Similar to legislation passed last year, many of these new bills propose withholding funding from school districts that don’t comply with these regulations. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from UCLA. Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation.

Some of these bills also require districts to give parents prior right of review for new curriculum adoptions or library additions. In at least 10 states, legislators have proposed bills that would require administrators to list every book, reading, and activity that teachers use in their lessons, a process that educators argue would be cumbersome and expensive. In South Carolina, a bill would ban teaching that “equity is a concept that is superior to or supplants the concept of equality.” In New Hampshire, “promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America” could become illegal, if a bill were to pass. In Florida, a bill would ban teachers from saying “racial colorblindness” is racist.

What started in early 2021 as a conservative effort to prohibit teachers from talking about diversity and inequality in so-called “divisive” ways or taking sides on “controversial” issues has now expanded to include proposed restrictions on teaching that the United States is a racist country, that certain economic or political systems are racist, or that multiple gender identities exist, according to an Education Week analysis of 61 new bills and other state-level actions. Republicans this year have drastically broadened their legislative efforts to censor what’s taught in the classroom, according to an Education Week analysis of active state bills.

Banned books 2022 list