Arizona’s top education official launched a hotline this week for state residents to report K-12 class curriculum and lessons that they deem “inappropriate,” the Arizona Department of Education said in a press release.
Championed by state Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne, the “Empower Hotline” allows residents to voice their concerns about classroom materials that “detract from teaching standards,” including lessons that “focus on race or ethnicity rather individuals and merit, promote gender ideology and social emotional learning,” the department said.
Horne, a Republican, unseated the Democratic incumbent last fall, running on a campaign platform of “fighting critical race theory” and stopping the “liberal indoctrination” of schoolchildren, according to his campaign website. He previously served two terms in the position from 2003 to 2011 and as Arizona attorney general from 2011 to 2015.
“I promised to establish this hotline so that anyone could report the teaching of inappropriate lessons that rob students of precious minutes of instruction time in core academic subjects such as reading, math, science, history and the arts. That promise is being kept,” Horne said in the press release.
Horne’s agenda has been criticized for placing unnecessary emphasis on political issues, instead of focusing on other needs such as adding more mental health services for students and trimming class sizes.
Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, told CNN she was “disappointed” that Horne hasn’t worked to “get a grasp of what was going on” in Arizona schools but instead has pushed policies based on what she called “outlandish claims that he had been repeating during the campaign.”
Garcia, who also teaches eighth grade social studies, said she won’t change her curriculum because…
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