(The Center Square) – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used federal pandemic relief funds to create virtual courses for teachers about anti-racism and social justice, which encouraged teachers to engage with sources espousing critical race theory.
The CARES Act in 2020 included funds for governors to award to education-related entities via the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund. Whitmer and state officials allotted $1.4 million to Michigan State University College of Education, the University of Michigan’s School of Education and Michigan Virtual to create professional learning modules for K-12 teachers.
According to an email from MSU’s Office of K-12 Outreach sent out Monday, educators are able to take a “newly relaunched” course developed in partnership with MSU’s educator school for free.
Republican lawmakers have previously introduced legislation to the Michigan Legislature that would ban the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms. Other states have passed laws that prohibit its teaching.
The way the program was funded has come under scrutiny from federal oversight agencies. The Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released in September that the state could not support the process it used to select Michigan Virtual, MSU and UM to develop the modules.
“The purpose of the program was to train teachers on how to implement the teacher professional learning standards developed by the Governor’s Education Advisory Council,” said a report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, which investigated how federal money was spent by the state.
The Governor’s Education Advisory Council was created by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer via executive order in 2019, and she handpicked all 15 members of the public who serve on it. She signed off on granting the money to Michigan Virtual, MSU and UM to develop the teacher professional learning programs and other entities, according to the federal watchdog report.
The courses include “Anti-Racism and Social Justice Teaching and Leadership” and “Anti-Racist Trauma-Informed Practice in PreK-12 Education,” “Social-Emotional Learning: Equity Elaborations,” “Social-Emotional Learning: Assessment Mechanisms” and 11 others.
The “Anti-Racism and Social Justice Teaching and Leadership” module developed with MSU staff aims to teach educators about how to see racism and privilege and how they play out in school and society, analyze theoretical frameworks for anti-racist and social justice teaching, recognize system oppression and apply strategies to dismantle it and examine how to connect with staff and communities.
The material in that course asked teachers about how they could respond to a classroom situation in the most anti-racist way possible.
That course linked to materials including a video of Bettina Love explaining “spirit murdering” and its explicit origin in critical race theory.
“I really wanted to put language, and take it out of critical race theory, and put it in education to say this is what’s happening to our schools,” Love said in the video educators were told to view as part of the course and apply what they learn to their own schools.
Another resource cited this key principle of critical judgement: “I will take responsibility for what I don’t directly control – structural racism, systemic oppression, and all forms of bias – and attempt to influence transformative change within seemingly entrenched systems.”
The second module developed in conjunction with UM seeks to heighten educators “awareness of trauma and oppression” and support them in “individually and collectively imagining ways to disrupt sources of oppression and harm in order to transform classrooms and schools, to facilitate the learning and well-being of students in a holistic way.”
One of the required readings in that course was an article by healing justice trainer Candice Valenzuela, which argued educators need to look at unresolved historical trauma.
“Trauma-informed training cannot be facilitated by anyone who has not faced the generational, historical trauma of racism, White supremacy, heteropatriarchy, ableism and capitalism within their own bodies, communities and practices,” Valenzuela writes. “We must not only hyper focus on the trauma of youth of color, but also ‘research up’ into the traumatic implications of White dominant society’s historical narcissism, historical amnesia and colonialist perpetration of violence.”
Other resources included in both modules offered less contentious views of how educators and administrators can evaluate their practices to help students who have suffered traumatic experiences or approach marginalized communities with empathy while continuing conversations about race and racism.
For example, in the anti-racism module’s scenarios, respondents were encouraged to find ways to handle a racist incident in a classroom or talk to a student who was wearing a confederate flag T-shirt with the goal of helping students understand that racism is not acceptable and that their actions affect those around them.
Regardless, the federal education watchdog was critical of how the state had allotted federal money to the entities that developed the modules.
“Congress intended the GEER grant to be an emergency appropriation to address coronavirus-related disruptions and support a state’s ability to continue to provide educational services to students and to support the ongoing functionality of [local educational agencies and institutions of higher education],” the OIG report said.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made the decision to award funds to the four entities without using “selection criteria” or include the “names of all the entities that were evaluated and did not document the evaluation of the 14 external requests” as is required.
The state never made information about the other entities who applied for the grants available to the agency, according to the report.
“Michigan did not maintain sufficient documentation related to its decisions to award funds to any of the education-related entities selected and not to award funds to other entities that submitted requests for GEER grant funds,” the report found.
In 2021, The Center Square reported that federal taxpayers paid millions for a critical race theory program for future educators, called RISE, which was awarded funds in 2016.
That program gave teaching students a $5,000 stipend and encouraged participants to use critical race theory as a way to to evaluate teacher quality, according to The Center Square.
The Democrat Party’s fantasy that it’s the Republicans who are obsessed with race, maybe they should be reminded of who’s pushing Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project, rubbing salt into racial wounds daily, and promoting the fiction that the greatest threat to the republic is “white supremacy.”
These Dishonorable socialist woke Democrat Party’s phony anti-racist crusades have little or nothing to do with protecting the civil rights or sensitivities of people of color or anybody else. But everything to do with the woke Democrats setting themselves up as their saviors. Their practice of patronizing groups cannot yield to the facts that the Democrat Party has a long history of racial discrimination and racist objectives. The Democrat Party’s is not defending the oppressed or the offended but it is about making themselves look like their defenders with their latest destructive political racist Con and deceptions.
HOW the hell is this not FRAUDULENT USE of govt funds?!
These stories keep surfacing about localities using COVID relief money for furthering the Leftist agenda rather than what it was originally intended for. In cases like this, funding should be pulled from something else since they misused the money.
IF i was given a ‘govt grant’ for say home refurbishing, And spent it instead on say strippers and drugs, I WOULD BE CHARGED WITH FRAUD at the least.. SO WHY CAN’T these govt pukes be charged too?!
Liberalism, regardless of how it manifests itself, is ultimately Satanic in origin. And until conservatives realize that and act accordingly, we will always be fighting with one hand tied behind our back. In other words liberals need to be treated like mad dogs. When you see a mad dog, you don’t try to pet him on the head and say, “Nice puppy! I’m sorry you’re so mistreated and misunderstood. Let me give you a nice doggy biscuit and everything will be all right.” What you do is shoot the thing and put him out of his misery before he infects you with his disease. IMO the same approach needs to be applied to liberals regardless of who they are or what they’re doing.
As soon as they cite “Capitalism” as a problem, we know they’re neo-Marxists, because that’s the term Marx invented to straw-man the free marketplace and private property.
we are living in the twilight of america because the left and there demons have destroyed the morality and promoted plain out sin.
these people are lunatics from hell and we do nothing to stop it.
This is another case of government budget items being spent for other purposes. The larger the budget, the easier it is to do this.
Michigan Gov. Whitmer is a far left loon who will do anything and spend as much of our tax dollars as possible to ruin that state and make it as bad as Washington and Oregon. She wants to impress the other far left loons that she can be just as reckless with our tax dollars as anyone else can! I for one am sick to death of reading and listening to the news everyday to hear about another far left program to waste our tax dollars while our veterans are homeless, our kids are being taught CRT and gender change, and Biden has found another way to waste another trillion dollars on some off the wall useless program.
WAKE UP AMERICA AND USE YOUR VOICES AND VOTES TO RID OUR GOVERNMENT OF PEOPLE WHO HATE OUR COUNTRY!!!