Reform and control: An analysis of SB 2042

Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2003 by Sleeter, Christine

California, the most culturally diverse state in the United States, leads the nation in developing a comprehensive system of content standards and assessment. In the 1990s, very detailed curriculum standards were developed, and in 2001, legislation created a seamless web of curriculum standards specifying subject matter content in every discipline forK-12 and university subject matter coursework, and standards for teacher credentialling and teacher induction. Teacher preparation programs had been publicly cast as "abysmal," "so the state decided to do for its [87] teacher programs what it did for K-12 instruction: construct a framework of standards that lay out what teachers must know and do" (Hardy, 2001).

There are indeed crises facing California schools. I will argue, however, that California's current reform effort has serious deficiencies that exacerbate some problems and simply ignore others. A caveat is in order. I do not believe that standards in and of themselves are necessarily bad. Strongly encouraging schools to set challenging academic standards for historically underserved children is very important; broad standards that serve as benchmarks can help do that. Problems arise, however, when standards become exceedingly prescriptive, and when testing is used as the main tool of school improvement. This article will focus specifically on four problems with California's reforms as pertaining to teacher education: silencing of debates about multicultural curriculum, promoting anti-intellectualism, creating a hierarchy of authority that locates communities at the bottom, and substituting an ideology of individual responsibility for addressing structural inequities.

Silencing Debates about Whose Knowledge Is Most Worth Teaching in a Multicultural Society

The last 35 years have witnessed vibrant debates about whose knowledge should be in the curriculum, beginning with the ethnic studies movement of the 1960s, followed by the women's studies movement, the disability studies movement, and exciting work in various other critical cultural studies. These movements challenged the dominant epistemology that assumes that knowledge produced scientifically is universal and has no particular location in lived experience. This assumption has produced the "view from nowhere" that proclaims itself to be true everywhere (Code, 1993). Dominant narratives in curriculum historically distorted, ignored, or undermined oppressed groups; scholars from marginalized communities have critiqued the embedded interests and worldview in those narratives (e.g., Said, 1994), constructed counter-narratives, and proposed various frameworks, models, and materials for reconstructed curricula (Banks & Banks, 1995; Sleeter & Grant, 2003).

Now, in an abrupt turn away from these debates and the fruits of this recent scholarship, California's new standards have taken debates over what to teach off the table. During the 1990s, the state adopted content standards and frameworks in the following areas: reading/language arts, history and social science, mathematics, natural science, and visual and performing arts. Under SB 2042, the new standards for teacher preparation and teacher induction make clear repeatedly that the role of teacher education is to prepare teachers to teach the state-adopted content standards using state adopted materials, and that teachers will be evaluated based on their demonstration of competence in delivering this curriculum.

The phrase "State-adopted academic content standards" appears 34 times in California's new Professional Teacher Preparation document, and 26 times in its new Professional Teacher Induction Program document. In the Multiple Subject Subject Matter Standards, the term "state content standards" appears only 11 times, but 29 of the document's 60 pages outline what they are. By contrast, the phrases "culturally relevant", "multicultural," or "justice" appear in neither the Professional Teacher Preparation document nor the Professional Teacher Induction Program document. "Bilingual" appears only once in a footnote, and "culture" appears only nine times total in both combined. This is one indicator of the extent to which debates about whose knowledge should be taught have been silenced.

Since the state-adopted content standards now drive the K-12 curriculum, teachers' undergraduate subject matter preparation, and the focus of credential and induction preparation, it is important to examine them critically. Elsewhere, I have examined the History-Social Science Framework and Standards for California Public Schools in relationship to seven analytic constructs found in ethnic studies, women's studies, and other critical studies (Sleeter, in press). They include: centering narratives, social construction of theory, colonialism, liberation from subjugation, social construction of identities, voice through the arts, and strengths of oppressed communities.

My conclusion was that despite a surface appearance of being multicultural, the History-Social Science Framework and Standards for California Public Schools is organized in a way that strongly prioritizes experiences and perspectives of traditional white, mostly male Americans, and that obscures historic and contemporary processes of U.S. and European colonialism and institutionalized racism. Its purpose is to attempt to detach young people from their racial and ethnic cultural moorings and connect them to a national and state identity that is decidedly rooted in European culture, and that champions individuality and the expansion of capitalism. In agreement with Symcox (2002), 1 found this set of academic content standards to reflect a highly assimilationist ideology, despite a veneer of pluralism. I have not analyzed content standards in the other subject areas for whose knowledge they champion. I am outraged, however, that after 35 years of research, debate, and political agitation to rethink knowledge from multicultural, ethnic, gender, and other critical perspectives, the state has simply announced that there is now consensus around what young people should know. Further, I am outraged that the state, through SB 2042, has configured the role of teachers and teacher educators as deliverers of that knowledge.