Public school teachers in Minnesota must now demonstrate that they have assessed how their "biases, perceptions and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems", or risk their state license. The requirement sits inside the state's official Standards of Effective Practice, a guidebook maintained by the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board. And one Republican state senator says the mandate amounts to a racial loyalty oath imposed on every educator in the state.
State Sen. Mark Koran told Fox News Digital that teachers now "have to embed in their curriculum, in their pedagogy, the understanding of the 'oppressed' and the 'oppressor' environment and overtly include that in their curricula." Koran, a Republican, did not hold back about the framework Gov. Tim Walz's administration has put in place.
"It's horribly disgusting. It is racism. It is instilling the systemic racism that doesn't exist today."
The standards go well beyond a single line about bias. They classify these requirements as "professional responsibilities", the same category that covers ethics, classroom safety, and basic competence. In other words, Minnesota treats a teacher's willingness to confess participation in "oppressive systems" as equivalent to her duty to keep children safe.
The licensing guidebook spells out a series of obligations that read less like teaching standards and more like the catechism of a graduate-school diversity seminar. Teachers must demonstrate understanding of "how prejudice, discrimination, and racism operate at the interpersonal, intergroup and institutional levels." They must also show familiarity with "the historical foundations of education in Minnesota, including law, policies, and practices, that have and continue to create inequitable opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for learners."
The guidebook singles out specific groups for whom teachers must highlight inequitable opportunities: "Indigenous students and students historically denied access, underserved, or underrepresented on the basis of race, class, disability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, language, socioeconomic status, or country of origin."
Under a separate section on student learning, the standards require teachers to demonstrate understanding of "the diverse impacts of individual and systemic trauma" on learning, including "racism, and micro and macro aggressions." Teachers must then use "culturally responsive strategies and resources to address these impacts."
And the standards do not stop at awareness. They demand teachers acquire "tools to mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems." That language treats the teacher herself as the problem, someone whose default behavior sustains oppression unless she actively disrupts it.
Koran connected the licensing overhaul to a broader decline in academic outcomes. Minnesota recently redid all of its teaching licensing standards, he said, and the results speak for themselves.
"Today in Minnesota, half of our children can't read or write or do math at grade level, 50 percent, and they have high school diplomas."
That claim, half of Minnesota students performing below grade level, is striking when set against the state's own boasts about graduation rates. Koran noted the contradiction directly.
"Minnesota is bragging about the graduation rates; we hit the highest ever, but fewer people have an education and are set up with a foundation to be successful."
The gap between rising graduation numbers and falling proficiency is not unique to Minnesota. But the state's decision to layer race-based ideology on top of already struggling academic performance makes the priorities plain. The licensing board chose to spend its political capital on oppressor-oppressed frameworks rather than on whether kids can multiply fractions.
Koran said the standards were redone "under the guise of equity," a phrase that has become familiar shorthand for policies that lower measurable bars while raising ideological ones. He added: "They've lowered the standards under the guise of equity."
The licensing standards are not the only vehicle for this ideology. Fox News Digital reported that more than fifty Minnesota school districts have adopted Policy 425, though the formal title and adoption timeline of that policy were not detailed. The sheer number of districts signing on suggests the framework has moved well past the pilot stage and into the operational mainstream of Minnesota public education.
Walz has faced increasing national scrutiny on multiple fronts. A separate fraud scandal has dogged his administration, and the governor's handling of that crisis has drawn bipartisan questions about oversight and accountability.
Koran placed the blame squarely on Walz's leadership. He described the governor as someone tied to "the radicals" and "the teachers' unions, all the public unions of a really wild, radical agenda." Education Minnesota, the state's largest teachers' union, was among the organizations Fox News Digital contacted for comment. Neither the union, nor the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, nor Walz's office provided a response noted in the reporting.
That silence is worth noting. When a sitting governor's licensing board publishes standards requiring teachers to confess their role in oppressive systems, and then declines to explain or defend those standards publicly, the silence itself becomes a statement.
Koran argued that responsibility for the direction of Minnesota education starts at the top. He told Fox News Digital flatly: "The governor matters."
"The governor sets the tone, sets the direction, and sets the goals for which we need to work to achieve."
That framing matters because Walz has tried to position himself as a pragmatic Midwestern leader, a champion of small towns and working families. But the licensing standards his administration oversees tell a different story. They tell teachers that their job is not simply to teach reading and math, but to interrogate their own complicity in systemic oppression, and to prove that interrogation to the state before they can stand in front of a classroom.
Koran called the assumption baked into the standards offensive. "It's an offensive statement to assume that somebody's an oppressor based on who's the disfavored race of the week," he said. "We just can't have that."
The senator's concern is not abstract. Teachers who object to the framework face a concrete professional consequence: they cannot get licensed. That makes the standards function less like guidance and more like a political litmus test. Agree that you perpetuate oppression, or find another career.
Walz's administration has already faced questions about whether it prioritizes ideology over competence. His office attempted to claim credit for federal fraud enforcement that his own agencies failed to prevent, and Democratic lawmakers voted in lockstep to block an impeachment investigation even as fraud losses mounted. The teacher licensing standards fit the same pattern: bold ideological commitments paired with weak accountability for actual results.
Koran made clear he views the fight over education standards as central to Minnesota's future. "We've got to get Minnesota back on the right track," he said.
Several questions remain unanswered. When exactly were the licensing standards revised? What specific rule or adoption date governs the quoted language? And what evidence did Koran rely on for his claim that half of Minnesota students perform below grade level? Those details would sharpen the debate, and the fact that they remain murky suggests neither side has fully engaged in the kind of transparent, data-driven argument the public deserves.
What is not murky is the text of the standards themselves. Minnesota has written into its professional licensing framework a requirement that teachers treat themselves as agents of oppression and prove they are working to dismantle it. That is not teacher training. It is ideological conditioning, funded by taxpayers, enforced by the state, and imposed on the very people parents trust to teach their children how to read.
When half the kids can't do math at grade level, maybe the licensing board should worry less about microaggressions and more about multiplication tables.
