House Republicans have proposed legislation to require K–12 schools that receive federal funding to post their curricula online for the sake of transparency for parents.
The bill would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to ensure that local education agencies “post the curriculum . . . on a publicly accessible website of the agency.” The legislation is dubbed the “Curriculum Review of Teachings Transparency Act.”
Republican congressman Scott Fitzgerald (Wis.) introduced the bill.
“Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in the classroom,” Fitzgerald said in a statement obtained by WisPolitics. “It’s clear bureaucrats and teachers’ unions have no reservations about putting divisive material such as critical race theory in front of our children that seeks to put people in groups based on skin color or gender. The CRT Transparency Act will solve this problem by helping parents get a straight answer about what their children are hearing in school.”
Online documentation of classroom instruction materials would help keep parents informed about what their children are learning. With the legislation, parents could likely uncover whether critical race theory or gender ideology are being taught in the classroom.
Example materials that often fall under “curricula” are textbooks and reading assignments, teacher lesson plans, and teacher handouts. In school districts across the country, parents have sounded the alarm about the availability of sexually inappropriate, graphic books in school libraries.
Many state legislatures have introduced or passed bills requiring various levels of curriculum transparency and regulation, some of which have outright prohibited the teaching of critical race theory in K–12. As one of her first orders upon assuming office this week, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders banned critical race theory in public-school classrooms.
Fitzgerald’s bill was co-sponsored by Republican representative Virginia Foxx (N.C.).
“Parents should have a say in what their children learn in school — and I believe the more parents learn what CRT really is, the more they will resist it. That’s why there needs to be open communication between schools and parents,” Foxx said in a statement obtained by WisPolitics.
“This legislation will ensure such communication takes place. Too often, the education bureaucracy pits parents and educators against one another — this is not how our education system was intended to work. The CRT Transparency Act will give parents the curriculum transparency they need, ensuring school administrators can no longer hide behind vague and opaque language,” she added.