For most teachers in the Lodi School District last year, the path to their annual raise took them through a professional development program focused on “equity.”
Every year, Lodi teachers are required to meet Performance/Professional Practice Goals (PPG), which includes professional development training. Last year, they had two options for that training: equity or technology.
Even though they did not have to take the equity track, most of them picked it anyway. Out of 112 staff members, 86 choose equity, 22 picked technology, and 4 didn’t pick either. (None of the 4 who did not participate at all were put on an improvement plan, as required by the district’s PPG policy.)
This is the first example identified by the MacIver Institute of a school district making Critical Race Theory part of the calculation for employee compensation. “Equity” is a common euphemism for Critical Race Theory (CRT). Any doubt of that association was dispelled as soon as the district picked the required reading material.
The equity track was built around the book “So You Want to Talk About Race.” The book was written in 2018 by Ijeoma Oluo.
Oluo says she belongs to a “broad and varied group of Democrats, Socialists, and Independents known as ‘the left.’” Her book is typical Marxist fare. Many of the concepts found in “So you want to talk about race,” were used by activists in 2020 to justify the race riots across the country.