Senate Bill calls for Kansas students to pass civics test to graduate, requires instruction on communism
A bill under consideration in the Kansas Legislature calls for students in the state to pass an American civics test in order to graduate and requires “instruction to provide students with an understanding of communist and socialist regimes and ideologies.”
In introducing Senate Bill 381 in a hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Brad Starnes, a Riley Republican and former teacher, coach and school district superintendent, shared statistics sourced from the Cicero Institute, a conservative public policy organization based in Texas. Starnes said that 19% of Americans younger than 45 can pass an American civic literacy test, that 34% of Americans in the 18-29-year-old age group have a “favorable view” of communism and that nearly two-thirds in that age group (62%) share the same view on socialism.
The bill Starnes introduced would have the curriculum requirements in place for “all accredited schools, whether public, private or parochial.”
Regarding the civics-test requirement, Senate Bill 381 notes that students can take the exam any time from seventh grade onward and “may take the examination as often as necessary to obtain a passing score.”
Speaking in support of the bill, specifically the civics-test requirement, Erica Sheets, the chair for the Johnson County Chapter of Moms for Liberty addressed the standard that she thinks should be met.
“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. I think our high school graduates should be at least as knowledgeable and proficient as our naturalized citizens should be,” Sheets said. “This is not a big ask.”
Joshua Reynolds, an education policy analyst with Cicero Action, discussed historical education and what he framed as an overall lack of knowledge on American history and lessons surrounding communism and socialism.
“It is vital that Kansas students receive the comprehensive historical education necessary to understand these ideologies and how they relate to and contrast with the principles of the American Republic,” Reynolds said. “Senate Bill 381 provides critical remedies to these challenges through its strong accountability mechanism for civic instruction requiring the passage of an American civics exam for graduation.”
A non-affiliated proponent of Senate Bill 381 was much more politically pointed with her comments.
“It is a great joy to see such a bill as this. It’s greatly needed because we the people are taking our country back, said Topeka resident Kathy Brown who introduced herself as a an attorney and a nurse.
Without providing evidence beyond characterizing Kansas’ education status from “what see in this [Legislature], Brown said public schools are “dominated by the left.”
“They describe Marxism as ‘Nirvana,’ they teach our Judeo-Christian heritage as evil, Satan worshippers and Islam as diverse,” she said. “They frame the founders as white supremacists. They’re teaching racism though now, but against a new color: whiteness.”
Opponents of the bill asserted that lessons of concern are already widely taught in Kansas and that in addition to the bill being unnecessary, pulled away from local control.
Representing the teacher’s union, Kansas National Education Association, director of government relations Tim Graham delved into the topic of “local control.”
“We’re not suggesting that the legislature lacks the legal authority to weigh in on subject matter taught in schools. As a matter of act, if you go and read the statutes, the statutes have been created to allow the legislature to actually weigh in on subject matter. But this goes way too far,” Graham said. “Just because you have the authority to get into these statutes doesn’t mean it’s prudent. ”...What I found with local control, it’s really easy to cite local control when it’s for you and it’s really easy to ignore it when it doesn’t add up in your argument."