“We Don’t Teach Critical Race Theory Here”: A Sentiment Analysis of K-12 School and District Social Media Statements

ABSTRACT

Conservative activism around the purported influence of Critical Race Theory (CRT) on K-12 education has swept the country in recent years. While others have documented the sources of these messages, how school districts have responded to these critiques has not yet been investigated. Drawing on research on how social media algorithms elevate polarizing information and activate emotions, we analyze public social media posts on school/district Facebook pages mentioning the phrase “critical race” to examine how educators address the claim of teaching CRT and how the local community responds. We use sentiment analysis to examine the emotions of these posts and how they are distributed across states. We also explore the sentiment of subsequent community reactions reflected in the comments of each post, including negative emotions such as anger and fear, and positive emotions such as trust. This study has implications for how school districts can help to stop cycles of fearful rhetoric and engage with stakeholders in ways that unite a school community around shared priorities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ We realized that querying “CRT” yielded greater false positives in the form of posts that were not about “Critical Race Theory” but about “classroom reduction teachers” or televisions with “cathode ray tubes” being allowed in school electronic waste drives. Similarly, querying “Critical Race Theory” did not yield an appreciable increase in relevant posts, while requiring the word “theory” as part of the query resulted in some false negatives in which relevant posts were excluded.

² Demographic information and other district statistics for both Westfield, MA and Springboro, OH are from the National Center for Education Statistics accessed in June 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily M. Hodge

Emily M. Hodge is an associate professor of educational leadership at Montclair State University. Her research uses qualitative methods and social network analysis to understand curriculum politics and the intended and unintended consequences of education policy.

Joshua M. Rosenberg

Joshua M. Rosenberg is an associate professor of STEM Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His interests are at the intersection of data science and education, including the application of data science methods in educational research contexts, and supporting K-12 students to work with data as a part of their learning.

Francesca A. López

Francesca A. López is the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy at Penn State University. The overarching goal of her program of research is to inform policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators about policies and classroom practices that can mitigate racial/ethnic inequality and social stratification.