One of my favorite weekly emails comes from Data Is Plural. Each Wednesday, DIP sends out a list of several datasets of interest, either submitted by different people or found from a range of different sources (academic journals, personal GitHub repos, etc). It’s incredibly fun going through the new datasets and seeing what types of data people are collecting.
One of the datasets that caught my eye as I was going through DIP’s archive was one titled “Legislative Limits on Teaching”, from August 24, 2022. PEN America published a report calling state bills that seek to restrict the teaching of certain subjects “educational gag orders” (EGOs). The report looks at various legislative attempts at the state level to restrict the teaching of certain subjects, many dealing with race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. When I accessed the dataset (February 12, 2024), there had been 307 bills filed since 2021 that PEN classified as an educational gag order.
What struck me about the dataset compiled by PEN America was that 45 states had bills introduced to restrict teaching certain concepts and topics, including states that I did not think would be on there, like Illinois. Maybe it’s because I currently live in Texas, and since I’m from Illinois I have major bias, but I always thought that very red states would be the most likely to introduce these types of bills. Of course, I’m forgetting that outside of Chicago, Illinois is fairly conservative and even states with Democratic governors have legislative bodies that contain elected Republicans who are allowed to introduce bills all they want.
I decided to map the data PEN America put together and also create a data table that provides the general summary of the bill when that row of the table is clicked by the user. I also included some summary information of the status of different bills throughout the country, as well as what groups (K-12, Contractors, etc) the bills target.
Of the 307 EGO bills introduced since 2021, 28 have been signed into law in 18 states. These EGO laws target contractors, higher education, K-12 schools, private institutions, state agencies & political subdivisions, and one “other” category. Laws have been signed in states like Texas, Arizona, Utah, Mississippi, and New Hampshire. Luckily, the majority of EGO bills introduced over the last 3 years are dead but there are still at least 13 bills that are pending in legislatures across the country.
The map is available here. I have some ideas for updates that I think would help make this map and dashboard more informative and, of course, if anyone reading this has any ideas please don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know!
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