The Chilling Effects of Tennessee’s Prohibited Concepts Law - What Is the Potential Role of School Board Members and Superintendents?

Oct 15, 2026

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Prohibited concept laws can chill teaching and contribute to the removal of social justice topics, yet the extent of district-level support and the mechanisms that perpetuate this effect remain unclear. This descriptive study proposes a framework for how district policy messaging contributes to chilling in an era of increased partisanship. Survey data from Tennessee PK–12 school board members and superintendents assess perceptions of the law. Results show overall support with notable role differences.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Tennessee’s Prohibited Concepts Law and implementation

Chilling effects and district-level roles

AERA Open January-December 2024, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1–21 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584241304750 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2024. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) The Chilling Effects of Tennessee’s Prohibited Concepts Law: What Is the Potential Role of School Board Members and Superintendents? Amanda Slaten Frasier East Tennessee State University Prohibited concept laws have a chilling effect on teaching, resulting in the erasure of social justice topics; however, the extent to which district-level actors support such laws or the role they play in perpetuating the effect is unclear. I offer a framework for understanding how district-level policy messaging contributes to the chilling effect in the context of increased partisanship and nationalized politics at the local level. I use survey data to describe school board members’and superintendents’perceptions of Tennessee’s PK–12 Prohibited Concepts Law. Overall, there is support for the law, but there are significant differences between the perspectives of school board members and superintendents, with the latter more likely to express neutrality. There are no differences by location, but there are significant differences based on political affiliation and perspectives about state control of curriculum, supporting the larger trend of increased nationalized partisanship of local politics. Keywords: Descriptive analysis, educational policy, governance, policy, politics, prohibited concepts, school board, school board members, superintendents, survey research Introduction In the last several years there has been heightened public attention and political controversary around attempts to control curriculums and teaching in schools through so called prohibited or divisive concepts legislation. Recent studies indicate that these laws have created a chilling effect on the work of teachers, which raises concerns about negative impacts for students. This descriptive study advances research on prohibited concepts laws by leveraging data from a statewide survey of Tennessee’s school board members and superintendents in order to better understand the role that district administration may play in producing the chilling effect. Tennessee’s Prohibited Concepts Law, Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-6-1019, was signed into law on May 25, 2021 (Appendix A) . The law utilizes increasing financial sanctions as a policy lever, where districts can be penalized by losing state funding if their teachers or curriculums include listed concepts in lessons. Implementation of the law includes a mechanism for reporting violations via a publicly available, online form. While this study focuses on one state, the Tennessee law mirrors similar legislation backed by conservative-affiliated special interest groups across the nation, which include vague specifications and undefined concepts that leave the laws open to interpretation (Anderson, 2023; Crenshaw, 2021; Kelly, 2023; López et al., 2021) . Further, the topics targeted by Tennessee’s law match those in recent analyses of existing and proposed laws across the United States, which identify two specific thematic areas targeted by prohibited concepts legislation: (1) ethno-racial diversity and (2) sex, gender, and LGBTQ diversity (Kelly, 2023; White, 2022) . Importantly, while the Prohibited Concepts Law in Tennessee does not explicitly state the words Critical Race Theory (CRT), and there are no examples of CRT being utilized in PK–12 education standards or curricula across the nation, Tennessee’s law broadly mirrors the wording of similar legislation meant to deter the teaching of anti-racism, justice, multiculturalism, criticality, and cultural responsiveness which have been adopted since 2020 (Anderson, 2023; Gallagher et al., 2021; Gross, 2021; Kelly, 2023; Kelly et al., 2023; Ladson-Bil

FAQs

What question does the article address about Tennessee’s prohibited concepts law?

It examines the potential role of school board members and superintendents in producing or sustaining the chilling effects associated with the law.

What method and data does the study use?

The study uses survey data to describe school board members’ and superintendents’ perceptions of Tennessee’s PK–12 Prohibited Concepts Law.

What are the main findings about support and differences in perspectives?

There is overall support for the law, but school board members and superintendents differ, with superintendents more likely to express neutrality.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Adam