A legislative commission is upholding new “culturally responsible” teaching standards.
The new standards pushed by the State Board of Education aims to better prepare teachers for a diverse classroom and to look at how their own biases may affect their instruction. The board’s Legislative Affairs Director Amanda Elliott says research shows that when students feel included and understood, they are more likely to succeed.
“The standards are what excellent and experienced teachers in Illinois already do but had to learn on their own or through trial and error over the years. Our goal in imposing the standards are to make sure all educators are ready to teach diverse students on day one in the classroom.”
But Representative Steve Reick of Woodstock questioned the changes.
“I do believe that what you are doing is you are taking teachers who may object to some of the things in this rule and thus are saying that they’re inability or unwillingness to abide by this is in effect making them incompetent.”
The new standards won’t go into effect until 2025.
