Seattle Public School district officials are again in the national spotlight, and not in a good way. Alarms have been raised across the country about Seattle’s proposed new math curriculum. Reason Magazine has a good piece on it here.

Over the last two years the Seattle School Board, led by president Leslie Harris, has promoted a curriculum developed by a small group of radical academics who are way out of the mainstream. If the school board imposes this curriculum, teachers will be pressured to teach math and other core subjects through the lens of political correctness, so-called social justice, and race and gender, as if number facts are somehow affected by the color of a person’s skin. This “race and gender studies curriculum” has parents worrying, and for good reason.

Here are some of the Learning Targets of Seattle’s new math curriculum:

“Students will be able to identify how math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color….

“Students will be able to identify the inherent inequities of the standardized testing system used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color…

“Students will be able to explain how math has been used to exploit natural resources...

“Students will be able to explain how math dictates economic oppression.”

Here are some of the questions math teachers in Seattle may be forced to ask:

“Where does Power and Oppression show up in our math experiences?” and “How is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist?”

With a top-down initiative like this, it is not surprising that enrollment numbers in Seattle Public Schools are dropping, or that Seattle has one of highest private school attendance rates in the country. This year public school enrollment has declined by 1,600 students, even as Seattle’s population has been growing rapidly. Just 52,800 students will attend one of the 101 schools in Seattle Public Schools, even though the city has more families than ever, with a population now topping 720,000.

Parents may have heard of this divisive gender studies curriculum, and decided to go elsewhere. Ironically, an approach pitched as being “inclusive” is actually excluding many students. Instead of attracting families to Seattle Public Schools, the race and gender studies curriculum is pushing families out. It explains the popular move by families to enroll their children in public charter schools, online schools, homeschools, and private schools, where all children are included and respected, regardless of race, and where math is not considered a tool of oppression.