Is America a racist country? Or the greatest nation on earth? Or both or neither or some of each?
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s review of state standards for U.S. history and civics comes at a critical moment in American civic life.
A crisis like a pandemic can spark unpredictable changes in trends and behavior, like widespread mask wearing in the United States. But it also can accelerate changes that were already underway but otherwise would have taken root much more slowly.
I have such vivid memories of my first day of my first year of teaching. Kids filling into their desks—so many different personalities, moving pieces, things to keep track of. That first class seemed to both fly by and stretch on for eternity. At the end, I was wiped. I had no idea how I’d do this four more times that day and then 180 more times this year.
When history looks back upon the coronavirus period and its effect upon schools, one redeeming aspect may be the spotlight that’s been cast upon parental choice in all its forms.
Red, White, and Black is a collection of essays published under the aegis of 1776 Unites, the “radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic” initiative launched last year by the Woodson Center, a forty-year old Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit.
A few months ago I shared some reflections from Race to the Top and implications for this moment. As I am now supporting a number of state and district planning processes, the macro lessons hold true but I am struck by the degree of difficulty of the present task:
Sitting on a Boston city bus, I watched a mother with a young child. For the twenty-five-minute ride, they didn’t speak a word. No “Look at that little girl on the bicycle” or “We’re having pizza for dinner!” When you’re with a young child for that long, do you talk to her?
Like the cicadas now infesting the mid-Atlantic, debates over how to present American history and civics to our children come around with striking regularity. In the early 1990s, the focus was on proposed national standards for U.S. history, which the Senate eventually condemned with a vote of 99–1. A few years ago, the dust-up was over the Advanced Placement U.S. History course.
Today, forty-four states—plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam—have public charter school laws on their statute books, laws that have led to more than 7,500 schools employing 200,000-plus teachers and serving 3.3 million students.
Nearly three months have passed since the third round of ESSER funding was signed into law as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP). These dollars can be used for almost anything under the education sun, and most of them will flow directly to districts, but the limited set aside for states merits attention if only for the staggering scale of Uncle Sam’s total outlay.
Editor’s note: This was first published in Educational Leadership.
