Father, we ask for wisdom for President Trump on how to make the most positive decisions to change America’s school system in America. We ask for schools that would strengthen not only the minds of our children but also their spirit. Strengthen the families across America as they make the best decisions for the education of their children.

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COVID-19 shut down America’s schools, but one group the virus didn’t shut down was American educators. Since the murder in March 2020 of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots, educators have scrambled to produce a new curriculum for public schools with updated material to assist Black students in understanding their history and place in America’s history. The new BLM material, along with The 1619 Project and Howard Zinn’s History of the American People, to name a few, will be readily available via the Internet.

Teachers frequently use supplemental material that they can readily obtain on the Internet. A teacher can, with a click of the button, download a relevant video, worksheet, and teaching outlines on anything from quantum physics to butterflies. The current political unrest and rioting in major cities like Portland, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles, centered around Black issues, have piqued students’ interest in social justice and sent teachers into a multitude of curriculum development clusters to quickly produce teaching material to be used in classrooms this fall. By all indications, the new curricula will create a feeding frenzy as eighty-one percent of teachers who responded to a recent Pew Research Center poll indicated their support BLM.

The issue with supplemental material, most often gleaned from the Internet, is its lack of accountability as it goes through none of the regular channels of a textbook adoption process. Even a worse problem is that many states have diluted vetting for standard textbooks. Teaching from downloaded material can be akin to teaching from Facebook. The content the children receive could bring this country to a more divisive point than they currently are by unleashing further racial unrest at a time when our nation needs unity.

Monitoring the curricula used by individual teachers in individual classrooms could be a next to impossible task. Initially, states selected a textbook adoption committee, and that committee would choose the textbooks used in the school districts in their states. Today, that process has evolved until only 17 states exercise formal authority over curriculum decisions. In these states, textbook adoption committees issue an approved list of textbooks and supplemental material that a teacher may use in a classroom. The adoption committee would eliminate any unsuitable material at the state level. The remaining thirty-three states have no state adoption process and allow individual school districts to decide what textbooks and supplementary material may be used in their classrooms. For these thirty-three states, monitoring supplemental classroom material is a gargantuan task added to an already overworked oversight office.

On September 6, 2020, President Trump said the US Department of Education would investigate whether California schools were using The 1619 Project and possibly defund those schools. Also. Senator Tom Cotton has introduced legislation in the Senate to prevent schools from teaching the curriculum. Fraught with historical inaccuracies, the material should be eliminated at the state level.

The question is: Should the federal government intervene in local curricula issues? Education, not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, falls under the provisions of the Tenth Amendment, which states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Common Core is a prime example of the Federal Government trying to mandate curriculum from the top down. President Obama tried not to make it appear that Common Core was a federal program since he knew the federal government should have no role in a State’s educational system. The Obama administration did offer incentives and funding and regulatory relief for states that adopted Common Core.

President Trump’s attempts, however noble and needed, to prohibit anti-American material in the classroom, would result in a tangle of regulations imposed on schools that are already overburdened with federal reports. It would also make President Trump appear to be overreaching his educational mandate. The federal government can only do so much. They cannot, and should not, go into our classrooms to monitor everything presented to the students. As most teachers have learned, teachers and administrators who wish to use the anti-American material will anyway.

The public school system in America is in a state of entropy. Currently, two-thirds of our students read below grade level. Refusing to adopt policies and changes that educate children with life skills, schools have abandoned the basics. Schools are in desperate need of prayer.  As parents, we desire an education that builds Godly faith in its students and assures a strong America for generations to come, which means we choose the best school for our child. As we link our prayers with the prayers of our ancestors, we pray for the restoration of the rights of the parents to choose the school that will educate their children best.

About the Author: Nancy Huff is an educator with a mission to equip believers to pray strategically for the Cultural Mountain of Education. She has authored Taking the Mountain of Education: A Strategic Prayer Guide to Transform America’s Schools. She leads prayer groups to pray at key educational locations across the US. Currently, Nancy serves as the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network (HAPN) Lead Prayer Coordinator for the Mountain of Education. For additional information go to: https://takingthemountainofeducation.com/author/nancyahuff/ (Photo Credit: Unsplash.)

What do you think- can the federal government control your curriculum?