Letter to the VBOE: Endorsement of H/SS Collaborative Draft

Forward Albemarle

January 27, 2023
Dear Members of the Virginia Board of Education,

Forward Albemarle is a group of parents, educators, students, and community members who support public education in Albemarle County. Forward Albemarle's primary purpose is to promote social welfare by advocating for excellence, diversity, equity, and inclusion in Albemarle County Public Schools and to support the teachers and staff of ACPS in their mission of educating students.

On December 20, 2022, a joint working group of the Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium (VSSLC), the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (VASCD), and the American Historical Association (AHA) released a proposed draft for Virginia’s History and Social Science Standards. We strongly believe that this Collaborative Draft reflects the Virginia Board of Education’s November 2022 charge to develop a standards document that marries the best of the August and November standards drafts with public comment.

The standards in the Collaborative Draft are inclusive in their reflection of a diverse range of perspectives and exemplary in their commitment to Governor Youngkin’s charge to tell the entirety of Virginia, United States, and world history. In contrast, the draft presented to the Board in January by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) includes several glaring mistakes (such as stating that the Marshall Plan helped rebuild Japan and grouping the founding of the NAACP with Reconstruction, among others) and omissions (such as Indigenous People’s Day, the term “fascism,” the five themes of geography, and the history of labor), undermining its credibility as a set of professional standards of learning.

The Collaborative Draft standards are first-in-class and will serve families, students, and teachers across the Commonwealth well for the entirety of their implementation. The January draft standards mandate a specific course sequence that could cause major disruptions for courses in grades 4-9. If adopted, this would move middle school courses to elementary schools, and high school courses to middle school. This carries the very real potential to create significant stang issues at a time when the teaching profession is already under considerable strain. The altered sequence of courses will also negatively impact students who are already in the middle of a particular course sequence.

Further, the standards within the Collaborative Draft foster the development of historical thinking skills as complementary to the acquisition of important historical content knowledge. These skills will be critical in ensuring students develop and master the VDOE’s Profile of a Virginia Graduate and the 5C’s (Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Citizenship). The January draft standards, on the other hand, include an excessive amount of required content that cannot be reasonably taught in a given school year. These standards will lead to increased focus on rote memorization at the expense of deeper learning, understanding, and skill development.

As Forward Albemarle Board members and parents of students in Albemarle County Public Schools, we, the undersigned, firmly believe that with its commitment to rigorous standards for content knowledge and the development of historical thinking skills, the VSSLC/VASCD/AHA Collaborative Draft of the Virginia History and Social Sciences Standards of Learning represents a balanced and fair compromise whose development reflects the very critical thinking, collaboration, and citizenship skills that we should be modeling for our students.

We believe that the Virginia History and Social Sciences Standards, as written in the Collaborative Draft, will help move history and social science instruction forward in our great Commonwealth and we strongly encourage their adoption.

Thank you for your consideration, Sarah Harris

President

Chris Seaman

Treasurer

Mary Nacey

Secretary