Texas school districts sharing content from indicted Southern Poverty Law Center: report

As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) faces federal indictment on alleged fraud charges, a new investigation reveals its educational arm has quietly influenced K-12 classrooms nationwide. 

According to a May 12 report from parental rights advocate Defending Education, SPLC’s "Learning for Justice" (formerly Teaching Tolerance) materials and "Social Justice Standards" have reached 218 school districts, 30 state government entities, and 42 states, including Texas.

The report describes the Learning for Justice materials as content that “often pushes or reinforces far-left cultural and political ideologies such as left-wing activism, anti-racism, Black Lives Matter, gender ideology and queer theory, white privilege, white supremacy, whiteness, and transgenderism.”

Through its official channels, SPLC “has been able to integrate its far-left content and materials into K-12 schools throughout the country,” with links to the SPLC website and documents found on school district webpages, in teacher professional development and trainings, classroom lessons and other school district resources, according to the report.

Of particular concern, according to Defending Education, is the “Action” domain of SPLC’s Social Justice Standards, which calls on “the youngest of learners to engage in ‘action’ or activism for social justice causes” and specifically urging students to plan and carry out “collective action against bias and injustice in the world.”

Included in the Social Justice Standards document are hypothetical scenarios in which children as young as kindergarten are given various “identity,” “justice” and “diversity” outcomes, along with an “anti-bias scenario” to illustrate such outcomes.

One illustration for students in kindergarten through second grade involves a classroom lesson on “family structure” that “includes gay and lesbian parents” of a young female student, who tells the teacher “she has two moms.” In another “anti-bias” scenario for grades 3-5, a student who “identifies as a transgender girl” gets help from a teacher to share the news with the whole class.

These and other concepts, according to the report, have been implemented across a number of states nationwide, including in New York, which has made “equity revisions” to social and emotional learning (SEL) benchmarks to align with SPLC’s standards, as well as Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, which incorporates SPLC’s Social Justice Standards into its PE curriculum.

Under its “Racial Equity” policy, Piedmont Unified School District in California requires its schools to adopt curriculum based on the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” framework and to “integrate social studies standards curriculum into units of study across all levels and in all content areas.”

Nationally, the report found a document from the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's biggest education union, titled “Legal Guidance on Student’s Rights: Discrimination and Harassment Based on Race, Religion, National Origin, and Immigration Status” with links to Teaching Tolerance materials under the “Resources for Educators” section.

According to the report, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) also utilizes Learning for Justice resources and provides resources for union members to integrate SPLC’s ideology into school curriculum.

And it’s not just blue states: the report found Alvin ISD in the Houston area and Judson ISD just outside San Antonio both offer resources from SPLC, including “10 Tips on Talking to Kids about Race and Racism” and training modules that link “religious bias or anti-[LGBT] persecution” to “systemic racism.”

Under Senate Bill 12, which went into effect in September, public school districts in Texas are prohibited from establishing any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, policies or activities that “reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

It’s not clear whether Alvin ISD and Judson ISD plan on removing the content from their respective websites. The Christian Post reached out to both school districts for comment Thursday.

Renae Rives, CCO for Alvin ISD, said she “could not locate” the content on the Alvin ISD website and asked CP to provide the link to SPLC-related materials listed on the site.

Describing the SPLC as a “left-of-center nonprofit” that claims to fight racism and discrimination, the Defending Education report notes the SPLC named the group — then known as Parents Defending Education — as an “extremist” group in 2022 and identified them on a national index of alleged extremist groups known as the SPLC “Hate Map,” along with Moms For Liberty and other groups.

The report comes less than a month after a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, indicted the SPLC on 11 counts, including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. 

Prosecutors allege the organization funneled over $3 million in donor funds to paid informants infiltrating extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations between 2014 and 2023, while misleading donors and banks.

The SPLC has pleaded not guilty and called the charges politically motivated. Teachers’ unions like the AFT and NEA, meanwhile, have publicly supported the organization following the indictment.