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Yesterday the Kentucky General Assembly overrode Governor Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 1, which includes language from Senate Bill 138, a bill that largely impacted how and what is taught in Social Studies classrooms in the Commonwealth, attached.
KCSS was very actively engaged in the journey of SB138 after it was first introduced in the Senate Education Committee. Through conversation with the bill’s sponsor, as well as feedback from educators statewide, we were able to clearly communicate our concerns with stakeholders about this bill. We approached our conversations with a spirit of collaboration, and ultimately were able to encourage some changes to the original language. While these changes altered some of the language of the bill, many of our concerns remain. KCSS has a mission to both be a voice for teachers, but also to be a resource and support system for teachers. With SB1 set to become law, we’ve begun to consider the impact this could have on instructional practice, civic engagement, and requirements placed upon teachers. We plan to continue to reach out to stakeholders statewide and develop a plan to help provide resources and support teachers as they navigate the new requirements that will take effect in the next school year. We will be reaching out to our membership for feedback and concerns, as well as other educators across the Commonwealth. To that end, our civic education advocacy arm, the Kentucky Civic Education Coalition, was recently awarded a grant from CivXNow (part of iCivics). Much of those funds will go towards curating and creating resources for Kentucky educators, which will be developed in light of the current and future needs of our teachers. Based on your feedback we received earlier in the month about these bills, we know teachers have concerns about the impact a bill like this can have on their classrooms. We have heard you and shared your concerns. Ultimately, it’s now our duty to look forward and find ways to navigate the changes that come. We have a duty as educators to help our students to develop into informed and engaged citizens. That will not change. There is so much inspiring work going on in classrooms in Kentucky. We know teachers can adapt to a changing landscape to continue to provide this excellent level of instruction. KCSS will continue to work for you and support you in this important work.
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We, the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies Executive Committee, denounce the actions of any person or group who strives to undermine the democratic processes and principles that have served our country for over 230 years. Elections, the electoral process, and the peaceful transfer of power are among the many factors that have upheld the oldest democracy in the world.
As social studies educators, it is our duty to help prepare our students to become active and informed citizens. It is equally important to distinguish the difference between peaceful, constructive protest and violent insurrection. We encourage teachers to engage in these difficult conversations with their students, and not be afraid to draw the line for students between constructive and destructive protest. We also understand that there is a vocal minority who is feeling hurt and betrayed by our democracy right now, and we will have students in our classrooms who similarly feel this way. It is our duty as educators to encourage these students to find ways to get involved in the democratic process and bring about change and cooperation in a positive way. We challenge teachers to consider how they take action and support civic engagement endeavors. In the words of Howard Zinn, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” As a council, we will continue to advocate on behalf of students’ need for a democratic education, where they have opportunities to learn and practice the needed skills and dispositions to engage in democratic civic life. Please see the resources listed below that might help you to begin the thinking and planning for how you can support courageous conversations and opportunities for students to take informed action for your students. When Bad Things Are Happening Facing History: Responding to the Insurrection at the US Capitol Plan Ahead With Our Teacher Checklist How to talk to your kids about violence at the US Capitol A message from the executive director, president, and vice president about the ongoing protests:6/9/2020 In response to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other victims of violence because of their skin color, both in recent months and over the centuries:
We stand with those exercising their first amendment right to protest. We stand with their message of justice, fairness, and equality. As social studies educators, we bear a particular responsibility to prepare our students for civic life. We are charged with helping students make sense of their world and their positionality therein. Part of that preparation includes identifying and challenging unjust systems, pursuing fairness and equality, and promoting the common good. As we encourage our students to engage with their intellectual curiosities, we also encourage others to listen and learn from the protesters’ message. We support the work of educators who are combating afactual and ahistorical social studies curriculum. We challenge social studies educators to reflect on their curriculum and consider: who is telling the story? Whose voices are loud and whose are absent? Whose voices are marginalized or siloed, sidelined from the main narrative? We challenge teachers to consider how they take action and support civic engagement endeavors. In the words of Howard Zinn, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” In our commitment to providing support for Social Studies educators and growth of their professional learning, KCSS’s fall conference theme, Kentucky’s Hidden Histories, was chosen so we could help illuminate the voices that have been silenced. Please see the resources listed below that might help you to begin the thinking and planning for how you can support courageous conversations and opportunities for students to take informed action for your students. TEACHING RESOURCES Be a Citizen: Civic Action Project Guide Teaching Tolerance Zinn Education Project Teaching Ideas and Resources to Help Students Make Sense of the George Floyd Protests, New York Times Racism in America: Resources to help you understand a history of inequality, Washington Post The 1619 Project, New York Times KCSS strongly supports passing the proposed Social Studies Academic Standards.
Included here are links to three position papers summarizing our support around three key pillars:
We urge all Kentuckians, teachers and community members alike, to contact Kentucky Board of Education members and urge them to pass these standards. We ask that you vary the letters you send and the dates that you send them. For example, 1) you might send the first letter this week, the third letter next, and the second the week after or 2) your first round this week might be letter 1 to 1/3, letter 2 to 1/3, letter 3 to 1/3. Then rotating these thirds for the next three weeks in the build-up toward the February second reading. Specializing these letters, your individual voice helps us promote Social Studies. If there is another perspective you'd like to advocate, by all means. KCSS wanted to provide a foundation to help. Access KBE contact information here. The Kentucky Council for the Social Studies (KCSS) serves as the primary voice for social studies education and educators in Kentucky. Our membership exists to inform, educate and advocate on behalf of not only social studies educators at all levels (elementary, middle, high and post-secondary), but also of students throughout the Commonwealth. KCSS wishes to inform state education authorities on our position regarding the proposed requirements, as well as advocate for this position.
As a result, our membership has reviewed the Proposed Graduation Requirements as they relate to the Social Studies and is, in general, supportive of the initiative to look for new and innovative approaches to engage and challenge students, and specifically supports that the proposed graduation requirements:
But, KCSS also identifies the following points that must be addressed: ● A transition plan must be created showing how new graduation requirements would be phased in; how parents, school, and districts would be educated on the new requirements; and, how educators at all levels would be trained to help students be successful. We would like the opportunity for ourselves and Kentucky citizens to make informed decisions. ● Equity must be addressed. Rural, urban, and other underserved schools often do not have access to the same resources as some schools in the state, especially when it comes to opportunities for students to meet the Transition Readiness requirements. Additionally, we know that, historically, unintended consequences and inequities have been associated with student tracking, as different groups are disproportionately filtered to different tracks. One example is the Technology Competency Requirement. KCSS is sensitive to the digital divide across the state of Kentucky, perpetuating inequities present in Kentucky’s poorest regions and counties. This requirement could place undue and unintended hardship on counties lacking the financial infrastructure to provide every student access to the technology needed to meet this requirement, which could result in self imposed graduation barriers on Kentucky’s students. Any new system must have specific plans to prevent demographics and geography from determining a student’s future.
● Many of these requirements are rooted in the Individualized Learning Plan, which lacks consistency in high impact implementation across the state. ● Financial Literacy. As stated in the previous section, KCSS has a position of support for Financial Literacy requirements. Where might these requirements be housed? These concepts serve to intersect Mathematics, business/career preparation, as well as the Social Studies. It is our position that these requirements be housed in mathematics or business/career preparation courses. Though there are some mathematical concepts within economics, finance and economics should not be falsely conflated. The two subjects have many distinct differences, requiring their own particular disciplinary content knowledge and skills. ● Credit Requirements. The proposed requirements require students earn 3 Social Studies credits. It is the position of the National Council for the Social Studies that high school students attain 3.5 Social Studies credits. The official position of KCSS is to request 4 required Social Studies credits. ● Critical Media Literacies. We strongly believe the technology competence requirement should also include critical source analysis, media literacy, and assessment of freedom of speech issues in digital space. To be technologically competent, students must be armed with the particular skills preparing them to assess information within digital spaces. The National Council for the Social Studies takes the following position, to which KCSS agrees and supports. “The National Council for the Social Studies Position Statement on Media Literacy argues that media literacy can facilitate participatory democracy if students' interest in media is harnessed. The statement conceives of media technology as neutral and under-conceptualizes socializing aspects of media technologies that foster atomized individualism. Narrowly grounded in New Media Literacies, Critical Media Studies, and Medium Theory scholarship, it offers a limited understanding of media as merely conduits for message transmission and concludes that media technology will create a more democratic society if students are encouraged to participate in it. The authors' pragmatist reconceptualization examines media not only as transmission but also as a space where common meanings are constructed. The authors offer a critical review that advances an alternative direction for media literacy in which learning for participatory democracy includes analyzing not only medium, messages, and content but also media forms and their relations to transactional tendencies within the broader society.” (Routledge, 2012.) ● What skills does the Technology Requirement entail? Can this include basic word processing and business formatting, in addition to coding, digital literacy, programming, and/or virtual reality? ● Standards Based Learning. KCSS requests clarification on “Standards Based Learning Experiences”. Is this connected to the shift across the state to move towards a more competency based progression system? ● Speaking and Listening Standards. As Kentucky’s population continues to diversify, it is imperative that graduation requirements reflect Speaking and Listening standards, to ensure all students are supported in developing communication skill sets. There is a wealth of research on which Kentucky can draw speaking to the importance of these skills towards achieving learning outcomes, as well as creating democratic classroom spaces conducive to rigorous and meaningful learning. ● Content and Skills. The proposed system potentially incentivizes a skills-only and assessment driven approach to instruction. Appropriate changes or a plan should be developed to discourage this, and instead encourage conceptual, problem solving experiences for students where they apply learning to in-school and out-of-school contexts. Previously stated by the Kentucky Board of Education, “Westheimer & Kahne’s pivotal study found that only supporting the concept of participation does not necessarily lead to action. Without an explicit connection between the content of a democratic education and the needed skills, students are less likely to take on the responsibilities needed in a civil society.” (Westheimer & Kahne, , 2002.) We understand that some of the above points may be easier than others to address and/or implement. KCSS recognizes that other unintended consequences, for instance equity, transitions, and standards, require more in-depth analysis and work to arrive at quality solutions. Diana Hess says, “…the ‘new civil right’ of educational opportunity should be framed as access to good schooling.” Together we can provide that for Kentucky students. KCSS is ready to continue to be involved in the longer task of shaping recommendations and solutions around research and plans that best serve our students, but currently, The Kentucky Council for the Social Studies advises that the Kentucky Board of Education not support the proposed graduation requirements as they stand. The power and potential of education in our state rests on the shoulders of its teachers. As a council, our mission is to educate, inform, and advocate on behalf of Kentucky’s teachers and students. KCSS strongly urges the Board to pass the proposed standards as they will support teachers in their important work towards creating informed, engaged Kentucky citizens.
The purpose of social studies education, and indeed public schooling more generally, is to create an informed, engaged democratic citizenry. Often this purpose feels divorced from expectations placed on teachers. No one knows Kentucky education and its young people like teachers. These standards are written by Kentucky teachers, for Kentucky teachers. Our teachers recognize the power of an effective social studies education in preparing students for active civic life in a pluralistic democracy. What’s been said multiple times is that standards should be driven by teachers. This is the second set of Kentucky social studies standards written by teachers. Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards were both adopted by this Board, however neither have the voices of teachers, as much as these proposed standards do. If we value teachers’ voices – and want to support them in their work for Kentucky’s students, then these standards should be adopted. What excites us about these standards is their potential to empower teachers and students in achieving this ambitious goal. These standards center the literacies students need to make sense of their world, helping Kentucky’s students be active contributors to their communities, whether in college, their careers, or as civic participants. A focus on skills, particularly inquiry-based learning, is not only more meaningful because it re-centers students in their learning, but it also has a large wealth of scholarship showing it to be an effective pedagogical strategy, reflected in research and assessment data. The Kentucky Council for the Social Studies supports these standards and urges they be passed. As the official state social studies organization, we are also willing to collaborate with the Board towards implementing them in Kentucky schools. The standards are grounded in the expertise of our state’s teachers and scholars in the field. They provide Kentucky educators a framework to promote the content, skills, and literacies of the social studies, nurturing rigorous and meaningful educational experiences for Kentucky’s children. It is the role of schools and especially social studies to prepare students to be active citizens in their democracy. Our classrooms are laboratories for democracy and it is our duty to afford students equitable opportunities so that they become not only college and career ready, but civically ready, too. Civic education includes civic knowledge, skills, dispositions, and experiences that are wrapped up in government, history, geography, and economics, as well as building capacity in all the other disciplines. In social studies classes, we focus those efforts on college and career readiness, but also on preparing students for engaged civic life.
But civic education needs time to develop. The Kentucky Council for the Social Studies advocates that an additional half or whole credit be added to the existing requirement for graduation. Currently, only US history is mandated by the state, but this additional half or whole credit would focus on ensuring civic readiness. The envisioned fourth credit will have a civics focus and will have students planning and carrying out a civic capstone project that shows their aptitude in the different civic competencies. Students will demonstrate in these capstones how civic knowledge of the principles of democracy, processes and structures of our institutions, and how perennial issues continue to shape our nation. Students will hone their thinking through cognitive skills that will enable students to synthesize and evaluate policies and ideas, while thinking critically of their own. Students will think and act through civic skills by deliberating with fellow citizens in and out of school to promote personal and common interests and making decisions through taking informed action. Students will, through this capstone process, through this additional credit, develop the necessary civic dispositions that affirm the very principles of the assessment and accountability system, as well as existing AP/IB, Honors programs and academies and the root goals of education--namely, exemplifying the moral traits of democratic citizenship through a conscious decision to promote equality, fairness, justice, and a commitment to the common good. Too often, instead of reflecting the dynamic nature of civic participation in society, civic education becomes the accumulation of knowledge through textbooks or demonstrated through multiple choice civics exams. The additional year of social studies, directed by a capstone project will allow for students to practice civic participation in an authentic manner, and will be a valuable assessment piece in determining students’ civic readiness where students can demonstrate with fidelity what no test can access. |
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