Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature and governor signed a legislation last month mandating the position to develop new record programs for K-12 public universities. It requires the upcoming education image to get” the best in America” and “focus on United States history, western society, and education”. The expert coordinating this cultural studies overhaul has a long history of advancing anti-Constitutional prejudices about American history.
The fresh Iowa K-12 cultural studies education, which includes but is not limited to the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the amendments to the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Emancipation Proclamation, is required by House File 2545 of 2024.
Now, Iowa’s social studies requirements include basically everything about U. S. record in grades K to 8, and very little chemical in high school, according to a 2021 assessment by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Additionally, the Iowa Department of Education’s ( IDOE’s ) director is required to review and recommend improvements to the” state standards” requirement for core curriculum, as well as the requirement for high school graduation, and the Iowa Department of Education’s ( IDOE’s ) director to do so.
Under new Director McKenzie Snow, Iowa Senate Education Committee Chairman Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, stated to The Federalist that his company’s goals are to refocus its efforts on teaching excellence and not on compliance. Snow, a former Donald Trump education official, was confirmed over Iowa Democrats ‘ objections last June. She supports school choice and has previously worked for Republican governors Chris Sununu and Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and New Hampshire.
History Rewrites” Lead Facilitator” Deep Into DEI
A January 1, 2025 preliminary IDOE report names Stefanie Wager as the department’s” Standards and Practices Administrative Consultant” in its K-12 division. She is described as the “lead facilitator” for the committee rewriting Iowa’s social studies curriculum and testing rules in an appendix. She serves as a” co-facilitator” in charge of the committee that is reorganizing Iowa’s science curriculum.
Stefanie Rosenberg Wager is a former Iowa social studies teacher and, from 2020-2021, president of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), a far-left lobbying group. Wager previously served as a NCSS vice president and board member from 2015 to 2015.
Identity politics are prevalent throughout Wager’s professional work and public advocacy. Her professional affiliations publicly proclaim that the United States ‘ founders and founding documents are inherently bigoted and in need of Marxist reframing, indicating how any curricula she influences will frame these documents to Iowan children.
The preliminary report makes some suggestions for improvement in a section with committee members ‘ “feedback” on what the new curriculum must include:” Ensure the revised social studies standards include a broad knowledge base, including the historical, legal, economic, and cultural contributions of a variety of Americans representing diverse backgrounds. “diverse backgrounds” does not refer to exemplary Americans from all walks of life, but activists and other marginalized people who are primarily known for their race, sex, and deviant sexual acts, according to Wager and the kind of social studies teachers NCSS trains.
Professional History of Far-Left Activism
As NCSS president, Wager listed elevating “issues of racial justice, equity, and inclusion” as one of her three top priorities in 2021. She praised her contribution to the establishment of” a standing committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Social Studies” to “promote equitable and inclusive practices in the social studies.”
” ]W] e must get back to a place ( or perhaps we were never there ) in which we see criticism as central to patriotism”, she wrote. A place where we can see how much we love our nation and how much we criticize it. This notion is essential to the development of high-quality social studies programs and serves as a key tenet in democratic societies.
In that letter, Wager also highlighted that while she was NCSS president, the organization fiercely advocated against state legislation that would prevent public schools from teaching critical race theory. She also praised NCSS’s efforts to support the promotion of The New York Times ‘ 1619 Project through funding and schools. That educational effort aims to spread the myth that the United States is inherently racist, and teaches American schoolchildren to hate their own country and families. Scholars have found it contains numerous other key historical errors.
Wager’s work perpetually concentrates on intersectionalism and identity politics. She gave a talk at an NCSS conference in 2022 titled” Double Displacement: American Indian and Japanese American.”
On her LinkedIn account, Wager posted about a 2022 NCSS conference featuring Ibram X. Kendi, one of the foremost critical race activists. Endi supports the effective erasing of the U.S. Constitution and says anti-white racism is necessary to address anti-black racism. After the university opened an investigation into the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, which Kendall founded because it lost track of tens of millions of dollars, the institution will shut down its operations in June.
Other LinkedIn posts from Wager encourage “antiracist” education “in the classroom”. According to Kendi, “antiracist” means advocating for the development of social hierarchies based on skin color.
Because, Wager claimed, “You’re messaging that people weren’t here thousands of years before Columbus,” he advised NBC News teachers in 2020 to not say Christopher Columbus “discovered” America. It appears Wager can’t consider multiple perspectives to understand that North America was indeed a discovery for Europeans.
At Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition conference in November 2022, Wager joined far-left extremists in speaking. She described other presenters as giving “amazing examples of elementary education and elementary social studies in ELA]English language arts” and called it” an honor to be here.”
Other presenters included New York Times columnist and riot excuse-maker Jamelle Bouie, Harvard University professor Danielle Allen, a DEI task force member at Harvard who serves on the board of the U. S. division of George Soros ‘ Open Society Foundation, Ohio State University professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries, whose far-left X account advocates DEI and calls Republican voters” Nazi’s ]sic ]”,’ and Gloria Ladson-Billings, a critical race theorist who pioneered race-conscious teaching techniques known as” culturally relevant pedagogy”. None of the presenters endorsed the American Founders ‘ views on law, natural rights, justice, or citizenship.
Wager signed a public statement opposing state legislation that required high school graduates to take the U.S. citizenship test in 2018. In his capacity as NCSS’s vice president, Wager signed a public statement. Rather than celebrating even a small step towards greater instruction in American government, the statement complained the citizenship test requires only “rote knowledge” and” a surface level of civic knowledge”.
For those reasons, the board of NCSS did not, however, suggest significantly raising the standards to become U.S. citizens. Instead, they advocated “allowing students to play a role in the decision-making aspect of school governance,”” News Media Literacy Education,”” Social and Emotional Learning,”” Addressing inequitable relationships within schools,” and” Action Civics,” which essentially uses public tax dollars to train students for leftist activism.
Leader of Far-Left Extremist Organization
There are numerous extreme public positions held by NCSS. According to the organization’s” Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,”” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guide the policies, procedures, and educational practices of NCSS.” In 2018, when Wager was NCSS vice president, the organization published a position statement ignoring the history of successful European conquest and settlement of North America that claims” all education in the United States takes place on Indigenous]sic ] lands”.
The statement reads,” [S] ocial studies education has a responsibility to fight colonialism and systemic racism that affect Indigenous Peoples ]sic.” It firmly rejects “assimilation,” supports the celebration of” Indigenous Peoples ‘ Day,” and says teachers and social studies should” Challenge Eurocentrism” in their curriculums. It says these precepts are incorporated into its recommended social studies state curriculum standards.
The NCSS released a position statement on” Contextualizing LGBT+ History within the Social Studies Curriculum” in 2019. In publicly funded social studies classes, the statement calls for the instruction of children in “evidence-based, academic discourse about LGBT++ topics.”
The statement claims, “exclusions and misrepresentations have perpetuated a deficit-based narrative of marginalized cultural groups and have presented a subjective and singular interpretation of the story of America told through the lens of those who created—and continue to benefit from—American cultural institutions: white, financially secure, Christian, heterosexual]cisgender ] males”. Then, according to the document, Audre Lorde, a lesbian author.
40-Person Committees Don’t Produce the” Best in America”
Even absent coordination by a far-left activist, Iowa’s process for revamping its curriculum doesn’t set the state up to achieve the law’s mandate for “best in America” core curriculum. As more Americans would be aware if most schools taught history, executive works are never created by committee. Even the U.S. Constitution, which is regarded as the pinnacle of human achievement, was primarily written by one man, the great James Madison, with some minor contributions from just a few others and some editing.
Iowa would easily achieve the law’s command if, instead of a bureaucratic process employing people shaped by incompetent and evil institutions such as NCSS, it simply selected best-in-country history curriculum outlines such as from the National Association of Scholars or Hillsdale College. Any citizen who is persuaded to consider either is quite obviously superior to the current social studies curriculum that is required in every state in the country.
Iowa must stop using the same types of people and procedures that have failed American children for more than 50 years in order to fulfill House File 2425.
