The critical race theory fight is leading to educator 'brain drain'

Teachers in classroom.
(Image credit: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

A growing number of educators across the country are being fired or resigning as hostility toward critical race theory and its role in the classroom mounts, NBC News reports.

Even as administrators in embattled districts insist they don't teach critical race theory (an academic framework intended for graduate students), some parents of young students and conservative activists have continued to use the phrase as a label for a "range of diversity and equity initiatives that they consider too progressive," NBC News writes. Frustrated teachers, unable to address "divisive concepts" with students, are then forced out, leading to "what educators and experts describe as a brain drain of those who are most committed to fighting racism in schools."

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In Jacksonville, Florida, for example, a white English teacher was fired for displaying a Black Lives Matter banner in her highschool classroom. A social studies teacher at a Tennessee high school is "facing termination" after assigning an essay on former President Donald Trump by Ta-Nehisi Coates and "showing a video of a poetry reading about white privilege." And in Eureka, Missouri, Brittany Hogan, one district's only Black administrator, chose to resign from her role as diversity coordinator after receiving threats so severe she needed private security to patrol her house.

"One of the biggest joys I have is being an educator," said Hogan. "But the job didn't seem worth my emotional and physical safety." Read more at NBC News.

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.