We'll teach shining shoes: Virginia school divisions responds to state-mandated standards

Journal of Social Studies Research, Spring 1998 by Fore, Linda C, Biermann, Melanie J

Abstract

Virginia recently adopted content rich cultural literacy standards for social studies and imposed those standards on local school divisions by way of a mandatory statewide assessment program. The new Virginia Standards of Learning represent a significant departure from the previous state curriculum, particularly in the elementary grades. Based on interviews with local curriculum specialists and assistant superintendents, this article reports on one phase of a research project which examines the implementation of those standards. The authors describe district level responses to state mandated curriculum,factors which impact those responses, and the difficulties of implementing the standards. Examining Virginia's standards-based reform also provides opportunities to ask questions about the standards movement itself, the quality of those standards, and the role that assessment should play.

Few would argue that the nation is currently in the midst of a standards frenzy, as educators, business interests, and policy makers search for the newest cure-all for public education. Commissions, committees and boards across the nation have attempted to identify the most important knowledge and skills that students should acquire as a result of schooling. The process of developing these standards has, at times, been difficult, as evidenced by the controversies surrounding attempts to develop national standards in English and in the social studies disciplines. There is also little consensus over how specific standards should be, whether they should be content or performance standards,and whether such projects should also include opportunity to learn standards (Marzano and Kendall, 1996). More importantly, as in the National United States History Standards project, citizens and policy makers have argued vehemently over what knowledge, and whose knowledge, students should be expected to master. It appears, at least in some curriculum areas, that controversy is inherent to the process of trying to develop standards.

As states also moved into the business of developing standards, the controversies endemic to the process followed. Virginia provides a striking example of how the controversies over national standards in the social studies disciplines have spilled down to the state level. In 1995, the State Board of Education, after more than a year of controversy and acrimonious debate (Fore, 1996), adopted specific content standards in the four core curriculum areas for the Commonwealth's schools. The controversies surrounding the Virginia Standards of Learning centered, as they did at the national level, on the standards in social studies.

While the professional literature has concentrated on the movement to develop standards (Lewis, 1995; Massell and Kirst, 1994; Nash and Dunn, 1995), less has been written about the process of implementing those standards projects. Based on the experiences of one state, the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of state-mandated curriculum reform in social studies on policy and decision making at the local level. Specifically, this project sought to examine how local school divisions would react to the new Standards of Learning in social studies. This article will briefly describe the debate over social studies curriculum in Virginia, including the differences between the previous state social studies curriculum and the new Standards of Learning. Finally it will explain the methodology of the study and identify and discuss the conclusions of that study.

Rejecting Expanding Horizons

Virginia's new social studies curriculum is a drastic departure from its predecessor. The previous Standards of Learning for social studies, adopted by the State Board of Education in 1989, were based on an expanding horizons framework, the typical scope and sequence for social studies. Introduced first in Virginia in the 1930s,expanding horizons, supported by textbook publishers, became, in effect a national scope and sequence (Ravitch,1988). Defining the purpose of social studies as the part of the school curriculum that prepares students to "participate in society effectively and responsibly" (Department of Education, 1989, p. iv), the 1989 Virginia Standards of Learning identified as goals of social studies instruction the acquisition of decision making and "problem-solving skills" (p.iv). Introductory statements for the standards document called for "paralleling learner objectives with current events or contemporary issues" as an "integral part of the program at each grade level" (p.iv). Goals for social studies also included the development of an understanding of self. Further, instruction was aimed at providing a framework of concepts which would serve as a basis for " continuous learning in history and the social sciences" (p.iv). More importantly, the 1989 Standards of Learning adopted the belief that, while the state should devise the "foundation upon which a sound curriculum may be built" (p.iv), it was the locality that should provide the specifics of the curriculum content. As such, the 1989 standards were descriptive, rather than prescriptive. The designers intended that the standards would "provide flexibility" and "utilize strengths of local curriculum" (p.iv). The standards were in other words, meant to serve as guidelines for curriculum development in Virginia's 137 diverse school divisions.