Today the Kentucky Board of Education heard first reading on a proposed revision to the state's social studies standards (access a pdf version of the standards at the end of this post). This was a long-overdue process, but has been accelerated under the mandates of Senate Bill 1 (2017) which requires a regular 6-year cycle of reviewing and, when necessary, updating the state's education standards.
The draft social studies standards have generated some controversy, sometimes from education advocates with whom I typically share common ground, especially on this topic. In this case, there have been criticisms that the standards lack specificity and that numerous examples of individual historical figures (like George Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.), events, or concepts have been omitted from the standards and therefore cannot be tested.
This is a special area of concern for me, not only because I chair KBE’s Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Committee, but because I have a long-standing personal and professional passion for this topic. My bachelor’s degree included a minor in history, I hold a Master’s degree in the same subject, I taught social studies as a K-12 teacher, and once served as an officer in the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies.
The quality of social studies curriculum and instruction has become a particular area of concern in recent years as I’ve watched elementary schools devote less and less attention to this subject (along with science and the arts as well). Following the work of E.D. Hirsch and others, I’ve come to believe that a lack of focus on content knowledge in the early grades is exacerbating achievement gaps and that by focusing more intentionally on domain-specific knowledge we will actually improve students’ long-term reading comprehension. (See links to several of my blog posts at the end of this message that express these concerns).
Accordingly, I have carefully watched the development of Kentucky’s draft social studies standards through the same lens of concern critics have brought to this matter: do the standards adequately reflect the depth and breadth of knowledge we want all Kentucky students to obtain as a minimum framework within the bounds of what is possible and appropriate for a set of state standards under Kentucky’s legal and regulatory structures?
I’ve been pleased, then, that over recent months I’ve seen the committee charged with developing the standards respond to several concerns I’ve raised about content. For example, the latest version of the standards includes a much more expansive discussion of both slavery and the Cold War era, both of which I felt were inadequately addressed in earlier versions. The department is also developing grade-specific standards overview documents for grades K-8 that will further elaborate curricular and content connections. I will continue to bring concerns about content specificity to the standards development committee and ask KDE staff working on this topic to offer some response and consider whether any additional changes to the standards are appropriate before the final reading on the standards is made in February.
Below I will offer an extended explanation for why I think the standards as written are a vast improvement over Kentucky’s current social studies standards (improving them in ways that very much reflect concerns about content), why they generally strike a good balance between between social studies skill and knowledge, and how they function as standards - not curriculum - and why that distinction is so vitally important. Adequately understanding what standards are, how teachers use them, and the role of state assessment in achieving our overall educational goals is vital to this discussion.
Standards are not the only thing that gets taught; and shouldn’t be; and can’t be under Kentucky law
The first important thing to note is that standards and curriculum are not the same thing. This is a distinction that educators themselves miss or sometimes gloss over. We do not expect, particularly in Kentucky, that everything students learn (or should learn) in school will be dictated via state standards.
Standards reflect a minimum framework for all students that will be measured on state assessments. Curriculum, on the other hand, includes the vast array of instructional materials, readings, activities, and local mechanisms of assessment, including the full body of content knowledge to be covered, all of which are, under Kentucky law, to be selected at the local level (I have made some recommendations to the department for the next reading on the social studies standards to make this distinction clearer).
I’ll readily admit that the difference is sometimes blurry. Standards certainly do inform and shape curriculum decisions, and the more expansive and detailed the standards the more impact they have on local decisions. But the point is that standards are not the sum total of what gets taught in schools, and shouldn’t be (and can’t be under Kentucky law). Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, himself a strong champion of a knowledge-based curriculum, put it this way:
I would wager that when I.M. Pei was commissioned to design the Louvre Pyramid, his first move was not to reach for a copy of the Paris building codes for inspiration. It should be no different for teaching. First things first: What is it you want to teach? Which stories, poems, or novels are worth your students' precious time? What do you want students to know about art, science, history, and literature? Answer those questions, then reach for the standards and build your lessons and units "to code."
I would argue that in Kentucky we’ve developed something far more useful to teachers than the Paris building codes are to architects. And I would concede that because of testing worries, teachers in Kentucky have often relied far too heavily on the standards as the sum total of what they attempt to teach (except in social studies, for reasons I’ll discuss), but the way this usually works out is an over-reliance on commercially-developed textbooks. There is a vast need for schools to engage in much more thoughtful work around curriculum development, which includes the selection of specific content matter, but the truth is that schools already do this. As a social studies teacher, I have direct experience with how this works.
At any rate, we don’t just want students to know who George Washington was as an isolated fact; we want them to understand his role as one of several key figures responding to large, sweeping, cultural, economic, and political forces that shaped the American Founding and continue to inform our civic discussions today. And that is in the standards, and will be assessed, as I’ll note below. (And I should probably also note that just naming something in the standards is also not a guarantee that it will be taught, and certainly not that it will be mastered by students).
Social studies as both knowledge and skill; these standards are a great improvement
Social studies standards are always fraught with some controversy. This happens in part because the way we present our past is frequently shaped by the way we interpret events, their consequences, and their importance. Social studies educators have long argued over whether their discipline is about imparting a body of content knowledge (facts and dates) or about giving students a set of skills around citizenship and critical thinking (how to engage the governmental process, how to understand historical cause and effect, etc).
As I argued recently, I believe these are false dichotomies. There is no such thing as social studies skill divorced from social studies content. You cannot think critically unless you have something to think about, and what you think about matters immensely. However, it is actually possible to memorize a set of facts and dates and not have a meaningful understanding of how they fit together or why they are important for our lives today. And unfortunately that has been the experience of far too many Americans when it comes to their social studies education. It is imperative that we impart meaningful content to students and teach them how to think critically about the world and their place in it relative to past events.
Therefore, it is important that standards-writers give attention to both content and social studies skill. And this is a delicate task. How much content do you embed before you are realistically squeezing out instructional time for going deeper with analysis and application, research and inquiry? And the more specific we become about content, the more challenging it becomes to decide what to include and what not to include. This is all the more difficult still in a state like Kentucky where standards writers must guard against diving too far into curricular choices that should normally belong to local schools.
But because you cannot separate knowledge and skill, the balance may lie in designing standards that ask students to engage in high-level thinking tasks that require a strong depth and breadth of content knowledge - even if you do not name all the specific content knowledge implied by the standard. And in all of these respects, I believe that the draft Kentucky social studies standards are very strong.
Previously Kentucky’s social studies standards were organized around “Big Ideas” which were neither sufficiently skill-oriented nor content-specific enough to meaningfully inform instruction. They were also grouped into broad grade level bands, so that teachers in early grades, for example, had essentially zero guidance into which social studies skills and concepts they should be teaching (and in far too many places, they just didn’t teach much of it with any intentionality).
The new standards are vastly more comprehensive. They break the standards down into content and skill for specific grades K-8 and then high school. They emphasize connections to literacy, which especially in the early grades helps bridge that gap between content knowledge and reading comprehension. And they organize content and skill across the large strands of history, geography, civics and economics, integrated with key inquiry practices of questioning, investigating, using evidence, and communicating conclusions.
Page counts are a poor way to measure the quality of anything, but in terms of its comprehensiveness and specificity, I would just note that the draft standards clock in at 147 pages, in comparison to the previous Kentucky standards that were a mere 60 pages long. And this doesn’t include the grade level overview documents for the new standards, still in development
Lots of content is embedded in the standards if not explicitly named; and it can be assessed
We should definitely continue to explore where there may still be insufficient attention to content, but I believe these new standards, if used with integrity by teachers, will ensure a far more organized and intentional delivery of social studies skill and content for students across all grade levels. And to pick up a point I first mentioned above, I believe that many social studies concepts not specifically named in the standards are nevertheless embedded there.
So for example, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other key figures in the Founding are not noted in the standards. But please notice the much more comprehensive standards that are present and which will be subject to assessment on the state social studies exam. It is inconceivable that students could deliver a proficient answer to questions associated with these standards without referring to such important figures:
- Compare the political form of monarchy with the self-governing system developed in Colonial America (4.C.CP.2)
- Analyze the causes of the American Revolution and the effect individuals and groups had on the conflict (5.H.CE.1).
- Explain how colonial resistance to British control led to the Revolutionary War (8.H.CO.1).
- Analyze the impact of the democratic principles of equality before the law, inalienable rights, consent of the governed and the right to alter or abolish the government in the United States from the Colonial Era to Reconstruction from 1600-1877 (8.C.CV.1).
- Analyze how the political, geographic, social and economic choices of the Colonial Era impacted the Revolutionary Period and Early Republic Period (8.H.CE.1).
- Explain how colonial resistance to British control led to the Revolutionary War (8.H.CO.1).
Is it true that no state social studies assessment could ask the question, “Who was George Washington” under these standards? Yes. But we don’t have to ask such a basic question when the standards ask student to have far more knowledge than the mere fact of Washington’s identity; when they, in fact, must know him and far more to demonstrate mastery of the standard.
I suspect that for most of the specific content items that have been noted as "missing", we could find a place where that concept, figure, or event is implicit in the standards. Just for another example, no student could demonstrate mastery of HS.C.CV.3, “Analyze the impact of the efforts of individuals and reform movements on the expansion of civil rights and liberties locally, nationally and internationally,” without reference to Martin Luther King, Jr. They must know him and many others to demonstrate mastery.
I will ask Department staff to continue looking for connections between "missing" content items and the standards and to respond before the second reading in February to see if such a process can further illuminate gaps in the standards that may require additional attention. But I am confident that these standards, overall, are not lacking in content specificity, and are in fact a great improvement and may rival other state standards frameworks in their comprehensiveness and attention both to content detail but also the much higher levels of historical analysis, inquiry, and application that we want all students to obtain. The grade-level overview documents may provide further clarity or opportunity to address any of these missing areas.
I welcome continued feedback on the social studies standards as public comment has already made a substantial difference in the work.
Download 2018 DRAFT Social Studies Standards 11.15.2018
Usual disclaimer: Views expressed on this website are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else affiliated with Western Kentucky University (where I am professor of educational administration, leadership, and research) or the Kentucky Board of Education (where I am a member and chairman of the Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Committee).
Related posts:
- Yes, kids need to know about the American Revolution
- If caring is king, content is queen
- Why Knowledge Matters: The Most Important Education Book of 2016
- Why Knowledge Matters, Part II
- Seven Myths About Education
- What if everything you knew about education was wrong?
- A classical education reading list
Gary,
There is far too much assumed coverage in these draft social studies standards. This runs afoul of a legal stipulation in Kentucky Statute that basically says something not in the standards cannot go on the state's tests.
A very recent Attorney General's opinion (OAG 18-018), by the way, says "courts 'look first to the plain language of a statute[.]' Id. ( citation omitted). If the legislature's intent can be ascertained by the plain language, the court's inquiry ends without resort to any other method or source. Id. (citation omitted)."
For one troubling example, please explain why World War I and II are specifically mentioned in the standards while the Korean, Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars are not. Aside from an obvious slight to more recent vets, it seems like lots of lessons to be learned from these wars won't be.
By the way, a law requires students to receive instruction about Veterans Day, but these standards ironically omit the wars fought by an increasing percentage of our living vets.
Furthermore, because WW I and II are specifically mentioned, could omission of the more recent wars be viewed by the courts as a big problem if you put questions about those more recent conflicts in the state's assessments? Or, is the intent to just ignore these conflicts completely?
Please pull these standards back and do more work on them.
Posted by: Richard G. Innes | 12/05/2018 at 02:31 PM