To be sure, there has already been considerable controversy about attempts to revise Kentucky’s public school social studies course standards.

The squabble started in the Kentucky Board of Education’s October 7, 2014 meeting when a proposed revision to the social studies standards was severely criticized by Kentucky’s History Teacher of the Year, Donnie Wilkerson. Wilkerson aggressively charged the proposal was “devoid” of content and also ignored the best research on teaching. Adding more fuel to the fire, Wilkerson also said the first group of teachers assembled to create the revision was disbanded by the Kentucky Department of Education when those teachers would not go along with the very poor approach to social studies that the department’s staff favored.

Following that October 2014 meeting, the board got a lot of negative feedback. The Lexington Herald-Leader even ran a story about the troubled standards which showed educators in Fayette County Schools also shared reservations about the proposal.

In addition, I located the state’s Kentucky Core Academic Standards for June 2013, which contain the state’s current social studies standards. I looked for a few keywords and concepts in the current standards that were missing in the new ones. Some of those omissions are really disturbing.

For example, while specifically listed in the state’s current social studies standards, the proposal astonishingly omits the:

• “American Revolution,”

• “American Civil War,”

• “World War I,”

• “World War II,”

• “Vietnam” and the

• “Persian Gulf War.”

Some other astonishing omissions include:

• “Bill of Rights,”

• “Preamble to the U.S. Constitution,”

• “Kentucky’s Constitution” and even

• The “Declaration of Independence!”

Clearly, Teacher Wilkerson was right on target when he said the proposal was “devoid” of content.

There was enough negative feedback that the proposed social studies standard was pulled back for more work. That work included the opening of a short public comment period at the end of 2014.

For months thereafter, nothing more was publicly released about the standards.

Then, a short time ago, I discovered by accident that the department had established a “Proposed Social Studies for the Next Generation” Web page with links to a revised social studies standards draft dated March 2015.

However, when I looked at the revision, it didn’t seem very different from the one presented to the Kentucky Board of Education back in October 2014. Teacher Donnie Wilkerson confirmed that the changes in the new, March 2015 document were minor.

The department’s staff had added something to the mix, however, called “Considerations for Curriculum Development.” I looked these over, but they are nothing more than suggestion lists of things that social studies teachers might choose to cover in their classes. The CCDs, as they are being called, are not mandatory and won’t be used to create the new social studies tests. In essence, as far as the standards are concerned, the CCDs don’t exist and many students in Kentucky will probably not be exposed to these outside-of-the-standards concepts. The CCDs mostly look like a smoke screen to cover the fact that the March 2015 version of the social studies standards revision remains devoid of content.

What is worse is that the staff at the Kentucky Department of Education isn’t getting the message; Kentuckians want real, high quality social studies standards like those in Massachusetts.

A document devoid of content is not acceptable.

In any event, the general public is going to get another chance to tell our state’s educators that eliminating things like all references to every war this nation ever fought is not acceptable in the standards that will drive what our kids learn about history during their public school years. I learned last week that a new “Challenge” is underway to get public feedback on the social studies revision. While there has been no official public announcement about this for reasons I don't understand, click the “Read more” link for the announcement that was sent to Kentucky’s public educators nearly a month ago.

The announcement of this new “challenge” comes from the Commissioner’s “Fast Five” e-mail from June 26, 2015. It has the link you need to respond.

KDE Seeking Feedback on Revised Draft Social Studies Standards

The Kentucky Department of Education is seeking feedback on proposed Social Studies Standards. As a result of previous feedback collected through December 2014, storylines preceding each grade level page of standards and 30% (52) of the proposed standards were revised to better capture the vision and outcomes for each grade level. Though this set of standards has met the criteria called for by Senate Bill 1 (2009) and has involved Kentucky educators throughout the drafting and revision process, it is time to seek additional feedback to inform next drafts/steps in the process of adoption into Kentucky’s required Academic Standards.

Through Wednesday, September 30, all who are interested are invited to review the proposed standards in social studies and share feedback and suggestions that may be used to refine them prior to final consideration for adoption. Feedback and comments will need to be thoughtfully considered and any needed revisions made before bringing forward a final set of proposed standards to the board for action during the 2015-16 school year.

To provide feedback on the draft Social Studies Standards, please use this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/kyss2015.

Questions on this process can be directed to Karen Kidwell at karen.kidwell@education.ky.gov.

Here are some other useful links you might want to check before you respond:

Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework – Don’t let the name “framework” confuse you. The Massachusetts Department of Education is quite clear that the material is fair game for the state’s assessments, which makes this standards material.

Kentucky Core Academic Standards June 2013 – This contains the state’s current social studies standards, which are certainly better than the proposal though far inferior to those from Massachusetts.