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Dogmas Cloud Academy District 20 Debates
Both Eddie Waldrep and Protecting Academy District 20 make some questionable claims.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
Complete Colorado linked to a September 26 interview of Eddie Waldrep, candidate for Academy School District 20 in the north part of Colorado Springs, by Brandon Wark of Free State Colorado (not to be confused with my much older Free Colorado). Waldrep is a clinical psychologist and part of an interracial family (which I mention only because that may bear on discussions of "DEI" (diversity, equity, inclusion) and "critical race theory").
For context, District 20 beats state averages on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success tests, with 61.1% meeting or exceeding expectations in English and 51.9% doing so in math. (That still leaves a huge number of students not meeting expectations!)
Waldrep obviously is a more-conservative candidate. Here's part of what his web site says:
Dr. Waldrep supports:
Auditing current reading and math curricula to identify what produces the best student outcomes
Exploring the standardization of K-3 reading and math curricula across the district
Attracting and retaining the most effective teachers
Aligning all district priorities with measurable, academic goals . . . .Parents are a child's first and most important teacher, and their children’s primary decision maker for education and healthcare. Upholding parental rights means respecting their roles in decisions about curriculum, policies, and discipline. . . .
Dr. Waldrep supports:
Requiring parental consent when a student requests a name or gender identity change
Protecting female sports and spaces
Making curriculum content fully accessible to parents online
Creating a centralized, parent-involved curating process for school library books and instructional materials
Much of this sounds pretty good to me, although I'm not sure what he means by a "curating process." It sounds like maybe he's talking about parents removing books from the school library. But maybe he's just talking about parents having approval over what books their kids check out. If that's it, this seems unworkable. Do kids literally have to get permission from their parents even to pick a book off the shelves and read it in the library? As I parent, generally I'm pro-reading.
Here is some of what Waldrep had to say with Wark:
I started seeing a lot of political bias . . . coming through in the schools. . . . There's lots of great teachers out there. . . . We've had some fantastic teachers. . . . What really kind of caught my attention first was that my daughter's [middle] school . . . instead of to read To Kill a Mockingbird, they kind of gave a slew of eight different social justice oriented books. . . . The teacher that was running this said [during an online meeting] that the reason was basically that it was told from the perspective of a white girl. And that really kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
Waldrep also said he had concerns about "Social Emotional Learning" and "Critical Race Theory." He said his district also is getting rid of valedictorians, a move he opposes.
I could not find any information about Academy 20 changing policies on valedictorians. I have an email out to the district and will update this article if I hear back. One school in the district listed the honor as of May 4.
CBS reports that Cherry Creek is dropping the designation because "this outdated practice did not align with our Core Values of teaching all students, rather than ranking and sorting them." That is idiotic reasoning. Recognizing the best students hardly is incompatible with teaching all students.
Waldrep said that eliminating valedictorian recognition "is kind of related to DEI type philosophies."
Waldrep said some "Social Emotional Learning" "programs are better than others." He worried about "telling kids that for you to be able to regulate your emotions you have to look for an external source." He promotes "self-efficacy" through "mastering experiences." He claimed Yale's SEL program is "influenced by radical left-wing ideology" and is used "as a gateway to push political narratives."
I looked up Yale's program and it mostly sounds like psychobabble bullshit to me. Here is an example of the meaningless jargon: "Builds and sustains positive emotional climates by creating agreed-upon norms for how people want to feel and how they can help each other to experience those feelings." But how is this "radical left-wing ideology?"
Waldrep recommends The Coddling of the American Mind. Here's my question for Waldrep: Isn't his heavy "curation" of books a form of coddling children? (I contacted Waldrep via his web site and will update this article if he replies.)
Waldrep says that declining SAT scores in the context of increasing graduation rates indicates declining standards. But then he also said that the district's CMAS scores have been relatively stable over time (they've actually increased a bit over the past couple of years).
Waldrep then went into "the science of reading," which I generally support.
Waldrep said parents should be involved when their children request a name change, and I agree, but then he immediately said that teachers are being "compelled" to say things that conflict with their own ideologies. This is incoherent. If the parent signs off on their transgender daughter adopting a new name, Waldrep seems to be saying that a teacher should be able to reject the parents' choices and use the child's older name. He also seemed to reject out of hand gender-affirming care for minors. In other words, "Parental rights for me but not for thee."
Waldrep mentioned that he's written several articles, including "The Model Minority Myth" and "The Anti-American Psychological Association" (which I won't review here).
On September 27, the "D20 Accountability Project" (I'll call it D20AP) posted a critique of Waldrep based on the interview. Here's what the anonymous site says about itself:
Protecting Academy District 20 from Extremist Influence. This website is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by any candidate, campaign, or political party. The views and content presented here are for informational and commentary purposes only. This site does not endorse or oppose any candidate for public office and is not part of any campaign committee.
D20AP says Waldrep's "claims reflect a pattern of distortion, culture-war rhetoric, and outright misinformation that would put public education in danger if allowed to guide district policy." But this rhetoric is itself overheated.
D20AP claims Waldrep's reference to "critical race theory" is a "dog-whistle. Critical Race Theory is a legal framework not taught in K–12 education. Its invocation here is meant to activate fear, not inform policy." Although Waldrep's claims mostly are unsubstantiated, this response is bullshit. No one claims that schools are teaching formal, academic-level CRT. Instead, the claim is that CRT filters down into how materials are presented in the lower grades. If it's true that his daughter's school pulled To Kill a Mockingbird because it's told from the perspective of a white girl, that plausibly is a decision influenced by CRT. (I don't know what the school is and so have no easy way to try to track down Waldrep's claim.)
Likewise, D20AP claims that DEI is irrelevant to decisions about valedictorians. But it's definitely part of the same package. The problem is the main claim has not been verified.
D20AP rightly says that changes in graduation rates and SAT scores do not necessarily reflect changing standards.
For the most part D20AP points out additional weaknesses in Waldrep's claims.
But is Waldrep really an "extremist," as D20AP suggests? It seems to me rather than his views fit with his district fairly well. "Extremist" in this context is a smear.
Personally, I wouldn't want either Waldrep or the people behind D20AP in charge of my child's education.