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Students also learn to ‘infuse’ DEI into syllabi
Future special education teachers at Kennesaw State University aren’t just being taught how to work with students with disabilities – they are also being trained to look for “inequity,” examine “privilege,” identify “microaggressions” and conduct schoolwide “equity audits.”
A fall 2026 class, titled “Addressing the Academic Needs of All Learners,” focuses on academic and behavioral outcomes for “diverse learners including students with disabilities” and emphasizes how schools can “equitably educate diverse learners.”
In one assignment, students select a college syllabus and use what they have learned to “infuse” it with issues of diversity, proposing changes to the course’s pedagogy, content, activities and required assignments. Another portion of the course introduces students to “power, privilege, and difference” and asks them to examine the “existence of privilege” and complete activities concerning racial “microaggressions.”
The syllabus later moves into race, racism, gender socialization and the “social construction of disability.” Assigned readings include a paper examining the intersections between “whiteness and disability studies” and a work discussing “community cultural wealth” through critical race theory.
The course also requires a “Schoolwide Equity Audit and Reflection Paper” worth 120 points, a quarter of the course’s 480 total points.
The syllabus calls the assignment a “Key Assessment” for special education and says key assessments are tied to professional standards, including standards from the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
Students must demonstrate competency on the assessment to progress through the program, and failure to do so can delay graduation. The syllabus describes equity audits as a way for school leaders to determine the “degree of equity or inequity” in schools and districts.
The class also instructs students to use the course’s framework to conduct their own schoolwide audit. The stated purpose is to help them recognize “significant and persistent patterns of inequity” in their school.
They are specifically told to examine whether students have “fair and just opportunity” to access high-quality programming, teachers, discipline procedures and achievement measures. In other words, equity isn’t simply one topic among many in the course. It is the framework students are explicitly asked to use to evaluate schools.
The College Fix called and emailed Professor Nakia Cotton-Smith to ask for the purpose of the equity audits, how they fit into special education, and if she feared any political pushback from the content. She did not respond to inquiries sent in the past two weeks.
The audits in particular drew criticism from Defending Education.
“Equity audits are merely performative since there is no measurable way to know when equity has been achieved,” Paul Runko told The College Fix via a media statement.
“The result of equity audits is always ‘more equity.’ Additionally, there is no evidence that equity audits do anything to increase student academic performance in K-12 schools,” the senior director of strategic initiatives said.
He said equity audits sometimes use valuable funds that could have been used to just help “struggling student” and are not an “effective” way to help special needs students.
A research fellow at the Heritage Foundation also criticized the course content.
Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, argued that the course reflects a broader problem in teacher preparation.
“No wonder kids get indoctrinated with Marxist ideology in public schools,” Corey DeAngelis told The Fix in a text message. “Their teachers are trained with this ideology baked into their college of education coursework.”
“Colleges of education have turned teacher prep into political training,” he said. “Then those teachers walk into public school classrooms and repeat the same framework with other people’s children.”
DeAngelis said parents want the basics of “reading, math, and high standards.”
That’s why families need school choice, the education expert said.
MORE: U. Nevada seeks library security guard committed to DEI
