By Alan Jamison| AMAC Outside Contributor
While Tim Walz has racked up an extremist record on a slew of issues as Governor of Minnesota, his education policy in particular stands out. If he and Kamala Harris can win the White House, Americans could expect Walz to lead the way in advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s radical takeover of the education system.
In May 2023, Walz and the Democrat majorities in the Minnesota legislature passed a $2 billion education bill that effectively amounted to a slush fund for left-wing interest groups and education priorities. The bill most notably contained funding for the Walz policy of putting feminine hygiene products in boys’ bathrooms in grades 4-12.
It also contained $6 million for an initiative requiring schools to implement “ethnic studies” courses starting in the 2027-2028 school year. As education policy expert Stanley Kurtz writes for National Review, while ethnic studies “still sounds to most Americans like innocent heritage boosterism,” it is in reality “race-based neo-Marxism” that “is a kind of anti-civics in which students are taught to reject and replace America’s system of government.”
Among other subjects, Minnesota students will now be forced to learn about “the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and apply lessons from the past that could eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.” It’s Critical Race Theory rebranded.
Moreover, not only has Walz made “ethnic studies” required learning for every public school student, he has mandated that the ideology is infused into every subject, from math to reading and writing. As Kurtz points out, Walz’s approach to ethnic studies is even more radical than the one taken by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who rebuffed the very same left-wing education activist groups that Walz has embraced.
In 2022, Walz even tried unsuccessfully to force his radical ethnic studies mandates on private schools and homeschool families.
Walz has also been a chief propagator of leftist fearmongering about “book bans” – liberal-speak for common-sense, parent-led efforts to remove sexually explicit and age-inappropriate materials from school library shelves. In May of this year, Walz signed into law a bill that “prohibits banning, removing, or otherwise restricting access to an otherwise age-appropriate book or other material from a school library based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” In practice, this gives ideologically minded educators broad legal cover to expose children to graphic content and explicit topics that have no place in schools.
During the pandemic, Walz also proved that his true allegiance lies with national teachers union bosses rather than individual teachers, students, and families by keeping schools closed for an extended period of time. Should he and Harris win the White House, groups like the National Education Association, which has endorsed Harris and Walz, fought for school closures, and has openly embraced CRT, would have a strong ally in the White House.
Even more alarmingly for students and parents, all of Walz’s woke education reforms have coincided with declines in student performance. When Walz took office in 2019, 59 percent of Minnesota students were rated “proficient” in reading, while 55 percent were proficient in math. By 2023, those numbers had fallen to 50 percent and 45.5 percent respectively.
Over that same time period, Minnesota’s chronic absenteeism rate more than doubled, from 14 percent to 30 percent. Largely as a result, Minnesota’s schools are now ranked 17th in the nation. They were ranked 5th when Walz took office.
Despite these alarming statistics, Walz has refused to get back to the basics, instead opting to double and triple down on turning schools into left-wing indoctrination camps.
While Walz’s policies are glaringly out of step with most American parents, they are right in line with the Biden-Harris administration. Earlier this year, the Biden Department of Education finalized its Title IX rewrite which requires any educational institution which receives federal funding to allow males who identify as women to use women’s restroom and locker room facilities. It also compels teachers and students to use “preferred pronouns.”
The Biden Department of Education has also listed the debunked 1619 Project as a recommended resource for teachers and has awarded millions of dollars to left-wing activist groups forcing CRT into classrooms nationwide.
Every vice president has one or more issues that they specifically focus on during their time in office. For Harris, it was (supposedly) the border crisis and the “root causes” of immigration. For Walz, it could well be taking his radical education record national.
With classes starting back up throughout the nation, education policy is once again top of mind for millions of American parents. As those parents weigh their options for which presidential ticket to back this November, Walz’s education extremism speaks volumes.
