NC schools chief cut a UNC grant amid flap over its promotion of diversity and equity | Opinion

Republican state lawmakers are preparing to purge diversity programs within the University of North Carolina System, but state Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt is way ahead of them.

Defying a vote by the state Board of Education, Truitt last year canceled a $7.5 million grant renewal with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill amid concerns about diversity training. The institute was training teachers of young children with disabilities to consider a child’s racial and cultural background when assessing them.

Eric Davis, chairman of the State Board of Education, said Truitt acted despite a board vote in January 2022 to approve the grant. “After we approved it, she switched gears. It did not sit well with us,” he told me. Davis said the board passed new rules requiring the superintendent to carry out its directions. “We didn’t see the need to have it in writing. Now we do,” he said.

The website EdNC reported that the state board was split on renewing the grant after board member Amy White said she had heard the training program was tied to critical race theory, an academic concept about systemic racism. Along with White, three other members of the 13-member board – Olivia Oxendine, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and state Treasurer Dale Folwell – voted against the renewal.

Conservative education groups attacked the program’s renewal. Sloan Rachmuth, president of the North Carolina group Education First Alliance, said in a news release that the institute’s training program was “preying on disabled 3-year-old children – getting them to participate in a political movement, and to hate themselves based on skin color in the process.”

Truitt’s spokeswoman, Blair Rhoades, said the ending of the grant was only financial housekeeping. She said Truitt wanted to request new proposals since the arrangement with the Graham Institute was more than nine years old and the work might be done at less cost.

“The superintendent realized this process could be simplified and that services could be provided in a more cost-effective manner,” Rhoades said. The General Assembly later gave Truitt permission to have the training done within the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI). No outside bids were sought.

But a Jan. 25, 2022 letter from Truitt to the Graham Institute’s director indicates that her concern about diversity training contributed to the grant’s cancellation. She wrote: “The participant guide goes on to educate preschool teachers how they can discuss ‘whiteness’ and ‘racial identity’ with their young students.”

Truitt also responded to the institute’s point that it was providing diversity training to teachers – not young children – under a program known as the Early Learning Network (ELN). “While you may not be providing curriculum to teachers and families,” she wrote, “DPI leadership does not agree with some of the strategies the ELN includes in its efforts to teach teachers about equity and cultural responsiveness.”

At least one prominent child education expert disagrees. Kenneth Dodge, a Duke University professor of psychology and neuroscience and the founder of Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy, said teaching teachers of students with disabilities to account for racial and cultural differences “is highly relevant.”

Dodge, a former board member at the Graham Institute, said, “The more we can train teachers to observe behavior and not rely on their preconceived notions and biases the better we’re going to be.”

Rhoades said Truitt did not block the grant renewal in response to pressure from conservative groups or members of the General Assembly. “As a statewide official, Catherine Truitt makes her own decisions and she does so with the people who elected her top of mind,” she said.

Cutting university diversity training will have broader effects than ending one grant. Federal funding and foundation gifts often require that programs be designed with an emphasis on equity and diversity. In addition to demoralizing researchers, actions by politicians in Raleigh to quash diversity policies could limit UNC’s ability to win federal and private grants.

Shutting down diversity policies and programs may appease right-wing critics, but it will diminish the funding and quality of UNC’s academic research and its benefit to the public.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com