SERC is a quasi-public agency established under statute to serve the CT State Board of Education in supporting "educational equity and excellence”.
It does this by providing professional development, research and best practices to educators, service providers, and families throughout Connecticut, as well as through embedded technical assistance and training within schools, programs, and districts.
Formerly known as the "Special Education Resource Center", SERC became the "State Education Resource Center" according to a change in state statutes. The current name reflects the broad range of services and programs it provides not just for special education but also general education.
The Marxist concept “equity" is spelled in all capital letters since the current vision of SERC is to address "institutionalized racism and other issues of social justice in schools and districts, and both models and facilitates equity in education.”
That’s a bit of a shift from its humble beginnings as a Special Education Resource Center.
According to the website, SERC’s distinction is rooted in the legislative mandate to support the State Board of Education in "the provision of programs and activities that promote equity and excellence” according to C.G.S. §10-357b(a). As such, SERC calls itself "the living embodiment of a racially conscious organization” because it "challenges bias, raises hard questions rooted in core values about student ability, and interrupts thinking and interactions that perpetuate inequities for Connecticut’s children.”
"We believe we cannot begin to close Connecticut’s achievement gaps unless we begin to address the institutionalized, racist practices that work, intentionally or unintentionally, to perpetuate them,” wrote Marianne Kirner, Ph.D., an Executive Director for SERC in 2011.
The 2017 guide says that "educators steeped in culturally relevant practices recognize that “race” is not synonymous with “minority.” They know that White is a race and that “whiteness” brings with it inherent privilege, which is distributed differently by race."
SERC further "discusses why we believe a focus on the intersectionality of race and education is important”… of course, intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw who is widely credited as one of the architects of critical race theory. Crenshaw and other Marxists who embrace CRT believe that the intersectionality aspect of CRT features two key elements.
First, CRT activists believe an intersectional approach is needed to better understand the nature of social inequities and the processes that create and sustain them. This is the “equity lens” through which the world must be viewed to uncover racism and hidden biases, which are assumed to be systemic, hence the term “systemic racism".
Second, which connects to CRT’s earliest roots as a legal construct, intersectionality has a core activist component, in that an intersectional approach aims to generate coalitions between different groups with the intent of resisting and changing the status quo.
It turns out that SERC has hosted a number of events on “systemic racism" over the years, and even has plans for yet another conference in 2025 on the same topic, Dismantling Systemic Racism.
SERC has been doing the work to "dismantle systemic racism" for at least 13 years by now, but somehow the work is never finished.
We learned that CRT: 1. strives to advance a social justice framework; 2. explains how race and racism are organized and operate; 3. aims to redress social inequalities; 4. is typically interdisciplinary and embraces multifaceted disciplines and/or research methods; 5. tends to be organized around core questions that reach into several disciplines; 6. draws upon paradigms of intersectionality; and 7. recognizes that race and racism work with and through gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality as systems of power.
Indeed, the references featured in the footnotes on SERC's 2017 guide draw heavily from CRT books, like Critical Race Theory An Introduction. One of the authors, Richard Delgado, is celebrated as one of the inventors of CRT.
Screenshot, NYU Press
SERC's equity vision extends to Marxist-inspired gender ideology and the protection, for instance, of biological boys playing in girls' sports and biological boys entering girls' private spaces. SERC even states that students have a "right" to be called by preferred pronouns, though free speech advocates strongly disagree.
It should be noted that just yesterday, all nine justices on the Supreme Court expressed unanimous disapproval of Biden's Title IX plans to redefine sex to include gender identity, to allow transgender students to enter spaces designated for members of the opposite sex, and to create an overly broad definition of “hostile environment harassment.” At least nine Connecticut public and private schools are impacted by the decision.
SERC, which was under fire last month by auditors for "not maximizing revenue" and for "underreporting expenses," currently serves 200 districts, agencies and organizations in Connecticut, and boasts it has trained more than 6,000 educators in "equity" aka "critical race theory".
In fact, the bulk of SERC's work (43%) is focused racial equity and social justice, according to the most recent annual report.
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