Roughly $44 billion of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill was sent to states that implemented elements of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their school districts, according to a new report from One Nation America (ONA).
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) authorized the U.S. Department of Education to spend more than $120 billion on the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) to assist school districts in re-opening from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report by ONA, a conservative policy advocacy group, found that several Democratic-run states used the ARP ESSER funding to subsidize programs that taught the tenets of CRT, such as implicit bias training for faculty and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, in school curriculums in 13 states.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist and teaches students to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. It advocates for the pursuit of “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
After Biden signed ARP into law in March 2021, the DOE published a report advising states on how to use their ARP funding. The DOE report implored states to address “fears of xenophobic and racist harassment” and other reasons why “families of color have cited for not returning to in-person learning.”
The DOE report recommended states use Chicago’s “Curriculum Equity Initiative” as a model, and states began teaching students in preschool the “principles of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy,” according to the report. Students will learn to “use their voice to take action” against racism.
The US DOE awarded at least $44 billion in ARP ESSER funds to 13 Democratic-run States, including California, New York and Illinois, that had responded with their plans to implement CRT throughout their curriculums.
The California Department of Education (CDE) received more than $15.1 billion in funding from ARP ESSER, according to Fox News. In California, the state allocated more than $1.5 billion to provide local education agencies with resources to teach faculty and school administrators implicit bias training, according to its ARP ESSER application.
Bombshell report reveals blue states used COVID relief to fund CRT https://t.co/LqBPwQ8XTS via @YouTube Time to recall 44 billion from the education system for the fraud the Democrats committed on the American Tax Payer.
— Mel Practice 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Make Calif Red Again (@MelPactice) May 13, 2022
Additionally, the CDE called for increasing resources toward “anti-bias strategies,” “environmental literacy,” “ethnic studies,” and “LGBTQ+ cultural competency,” according to the plan.
Illinois received more than $5 billion from ARP ESSER funding which the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) emphasized incorporating “anti-racism” into school curriculums, according to its re-opening plan. The IDE insisted on setting aside funds to create a statewide coalition to target “issues pertaining to interrupted learning and support groups that were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic (e.g., homeless, LGBQT, marginalized communities).”
On a more local level, Chicago Public Schools received more than $32 million from ARP ESSER to advance a “comprehensive, culturally responsive universal curriculum.”
Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey are the other states that used ARP ESSER to advance CRT principles in their schools, according to the ONA report.
The U.S. DOE referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to a statement stating that “the Department does not dictate curriculum, nor is it encouraging the use of American Rescue Plan funds to teach any particular curriculum—and any claim to the contrary is patently false.”
The CDE and ISBE did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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