After more than eight months of debate, the Virginia Board of Education reached a compromise and approved new guidance for what students will learn in history and social studies classes from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The board and Education Department worked through four versions of the standards, reviewed thousands of public comment submissions, and listened to days of debate over the best way to teach history in the commonwealth. They faced criticism for “whitewashing” history, prioritizing politics and acting without transparency.
The final contents of the standards reflect a more comprehensive approach to history. The standards will require, for the first time, that Virginia students to be taught about racism, and specifically they note that the country’s history is complicated and nuanced. But, the lengthy and contentious process to arrive at this version underscores the deep division and political tension coursing through education policy in Virginia and around the country.
“There’s no reason that this had to become as controversial as it became,” Board President Daniel Gecker said in Thursday’s meeting. “That having been said, I am looking forward as opposed to back. And I’m comfortable that the standards will meet the needs of Virginia’s children.”
A majority of the work before the vote came in a marathon session Wednesday as the board reviewed the standards line by line, bickering over technicalities until they reached a consensus. They easily made it through a bulk of the standards but hit a roadblock on the preface to the guidelines.
“I’m not surprised that the sticking points were mostly in the introductory preface because a lot of language there, it’s deeply inflected with partisan politics,” said Brendan Gillis, manager of teaching and learning for the American Historical Association.
Much of the debate centered on a line in the guiding principles that reads: “Teachers should engage students in age-appropriate ways that do not suggest students are responsible for historical wrongs based on immutable characteristics, such as race or ethnicity, or attributes such as economic class.”
That language matched the tone and vision set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who campaigned on an education platform in 2021 and used his first executive order as governor to ban “inherently divisive” topics from school curriculum and materials.
Anne Holton, who was appointed to the board by former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, opposed the sentence, arguing that it is the kind of language has been used in other states to limit what educators can teach about race.
“There’s a history to this history language, and it goes back to the myth that’s been promoted deliberately across the country by a number of groups, that teachers are routinely trying to indoctrinate students about Black history,” Holton said. “That teachers are trying to teach students that they should feel guilty based on their race, and that is a myth.”
The board, which is made up of a 5-4 majority of members appointed by Youngkin, voted to keep the language in the standards, but edited it to say: “Teachers should engage students in fact-based, non-ideological, and age-appropriate ways that do not imply students today are culpable for past events.”
“This is not political. We’re not going to be bringing a set of politics one way or another into the classroom,” said Youngkin-appointed member Andy Rotherham, who proposed the amendment. “If you read the plain letter of this you can see this applies in general, this doesn’t apply to one kind of kid or another kind of kid.”
The board was first supposed to vote on the standards in August, but board members raised concerns with the initial 400-plus-page version of the standards that had been developed over more than a year with dozens of collaborators.
In November, the Education Department proposed an alternative 53-page version of the standards that quickly drew criticism from left-leaning politicians and education advocates for placing less emphasis on marginalized groups and offering few details on who contributed to the new standards. The document included errors such as a characterization of Indigenous people as “immigrants,” and omitted references to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth holidays.
Jillian Balow, who resigned last month as superintendent of public instruction, had been directed by the board to resolve the errors and integrate content from the August draft. Balow came back with a third version of the standards in January.
The January draft resolved many of the errors. After the rollout of the January standards, the board held six public hearings across the state. More than 750 parents, teachers, activists and students packed the meetings, and nearly 300 people spoke. More than 1,600 people submitted online public comments.
A review of the in-person public comments submitted showed that more than 75 percent of 294 speakers voiced concern with or opposition to the January standards. Comments included concerns about the process that was criticized for not being transparent, calls that more history about diverse cultures be included, and uncertainty about some standards being too difficult for young students.
Wednesday afternoon’s line-by-line review was in part a response to those concerns. The board added a reference to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, added points on labor history and removed some of the name recognition standards that critics said would have required too much memorization instead of actual comprehension from students. They also broadened conversations of slavery, including mention of chattel slavery.
They also discussed syntax, sometimes getting bogged down by a single word, like a debate on whether fourth-graders would understand the term “disenfranchisement.”
“With a document like this, you’re talking about weeks of education over 12 years for 1.2 million students,” said Gillis, with the American Historical Association. “Every word, every line has a lot of significance.”
Despite the revisions and response to criticisms in the amended and approved version, organizations that opposed the standards remained dissatisfied. Virginia Education Association President James J. Fedderman said during public comment that while the final version was an improvement, the process and the standards were still flawed.
“As a Black man, as an educator, as a parent, these standards fail at every level. And while you can try to whitewash history, you can never whitewash me,” Fedderman said.
Fedderman urged the board to move quickly with next steps to give teachers enough time to adapt and adjust to the new standards before they go into effect in August 2025.
“This will remain an unpleasant memory for all of us, but we’re all resilient and we will get through.”
Now that the standards have been approved, the Education Department will have to develop a curriculum framework that serves as a more detailed companion document to the guidelines. New textbooks aligning with the standards will also have to be approved.
