Superintendent Matt Joynt has been accused of supporting CRT in his doctoral dissertation.
CONCLUSION:
After discussions with Dr. Joynt and reading the dissertation, it is clear this was a blatant misrepresentation of facts and Dr. Joynt did not support CRT in it.
Further, Dr. Joynt stated there is no CRT in MTSD. Please see other stories from Inform on CRT:
Before going into details, we understand that dissertations are research papers and NOT persuasive reports. In short, if Dr. Joynt had supported anything in the dissertation, he would have gotten an "F".
Quoting Dr. Joynt: "It is important to note the expectation that a literature review be an unbiased display of already existing thought and research around the researcher's topic. It is an objective summary provided by the researcher and not to be subjective in any way."
The Accusations
The following quotes from the dissertation were shared on Facebook in spring 2020 by a community member claiming that in reviewing the quotes, MTSD is very comfortable aligning itself with Marxist pedagogy.
"Some constituents would believe that educational equity will ultimately mean the loss of privilege for some or that equity will come at a cost for their children. Conflicts such as these can influence school board members motivation to support educational equity and social justice-related efforts."
"This aligns with Freire's (1996) proposal that the purpose of public education is to end the oppression of historically marginalized and underprivileged students."
General Response
"Being that the topic of my research included educational equity, there are references to literature in this study by authors that have used critical race theory as a lens to inform their findings. There are also references to literature by authors that did not apply critical race theory to their work."
"As our Board of Education is aware, my work as the superintendent of schools in the Mequon-Thiensville School District to live our mission and align with our vision: each student, every time, empowered to succeed certainly includes efforts to ensure educational equity. Those efforts are in alignment with MTSD Board Policy #2018: Equity in Education."
The title of Dr. Joynt's dissertation is Motivation of School Board Members to Support Equity and Social Justice in Public Education.
In short Dr. Joynt examined school board pressures from different sets of constituents.
We encourage you to read the dissertation to make your own assessment.