The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) has placed a heavy emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, but critics of the department said that has taken focus off students and academics, and amounts to picking winners and losers. 

"The Oregon Department of Education fosters equity and excellence for every learner through collaboration with educators, partners and communities," the department’s website reads. 

The Department of Education’s "Equity Lens," featured prominently on the website, is designed to help "educators and decision-makers recognize institutional and systemic barriers and discriminatory practices" within the education system. One document on the department’s website lists questions to consider when allocating resources, such as what barriers exist to equitable outcomes, and how racial and ethnic data is being collected.

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One former ODE staffer said this was primarily virtue signaling among department leadership. 

"While ODE leaders seem to use every opportunity to virtue signal internally and externally, their primary goals seem to involve lining their own pockets and ensuring their friends and allies outside of ODE get lucrative contracts with little to no accountability," the former ODE employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News Digital. 

Marc Thielman, a former school superintendent who ran for governor in Oregon, said the system has begun picking winners and losers. 

"What we have is a system that has lost focus on its fundamental purpose, and it’s picking and choosing winners and losers. Everything about it is designed to undermine the system as it exists," Thielman told Fox News Digital. 

The Educator Advancement Council within the ODE is "aimed at helping Oregon achieve high-quality, well-supported and culturally-responsive educators in every classroom." Shadiin Garcia previously served as the executive director of the Educator Advancement Council, under which a Racial Justice Institute (RJI) was created to "provide culturally and racially affirming learning environments for educators," according to the RJI website.

The Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA), an organization based out of Mississippi, was ultimately awarded a $2 million contract from the Education Advancement Council to create the RJI, which would provide professional development "for up to 600 racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse educators across the Pre-K to 12 School System."

According to Garcia’s LinkedIn, she later left the ODE, and is now the Executive Vice President at the Metropolitan Group, along with being a Coordinator and Lead Facilitator of the Racial Justice Institute for IDEA.

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Daniel Ramirez served as the interim executive director of the ODE Educator Advancement Council from September 2020 to July 2021, according to his LinkedIn. While at the Department of Education, Ramirez served as the point of contact for a contract with Community Design Partners, which was expanded from $545,000 to more than $1.6 million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Community Design Partners for this contract were approved by Ramirez. 

Ramirez subsequently left the Department of Education to work for Community Design Partners, where he began in July 2021 according to his LinkedIn profile. The Community Design Partners website says the organization is "dedicated to a wide range of social justice issues such as accessing postsecondary options, diversifying the teaching workforce, and advancing student success by removing systemic barriers."

Carmen Urbina is the owner of the Oregon Center for Education Equity (OCEE), and simultaneously worked as the Deputy Director of the ODE. In her position at the Department of Education, Urbaina signed off on a "Taking it Up" training to be delivered to ODE staff. The training was developed by Urbina’s company, OCEE, and delivered by a previous owner of OCEE. The training document presented to the ODE staff goes so far as to list "Special Appreciation to the Oregon Center for Education Equity." 

In a contract request form that questioned whether the contract could "benefit the people involved," Urbina listed no conflict of interest; however, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said that out of an "abundance of caution," Urbina did declare the potential conflict of interest to them. 

The "Taking it Up" training itself was a two-day seminar, focused on "the institutionalized racist barriers that hinder elimination of the racial achievement disparities in school."

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A spokesperson for the ODE, Marc Siegel, said in all these cases, the procurement process was completed "with integrity and adherence to state laws and practices." He also noted that the department worked to align with Gov. Kate Brown's Executive Order 2018-3 "Promoting Diversity and Inclusion Opportunities for Oregon Minority-Owned, Women-Owned, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned, and Emerging Small Businesses" within the process. 

Thielman said the Department of Education's equity priorities are filtering down to K-12 schools and affecting education. 

"ODE has been working hard to purge conservatives from the industry in general," Thielman said, encouraging parents to pull their children from public school if they can. "There is no representation for a conservative parent, it does not happen." 

In the end, Thielman said, the entire funding for the Department of Education is dedicated to pushing racial ideology. 

Changing the structure of the department would take a complete overhaul of leadership, Thielman said. "ODE is nothing but a political organization of the governor," he added.

Siegel defended the focus on equity within ODE. 

"It is clear that racial equity must be addressed to support every learner. We know there are long-standing inequities in our systems that have led to gaps in outcomes for students of color," he told Fox News Digital. "We do emphasize culturally responsive professional learning and an inclusive curriculum that is reflective of all communities in our state. There is both an intellectual and ethical basis for centering equity in professional learning and instructional materials, primarily so ODE can meet its responsibility to create the conditions in which every student can reach their full potential."

"There is a long and painful history of racial bias in education. Students are ready for systems and institutions to change. Creating a just and equitable learning environment that embraces the history and experiences of its learners is not only good for students, but also for our communities and our shared future," he continued.

The Metropolitan Group, IDEA and Community Design Partners did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

Happy, glorious Monday to everyone here. So what happens when you're running out of white racists? That wasn't even meant to be funny. Oh, that was great. That's never happened before. The setup gets a joke. 

Well, when you run out of white racists, like Doritos, you got to make more. That means it's time for 'This Guy Blows. Brought to you by sugar free candy ruining Halloween since 1962.' I don't think that's real.

Yep. Charles Blow is the worst writer in America. It's either him or the guy who keeps writing 'dwarf' on my office door. Tyrus. But Blow, whose name is short for blowing smoke up his own ass, takes a tale involving Latino leaders in L.A. making bigoted remarks about Blacks and calls it proof of white supremacy. Yes, a Latina smears a black person. But that's white racism, making white supremacy look more diverse than a 1980s Benetton ad. Remember those?

He calls it 'lite supremacy,' which copies white supremacy. Because when a brown-skinned minority says something anti-Black, they obviously cribbed it from the whites. So I guess you can judge how racist someone is by the sunblock number they use. The higher the number, the more chance you have of being racist. I use a 45. So basically, I'm a grand wizard. 

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It's racism lite. Half the pigment and all the calories. Of course, non-whites can be bigoted from Louis Farrakhan to Joy Reid, but that's not what Blow is saying. He's saying that there are different levels of pigment power, and the lighter ones are what he calls white adjacent, which sounds like Sherwin Williams's newest color. That paint store, Kat. Anyway.

But when these bigots insult Blacks, they learn such bad behavior, of course, from the whites. But isn't that belief racist in itself that Latinos aren't smart enough to be racist on their own? They had to copy whitey. And I guess Blow never assumed that such behavior could have been learned from him. This guy plays the race card more than Liz Warren trying to get into Harvard.

So, okay, now even brown people are white supremacists. Lighter becomes whiter when brown scoffs at Black. The Crayola crayons research department must be pulling their hair out. And consider poor Larry Elder, who was once smeared as the face of white supremacy. He's thinking, 'Damn, another job taken from a Black man.' Tough break, Larry. Even Relief Factor can't ease that pain. Great product, by the way.

But while Blow claims to condemn rates of racial tribalism, he then does the same thing seeking a new racial team sport and dividing the teams based on darkness. Instead of shirts against skins, its skins against darker skins. Now, if we follow Blow, it's as if whiteness itself is an evil substance and there are gradients of it that contribute to racism. But maybe it's time that we replace the word 'racism' with 'whiteness' and save everyone the time. You know, in the bad old days, being white made you racist. Now being racist makes you white, even if you're brown or white-lite. 

I wonder how they feel if Blow came up to them and said, 'What's up, lighty?' True - if this guy saw a black squirrel being attacked by a gray squirrel, he would say the gray squirrel learned that from the white people. Who knew white supremacists were so lazy? One minute they're marching with tiki torches, now they're outsourcing their racism to immigrants. Finally, Blow ties us all to the wish to defund police, the most disastrous anti-Black policy since they canceled 'The Jeffersons.' It's true.

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If you don't support defunding, then you're racist against Blacks. There's not much wiggle room there. Blow's so shallow he should wear a 'no diving' sign around his neck. But we know a decline in policing hurts Blacks more than any policy of the last 30 years. Also, Black people want more police. And look at the skin color of the dead since the crime wave exploded. They're mostly Black, but blow only sees pigment among the living because the dead don't respond to his click bait. 

So what's this all come down to? Well, Charles is on his own racist meal ticket. You really got to hate white people to concoct this kind of feverish hate dream. And also, you got to see it as your career. Blow is a one-trick pony trying to survive in the media landscape. He can't ever say racism has diminished because if he says that, he'll be out of a race-baiting job. So no wonder he's expanding the dating pool of bigotry. He's like a horny dude changing his tinder radius from ten miles to planet Earth. Who hasn't done that?

Plus, he knows his employer can't ever fire him, right? 'That's racist,' he'll say. He's learned well over the years watching Hall of Fame race-baiters from Sharpton to Shaun King to Joy Reid. You need to expand the accusatory net of racism, even if it means that you're saying all the hard work of civil rights leaders of the past 60 years made things worse. It's so odd that people like Blow are called progressives because for them, nothing ever progresses. It just gets worse. In his tiny little mind, it's still 1958 and really that blows.