Minnesota’s public schools have apparently found the secret formula for educational success: less reading, less math and a whole lot more ideological confessionals.
Under Gov. Tim Walz’s watch, teachers seeking a state license are now expected to demonstrate how their “biases, perceptions and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems,” according to Minnesota’s own “Standards of Effective Practice.” They’re also expected to use “tools to mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.” Before teachers can teach Johnny how to multiply fractions, the state wants them to first confess their role in society’s alleged power structure.
Republican state Sen. Mark Koran isn’t buying it. “This requirement effectively amounts to forcing teachers to take a vow of being an oppressor,” Koran told Fox News Digital, calling the mandate “just crazy” and “horribly detrimental.
“He’s tied to the radicals, he’s tied to the teachers’ unions, all the public unions of a really wild, radical agenda,” Koran said of Walz.
The senator says Minnesota quietly overhauled teacher licensing standards “under the guise of racism,” embedding identity politics directly into classroom expectations. Under the revised framework, teachers are expected to incorporate concepts of “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups into curriculum and instruction.
“It’s horribly disgusting,” Koran said. “It is racism. It is instilling the systemic racism that doesn’t exist today.”
The standards go far beyond traditional teaching skills. Minnesota educators are also required to demonstrate understanding of “how prejudice, discrimination, and racism operate at the interpersonal, intergroup and institutional levels.”
Teachers must further acknowledge the “historical foundations of education in Minnesota” that supposedly continue creating “inequitable opportunities” for students based on race, class, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation and immigration status.
And because no modern education bureaucracy is complete without therapeutic jargon, the state also requires teachers to understand the impact of “individual and systemic trauma,” including “micro and macro aggressions,” on student learning.
In other words, Minnesota’s education establishment appears far more concerned with social engineering than actual engineering — or basic literacy.
“They’ve lowered the standards under the guise of equity,” he said. “Today in Minnesota, half of our children can’t read or write or do math at grade level, 50 percent, and they have high school diplomas.” That’s the part education activists rarely put on the glossy brochures.
Minnesota officials continue celebrating rising graduation rates, but critics say those diplomas increasingly resemble participation trophies rather than proof of academic readiness. “Minnesota is bragging about the graduation rates; we hit the highest ever, but fewer people have an education and are set up with a foundation to be successful,” Koran lamented.
The controversy lands as Minnesota faces mounting scrutiny over broader governance failures, including massive fraud scandals involving taxpayer dollars. Conservatives in the state argue the same bureaucracy that can’t protect public money also can’t resist turning schools into ideological training grounds.
Critics also point to race-conscious policies spreading across dozens of Minnesota school districts, including hiring and retention preferences aimed at “teachers of color and American Indian teachers.” Supporters frame the programs as diversity initiatives; opponents see state-sponsored discrimination dressed up in fashionable academic language.
Koran warned that the ideological shift could ultimately push qualified teachers away from public education altogether. “It’s an offensive statement to assume that somebody’s an oppressor based on who’s the disfavored race of the week,” he said. “We just can’t have that.”
At some point, taxpayers may reasonably ask a simple question: Are schools supposed to produce politically enlightened activists — or graduates who can actually read, write and balance a checkbook? Because right now in Walz’s Minnesota, the answer increasingly seems obvious.
