Fairfax school leaders criticize inaccurate history standards.

Fairfax County Officials Dispute Proposed Virginia History and Social Science Standards

Fairfax County, Virginia school officials are pushing back on the state’s proposed history and social science standards of learning. They claim that some of the changes are misplaced at certain grade levels, inaccurate, or missing critical information. Superintendent Michelle Reid and Rachna Sizemore-Heizer, chair of the school board, expressed “significant concerns” in a letter they sent to state Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera and Virginia Board of Education President Daniel Gecker.

The latest proposed standards document, released in January, includes over 100 additional standards. Fairfax County officials claim that this addition will prompt “rote memorization for the sake of content coverage” and that teachers will find it challenging to cover more information without additional time to do so.

These standards are reviewed once every seven years, and the last revisions were in 2015. The Virginia standards of learning guide curricula decisions and determine what students should know at the end of certain courses. The November 2023 draft of the standards drew backlash for not including important holidays (such as Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day) in elementary education concepts. The latest version, released in January, prompted significant concerns from Fairfax County leaders.

The latest proposed standards increase the number of history standards from 737 to 869 total concepts and sub-standards. Fairfax County officials argue that this leads to “content knowledge that is unrealistic, unsustainable, and presents standards that teach students what to think, not how to think.” One such example of this is a proposed standard that would require fourth-grade students to memorize all eight Virginians who have been elected president and their spouses.

Fairfax officials also express concerns about when certain concepts are taught. For instance, a proposed standard requires second-graders to understand the Louisiana Purchase, which officials deemed “complicated for a 7 or 8-year-old child.” Another proposed standard requires second-graders to interpret the state seal on the Virginia state flag. Officials argue that this is “far too complex for students to understand in terms of needed context and background knowledge and presents an additional challenge of exposing 7 and 8-year-old children to depictions of nudity, political violence, and assassination.”

Some of the proposed changes replace Indigenous Peoples Day with Columbus Day. Additionally, Christmas has been added to kindergarten through second grade without the inclusion of other religious holidays practiced by the Commonwealth’s diverse people. Another issue is that one proposed standard about notable African empires fails to mention Songhai and has “awkward wording which aligns enslaved people with objects like gold, salt and food which dehumanizes those from the African continent and minimizes the accomplishments of African nations.”

The letter also notes that standards covering labor unions, strikes, and changes in working conditions have been deleted. The term fascism has also been eliminated from the standards, which the letter argues is “essential to any understanding of the Second World War.”

Several Virginia agencies and experts have expressed similar concerns with the proposed standards. The Board of Education will review them in August.

**Key Takeaways:**
– Proposed Virginia history and social science standards of learning are being disputed by Fairfax County officials.
– Some of the changes include misplaced information, inaccuracies, and missing critical information.
– The addition of over 100 standards has prompted concerns of rote memorization and teachers’ ability to cover the information.
– Certain proposed standards are seen as too complicated for children to understand and could expose them to sensitive topics.
– There are issues with replacing Indigenous Peoples Day with Columbus Day, the exclusion of other religious holidays, and dehumanizing language in proposed standards.
– The term fascism has been entirely removed from the standards.
– Several Virginia agencies and experts have expressed similar concerns.

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