
When EHS announced the new Pre-AP English 10 course in 2012, it claimed that student assignments would be “carefully chosen” for “their rigor,” since “we’re aiming for the top.” In fact, the texts used in the course do not prepare tenth-grade students for future academic challenges, either in high school or college, if the new analysis is accurate. This would suggest a direct link between the race-based focus of Edina schools and the district’s lagging academic performance.
Pre-AP English 10 constitutes an abuse of parents’ trust, taxpayers’ money and –most importantly—vulnerable children. Edina citizens should hold EPS district leaders accountable for the way that EHS is substituting political indoctrination for solid instruction.
The real agenda of Pre-AP English 10
Roehl’s account of the genesis and mission of Pre-AP English 10—entitled “Voices from the inside: Jackie Roehl”—appeared in a 2013 book entitled More Courageous Conversations about Race. [Read Roehl’s essay here.] The book’s author was Glenn E. Singleton, president and CEO of Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a California-based “diversity” consulting group that trained Edina teachers and staff on racial issues for several years starting in 2009.
Roehl’s account was aimed, not at Edina students and parents, but at teachers and others around the nation who share PEG’s ideology.
In her essay, Roehl echoes PEG’s doctrine that schools like Edina High School are deeply racist institutions. A campaign to rid such schools of institutional racism, she writes, requires both “a major shift in teaching approaches and active social justice work.” Consequently, teachers must become social activists dedicated to changing their schools from the ground up, so they can abolish what Roehl calls the “systems of racism” that prevent minority students from reaching their academic potential.
According to Roehl, Pre-AP English 10 was designed to serve as a cornerstone of the campaign to launch such a transformation at Edina High School. The primary purpose of the course was not to teach students about great literature, elevate their writing skills, improve their grammar or enhance their understanding of the English language’s complexities. It was to enlist kids in a campaign to eradicate “White privilege” at Edina High.
What PEG teaches
Roehl’s essay begins with an account of her own conversion, so to speak, to PEG’s race-based ideology. Before her racial awakening in 2004, she writes, she had focused her teaching on “whole-class discussions about literature,” which she viewed as “Socratic.” However, after learning about “culturally relevant teaching” from another diversity organization, she realized that in her customary method of instruction, “my White students” were just “reflecting my White culture back to me.”
Roehl’s approach to teaching changed materially when PEG became involved with the Edina schools in 2009, she writes. PEG’s emphasis on “courageous conversations” about race—and “specifically, a study of critical race theory helped me reach the place I am today—a teacher who not only incorporates culturally relevant strategies but also understands the importance of critically examining the systems of racism that prevent some students from achieving to their highest potential in school.”
Critical race theory is an extremist ideology that rejects America’s colorblind ideal—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, conviction that people should be judged by the content of their character. Instead, it holds that only an unrelenting focus on skin color can change America’s pervasively racist institutions.
The theory’s fundamental premise is that white people enjoy unearned “privilege” from birth. However, they are usually unaware of their illegitimate privilege, which is to blame for all the problems that minority groups face.
PEG maintains that white people must be made conscious of their privilege so the sweeping transformations required to “interrupt” a “system of White dominance” can take place. PEG instructs teachers that they have a “moral and ethical” obligation—in Roehl’s words–to close the racial achievement gap. In PEG’s view, that means teachers must use their influence over students to raise their racial consciousness and work to end institutional racism.
The logical implication of PEG’s ideology is that teachers’ most important job is notto convey subject matter knowledge to students. It is to become social activists who change their schools from the ground up, abolishing the “systemic issues” that PEG claims perpetuate racism.
In addition, teachers must act as therapists, ministering to students who are viewed as patients afflicted with “race, racism and Whiteness.”
Roehl’s account of how Edina teachers worked to transform EHS and its racist students
PEG’s “courageous conversations” about race and their influence on teachers’ classroom observations “were the missing piece for the school [EHS] to really begin systemic transformation” of its racist practices, according to Roehl. “PEG’s Beyond Diversity Workshops, equity team seminars, and CARE trainings,” she wrote, “gave my colleagues and me a framework to examine the individual and systemic practices at Edina High School that limit [minority] student achievement.”
Enraptured by PEG’s ideology, Roehl and her colleagues “wanted to impact the entire [EHS] staff.” Consequently, “[f]or the last 2 years, the CARE team used staff development time and even former faculty meeting time to present to the full staff the philosophies and strategies learned from PEG….”
According to Roehl, “We placed an equity lens over all staff development discussions—from literacy to homework to assessment.” (“Equity” in this context, doesn’t have its common-sense meaning of equal treatment for all, but signals an obsession with “white privilege” and racial identity politics.)
Roehl continues:
We even used specific readings and films from PEG seminars with our staff. For example, one 3-hour session on critical race theory and the film The House We Live In impacted many staff members, especially examining Whiteness as property, and pushed them to understand the importance of equity work at Edina High School. (emphasis added)
Pre-AP English 10 as the primary vehicle of PEG’s ideology
EHS’s new Pre-AP English 10 course, launched in the 2012-13 school year, grew out of this systematic effort to eradicate racism at the high school by Roehl and her colleagues. The course was designed to serve as a primary weapon in the assault on racist practices at EHS. As a central tool in re-educating kids, it helped to lay the foundation for what was intended to be a comprehensive high school curriculum rooted in racial identity politics…….” and there’s more below:
MN Prager Discussion Group 