Teaching history. Don't worry about the NAEP scores.
There was a brief media concern with curriculum last week when the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released their Social Studies results.
Civics and U.S. history scores on the NAEP showed significant declines for 8th graders in both subjects.
Without going into once again about the problems with how NAEP scores are used and misused, what the NAEP doesn’t do is go into the reasons scores go up or down.
Was it Covid?
Too much emphasis on math and science at the expense of social studies in the school curriculum?
The impact of No Child Left Behind?
Was it rooted in poor reading instruction? Yes. We are debating again the false choice between phonics and whole language.
Sigh.
There were a million reasons suggested.
I don’t know the questions on the NAEP.
But I do know that in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and several other southern states MAGA legislators are passing laws that prohibit the teaching of the historical facts.
These laws are designed to keep white students from allegedly feeling guilty about the racist and misogynist conduct of their ancestors toward the indigenous in the Americas, Native-Americans in the United States, enslaved Africans in America, and women in the U.S.
I have never noticed an abundance of guilty feelings about all that and that’s not the purpose of teaching anyway.
Teaching and learning is about changing behaviors.
If you are a public school teacher in one of the states that enacts one of these “anti-woke” or “don’t say Gay” laws, you have to be concerned that reading, sharing, and/or teaching these true historical facts may subject you to the risk of a criminal prosecution in state court and imprisonment.
If you are a public school teacher in certain states, you may be jailed for teaching the documented historical facts.
In 2022 a proposed law opened Kentucky teachers up to criminal charges for teaching history outside the boundaries of a new state law.
A portion of Senate Bill 1 was written in such a way that violations could result in Class A misdemeanors. Educators found guilty would also be barred from teaching for five years.
I would think that might negatively impact scores if relevant questions were asked on the test.
If you are going to spread a calumny, then you ought to expect to be challenged. I checked your link. It simply elaborates on the original slander. Nothing in it goes beyond opinion. I'm sure the author agrees with you, but there are no facts cited which could be checked.
You ought to have done better. If you think the other person is guilty of something and you say so in print, then you should be ready to document the truth of your assertions
If you can't do that, you should look for a graceful way to retract. It isn't up to the other party to prove his innocence.
I had always assumed that Southern schools would teach a sanitized version of slavery. I took that for granted.
I was very surprised on the other hand to learn that my father's family were "settler colonialists" because they went west.