[Just The News] Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Education approved a grant application for a summer research program whose "core feature" was introducing student fellows to "critical race theory."The feds approved a five-year extension of the original grant for the Research Institute for Scholars of Equity (RISE) this year, with one notable and unexplained omission: the term "critical race theory."
The change suggests promoters of CRT are shying away from using the term as it becomes more politically charged. This summer, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment to the budget reconciliation bill that would ban federal funding for the teaching of CRT in schools.
The 2016 version says students will use "critical race theory (as well as mixed-methods research techniques) as a means of studying issues such as teacher quality, education policy, and race and social justice in education." The 2021 version simply mentions "mixed-methods research techniques."
A new sentence may be intended to surreptitiously refer to CRT: "During this institute, fellows study the sociocultural contexts of American schooling and learn how to formulate culturally competent research questions."