SPLC pushed its way into K-12 schools and is more of a threat than you realize

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Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, excoriated the Southern Poverty Law Center during a Wednesday hearing focused on the left-wing group's alleged funding of White supremacist organizations, while the lawmaker also targeted Democrats' racial rhetoric.

The recent indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) by the Department of Justice (DOJ) has spurred a flurry of interest over the last couple of weeks, including a House Judiciary Committee hearing focused on examining the "role that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has played in distorting civil rights policy in recent years."
While it is unlikely the hearing will yield anything new, it will bring much-needed exposure to the malicious organization that has engaged in left-wing lawfare for years and corrupted our K-12 schools.
For well over a decade, the SPLC has leveraged its status as a civil rights organization to convince school districts to use its Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) standards, resources and lessons in the name of "social justice." In fact, following the racial justice protests of 2020, prominent leftwing organizations, including the SPLC, seized on the opportunity to steamroll a far-left political agenda in K-12 education.
The nonprofit’s programming has been sold to highly empathetic educators as vital to reducing "bias" and "hate," fixing the achievement gap and addressing mental health issues. The ideas being peddled by the SPLC — "anti-racism," "White privilege" and "Whiteness" — spread quickly throughout every facet of the K-12 education system via the Colleges of Education, activist teachers and administrators, associations, teachers unions and consultants.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center has widespread influence in education. FILE: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, left, and SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair are shown in a split image as the Justice Department pursues charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images; USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images)

Currently, the SPLC’s influence on K-12 is massive but also difficult to quantify. Even though hundreds of districts use its content in lessons, in curricula, as resources on racial justice webpages, and have adopted the organization’s social justice standards, it is hard to nail down the totality of the organization’s impact.
What also makes its use difficult to gauge is the undocumented use by teachers when they introduce Learning for Justice content as supplemental materials or use it to steer dialogue on controversial topics.
Unfortunately, the influence operation does not end there.
For example, popular Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs such as Second Step, Panorama Education, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence's (YCEI) RULER have integrated the SPLC’s lessons and standards into their curricula and platforms. Tens of thousands of districts across the country have contracts with these entities.
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Additionally, the far-left nonprofit’s programming and content are pushed through professional development, teachers unions, professional organizations such as the American School Counselor Association and the Association of Alaska School Boards, Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) and state Departments of Education.
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In reality, upwards of thousands of districts have knowingly and unknowingly played a role in the proliferation of divisive SPLC content that often shames children based on immutable characteristics like race and ethnicity and promotes a verifiable anti-Western ideology. Despite the claim that these concepts are meant to fight injustice, they actually create hostility, resentment and angst between individuals.
What also makes its use difficult to gauge is the undocumented use by teachers when they introduce Learning for Justice content as supplemental materials or use it to steer dialogue on controversial topics.

Regardless of the legal outcomes that await the SPLC, the DOJ’s indictment of the left-wing nonprofit has brought long overdue attention to the organization. For years, the SPLC has enjoyed unquestioned credibility within the K-12 education system. Hopefully, the indictment, hearing and further exposure will bring into question the SPLC’s authority.
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In the meantime, parents, community members and legislators need to investigate their own school districts for these politically biased content and materials. Moreover, school districts need to purge from lessons, curricula and resources any content that has originated from the organization.
No child should be forced to learn from an organization that fights "bias" and "hate" by advancing their own biased left-wing ideology and labeling concerned parents as members of a hate group.
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Rhyen Staley is the director of Research for Defending Education. He holds a master's degree in elementary education and has over a decade of classroom experience in both public and private schools. He has over 25 years of coaching experience from junior high to Division I.