When schools focus on diversity, minority students learn less

It has long been clear that the education establishment’s obsession with identity politics pushes noxious notions into impressionable young minds. It is now also clear, from a new study, that the obsession also thwarts real learning. The identity politics regime in education must end.

The Heritage Foundation reported this month that 48% of school districts with at least 15,000 students have a chief diversity officer and that there was a consistent correlation between this and measurable “learning loss during the pandemic by black and Hispanic students” that significantly outpaced learning loss by the same demographics in districts without such diversity officers.

The districts employing chief diversity officers also were more likely to trammel parental rights because they “were significantly more likely to have policies that keep the ‘gender transitioning’ of students secret from parents.”

There’s a logical cause and effect in these findings. Districts focused on “diversity” are ones that tend to devalue traditional education in favor of pushing a left-wing social agenda in the classroom. There’s only so much time in a day, and it is used up when teachers are “directly talking about identity, diversity, injustice, and activism” or are holding “clarifying conversations about anti-bias issues” with 4-year-olds. It means less time for traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic.

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