Discovery Education

The Discovery Education program primarily focuses material related Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Reading (STEM-R). Some modules within the education program, primarily those relating to the environment, have strong bias in favor of weather-dependent energy. ¹

Discovery Education also provides social sciences education programming, and has partnered with the left-of-center Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights to produce programming with a focus on human rights. ²

Background

Discovery Education is owned by Clearlake Capital Group, a private equity firm with $70 billion under management across technology, consumer, and industrial sectors. ³

Discovery Education publishes a guidebook on how to obtain federal funding to pay for its programing through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). ⁴ ESSR is a $13.2 billion dollar grant style fund appropriated by Congress as part of the Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to recover from education losses created as a result of school shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⁵

Climate Science Programming

Discovery Education provides left-of-center climate science programming, including programming that teaches that “personal choices can have global consequences,” ⁶ equates weather-dependent forms of energy with “limitless energy,” ¹ and refers to such forms of energy as being “environmentally clean.” ¹

Social Science Programming

Discovery Education claims to provide educational modules that allow students to “gain appreciation and empathy as they learn history through a variety of voices in a safe, collaborative learning environment.” ⁷

In 2019, Discovery Education partnered with Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights to create an educational module labeled “Speak Truth to Power.” ⁸

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and Justice publishes educational resources that are to the left-of-center on LGBT issues, such as articles produced profiling Schuyler Bailar, the first transgender NCAA Division I swimmer, and praising their efforts to include trans men in professional sports. ⁹ The educational programming instructs teachers to use gender pronouns, to call on students to use nonstandard pronouns if they so choose, and to refer to individuals discussed such as Bailar as “human rights defenders from the transgender and non-binary communities.” ⁹

The programming produced by the two organizations utilized five “Speak Truth to Power” teachers, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Robin DeLuca-Acconi, Mona Al-Hayani, Chris Buckley, and Michelle Haddix. ¹⁰

Estella  Owoimaha-Church is a former drama teacher Hawthorne High School in Hawthorne, California. Owoimaha-Church has stated that she uses the “Speak Truth to Power” model to ensure that the material she teaches reflects and focuses on the identity of her students. ¹¹ She is the recipient of the California Teachers Association (CTA) Peace and Justice Human Rights Award. ¹² In a discussion about a podcast hosted by her, Owoimaha-Church stated that when she first met her co-host, they talked for “hours and hours on [ther] identity (and) roots, where that intersects with anti-Blackness, Blackness, how [their] social consciousness was raised by Black feminist thought.” ¹³ She went on to state that COVID-19 provided her the opportunity to connect and build community with likeminded individuals to “build on the work that so many Black Lives Matter folks did.” ¹³ Owoimaha-Church has advocated for, in her words, “ethnic studies” to begin at pre-school and work its way through the K-12 system, and lamented the fact that social science inquiries related to race are only encountered by some when they enter college. ¹³

Mona Al-Hayani is a teacher in Toledo, Ohio and a “profiled” member of the American Federation of Teachers. ¹⁴ She is also a vice president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, a local union of the AFT. ¹⁵ She has stated that union membership provides her with “a platform to connect with community and fight for political, social and economic justice,” and that “education is the path justice.” ¹⁴

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In an article sponsored by Discovery Education and published by the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teacher labor union, ¹⁶ NEA member Yovanda Pineda criticized Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for signing legislation ¹⁷ that eliminates state funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming at public universities and colleges in Florida. ¹⁸ Pineda referred to the bill as “anti-education,” ¹⁷ and stated that the bill was inconsistent with her obligation as a teacher of history to educate students on “injustices, tyrannies, and resistance of the past to understand our present.” ¹⁷

As part of Discovery Education’s marketing for its social science programming, the organization hosts “Discovery Education Equity Talk” panels. In a May 13, 2021, the former Superintendent of Guilford County School District in North Carolina, Sharon Contreras, panned the Trump administration’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, and claimed that there was “an absence of state and federal guidance,” which forced superintends, such as herself to become “public health experts” and make decisions under, according to Contreras a “politicized environment” that according to her “dismissed the science.” ¹⁹

Leadership

Kelli Campbell is the president of Discovery Education. ²⁰ Prior to leading this organization, she was the COO of Discovery, Inc. ²⁰