Category Archives: Education (K-12)

Should this be our framework for learning American history and civics?

by James A. Bacon

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) has posted a new set of proposed goals for the teaching of civics, geography, and economics — the first major changes to the History and Social Science Standards of Learning since the existing standards were adopted in 2015.

Critics have accused the Youngkin administration of wanting to ban the teaching of the more unsavory aspects of Virginia history such as slavery, racism and segregation. The charges were leveled without any evidence and in the face of repeated declarations to the contrary by Youngkin administration officials, but Virginia’s legacy media has allowed them to pass unchallenged.

If Governor Youngkin is bent upon whitewashing Virginia and U.S. history, it’s not apparent from this overview to be presented to the Virginia Board of Education November 17. Consider these proposed changes to learning goals enumerated in that document:

• Adding more specific and thorough treatment of the issue of slavery, particularly by requiring more content in earlier grades;
• Adding more specific and thorough treatment of the issue of segregation, particularly by requiring more content in earlier grades;
• Adding more specific and thorough treatment of the Reconstruction era;
• Adding more clear and thorough treatment of the issue of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia;
• Requiring the examination of important Supreme Court cases like Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. U.S., Buck v. Bell, Loving v. Virginia and others;
• Further examining the critical role of the Founding Fathers and the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution;
• Further explaining the importance of Women’s Suffrage and key events in history that led to the Nineteenth Amendment.

The devil is not so much in the details, which Virginia school children undoubtedly will learn, but in how the issues of slavery, racism, segregation and women’s rights are framed. Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

Last month the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)  released its Nation’s Report Card, which showed that the average math test scores declined by eight points nationally. It was difficult for most Americans to know what to make of the loss. The scores were an abstraction. How bad was the loss of five points?

The Education Recovery Score Board, a collaboration between Harvard University and Stanford University, has devised an answer. Drawing upon the NAEP scores and standardized test scores from 29 states, the Harvard-Stanford team translated the drop in NAEP scores into years of education lost. The average U.S. public school student fell behind a half year in math, and a quarter year in English.

The Education Recovery Score Board performed another valuable service. Where the NAEP published state-average scores, the Harvard-Stanford project mapped the NAEP scores to the school-district level, providing greater granularity in the data and exposing wide differences between school districts within states.

“The pandemic was like a band of tornadoes that swept across the country,” said project co-director Thomas J. Kane. “Some communities were left relatively untouched, while neighboring schools were devastated.”

Judging by NAEP’s state-level data, Virginia got hit by more than its share of tornadoes. The decline in math scores between 2019 and 2022 was the worst in the nation, and in English almost as bad. But the Education Recovery Score Board data show enormous variability within the state. Some school districts survived with modest damage; others were flattened. Continue reading →