( Jacob Bliss –Breitbart & Fern Sidman-TJV NEWS)
Critical race theory (CRT) is banned from being taught in schools across Arkansas after newly sworn-in Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order on her first official day in office Tuesday.
“Schools must educate, not indoctrinate students; and their education policies must protect children and prepare them to enter the workforce… Teachers and school administrators should teach students how to think—not what to think,” the executive order stated.
The order gives the state’s Department of Education the power to prevent indoctrination and critical race theory from being taught to Arkansas students. It also prohibits employees and students from being forced to attend training and orientations on critical race theory. It will also empower parents to make decisions for their children and “foster curriculum transparency in classrooms across the state.”
Sanders’ order describes critical race theory as “antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness. It emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject.”
The order also directs the Secretary of the Department of Education to “review the rules, regulations, policies, materials, and communications” of the department to “identify any items that may, purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies” such as critical race theory.
Sanders, the former White House press secretary under President Donald Trump, was sworn in on Tuesday as Arkansas’ 47th governor.
As governor, one of her top priorities would be education reform legislation. She wants to focus on improving literacy, pay raises for teachers, school safety measures, and some form of using public money to pay for private schooling or homeschooling.
First Female Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Boosts Pre-K Literacy & School Security
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is beginning her tenure by empowering parents and promoting “smart” incentives for high-performing teachers in a new effort to boost pre-K literacy and security of schools in the state, according to a Fox News report.
Sanders, who has three children, signed a new executive order called “Arkansas Learns,” on Wednesday at an event with Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva, who previously served under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Fox News reported that Oliva served in Florida as senior chancellor for the Florida Department of Education and is a former teacher.
The executive order is aimed at ensuring students are on track to “read at or above grade level” after finishing third grade, the Fox report indicated. The action comes as the COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on the learning of kids across the U.S. was revealed through national test scores released at the end of last year that showed sharp declines in math and reading.
Sanders, whose father Mike Huckabee also held the position of governor of the state, said the order will put more decision-making power into the hands of parents by expanding access to charter schools and enforcing a review into whether schools are being “transparent with curriculum” taught to children across the state, Fox News reported.
Because school shootings and generalized violence is prevalent in the nation’s schools, Governor Sanders wants to get ahead of the curve by having the state she represents bolster physical safety measures in the classroom, Fox News reported. That would translate into expanding high-speed internet and access to workforce apprenticeships and put good teachers on a path to receiving “smart” incentives, including higher pay, according to the report.
Sanders signed seven executive orders Tuesday on the day of her inauguration as the first female governor of Arkansas.
One of those orders, titled “Executive Order to Protect State Information and Communications Technology from the Influence of the Government of Foreign Adversaries,” will ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from all state government devices, Fox News reported.
President Biden approved a limited TikTok ban last week when he signed the 4,126-page spending bill into law, as was reported by NBC News. The ban prohibits the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes, the NBC report indicated.
Given the increasing scrutiny of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, it could be just the beginning of challenges to come for the app. NBC News reported.
On December 14th, it was reported that Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, along with Reps Mike Gallagher (R-WI) & Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. The Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act) would protect Americans by blocking and prohibiting all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern.
Senator Rubio said: “The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok. This isn’t about creative videos — this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day. We know it’s used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China. There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”
Another order justified the ban of the word “Latinx” in government documents and name titles by citing a Pew Research poll that found that only 3% of American Latinos and Hispanics used the term to describe themselves, Fox News reported.
