Milwaukee Public Schools’ website, Why Race Matters, features material from Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations framework. Milwaukee Public Schools is Wisconsin’s largest school district.

In Feb. 2021, Milwaukee Public Schools signed a $158,000 agreement with Singleton’s company, Pacific Education, also called Courageous Conversations. 

Why Race Matters includes podcasts, articles, resources, and teacher training modules addressing topics like “anti-racism” and “teaching while white.” Below are a just a few divisive and race-based resources that the website offers. 

The website features “Personal Reflections/activities,” including a Sample Personal Bias Survey from the Wisconsin RTL Center,” a collaborative project between the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the CESA Statewide Network,” that asks individuals to rate their feelings about people of different ethnicities, sexual orientations, and religions. 

The following section, Activities/Resources on Whiteness, directs teachers to a resource from the Columbus Museum of Art, “Talking to Kids About Racism: Self Reflection and Self Education About Race,” which states that white supremacy is “in the systems that make our daily life.”

A recommend staff activity is Dismantling Racism Web Workbooks which links to a critical race theory-based workbook called “What is Racism” that openly states, “CRT also has an activist dimension” and features the following statements that stereotype people based on having “white” skin. 

 

In addition to teacher resources, the website offers k-12 educational materials, most of which are rooted in the divisive framework of critical race theory.

An elementary school resource is Ibram X Kendi’s book Anti-Racist Baby which begins with the statement, “Babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist, there is no neutrality…”

A high school activity is an “identity chart,” in which students are asked to share their skin color, religion, and first language as a “community building tool.”

Public Schools in Milwaukee School District have an average math proficiency score of 15% and reading proficiency score of 19%. That data can be found here.