SPLC pushed its way into K-12 schools and is more of a threat than you realize

The recent indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) by the Department of Justice (DOJ) has spurred a flurry of interest over the last couple of weeks, including a House Judiciary Committee hearing focused on examining the “role that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has played in distorting civil rights policy in recent years.”  

While it is unlikely the hearing will yield anything new, it will bring much-needed exposure to the in left-wing lawfare for years and corrupted our K-12 schools.  

For well over a decade, the SPLC has leveraged its status as a civil rights organization to convince school districts to use its Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) standards, resources and lessons in the name of “social justice.” In fact, following the racial justice protests of 2020, prominent leftwing organizations, including the SPLC, seized on the opportunity to steamroll a far-left political agenda in K-12 education. 

The nonprofits programming has been sold to highly empathetic educators as vital to reducing “bias” and “hate,” fixing the and addressing mental health issues. The ideas being peddled by the SPLC — “anti-racism,” “White privilege” and “Whiteness” — spread quickly throughout every facet of the K-12 education system via the Colleges of Education, activist teachers and administrators, associations, teachers unions and consultants. 

Currently, the SPLCs influence on K-12 is massive but also difficult to quantify. Even though hundreds of districts use its content in lessons, in curricula, as resources on racial justice webpages, and have adopted the organizations social justice standards, it is hard to nail down the totality of the organizations impact.  

What also makes its use difficult to gauge is the undocumented use by teachers when they introduce Learning for Justice content as supplemental materials or use it to steer dialogue on controversial topics. 

Unfortunately, the influence operation does not end there.

For example, popular Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs such as Second Step, Panorama Education, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s (YCEI) RULER have integrated the SPLCs lessons and standards into their curricula and platforms. Tens of thousands of districts across the country have contracts with these entities.

Additionally, the far-left nonprofits programming and content are pushed through professional development, teachers unions, professional organizations such as the American School Counselor Association and the Association of Alaska School Boards,  (PTAs) and state Departments of Education. 

 

In reality, upwards of thousands of districts have knowingly and unknowingly played a role in the proliferation of divisive SPLC content that often shames children based on immutable characteristics like race and ethnicity and promotes a verifiable anti-Western ideology. Despite the claim that these concepts are meant to fight injustice, they actually create hostility, resentment and angst between individuals.  

Regardless of the legal outcomes that await the SPLC, the DOJs indictment of the left-wing nonprofit has brought long overdue attention to the organization. For years, the SPLC has enjoyed unquestioned credibility within the K-12 education system. Hopefully, the  will bring into question the SPLCs authority.

In the meantime, parents, community members and legislators need to investigate their own school districts for these politically biased content and materials. Moreover, school districts need to purge from lessons, curricula and resources any content that has originated from the or