Miss. Dept. of Education proposes new changes for academic standards for social studies

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Ahead of the 2022-2023 college yr, the Mississippi Department of Education unveiled proposed changes to the academic standards for social studies.

The 309-page doc particulars revisions made in direction of the fabric college students are anticipated to study that topic.

“The initial reaction was these are a lot of changes,” stated Chauncey Spears, Educational Policy Analyst of the Mississippi Center for Justice. Spears used educate social studies and spent greater than a decade working with MDE.

He admits the proposal leaves him with extra questions than solutions. 

“We were primarily concerned with why the changes were being made, and how more people can have a stronger voice in structuring the social studies education in classrooms, in public schools, in their communities throughout the state,” stated Spears.

One potential change that caught Spears’ consideration is listed on web page 200 of the doc.

The earlier goal acknowledged was for lecturers to show college students “names of important people of the modern Civil Rights Movement, including Mississippians. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Charles Evers, etc.”

The newly proposed revisions would solely require lecturers to “identify important people of the modern Civil Rights Movement, including Mississippians.”

Another instance of the changes highlighted within the proposal –  the earlier goal was for lecturers to show college students to “examine the Southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms, including: Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, Ku Klux Klan, etc.”

However, the new revisions would solely require lecturers to “analyze Southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms.”

As a outcome, lecturers gained’t be required to show about occasions or folks not listed within the new proposal, which Spears stated is regarding.

“If specific actors and events in our state’s history, or in American History, or how we see civics, etc., are not explicitly listed in there, it is up to the teacher, and up to the teacher’s professional judgment, and that may be subjective on some levels,” Spears expressed.

MDE issued a press launch on the proposed changes and stated greater than 40 Mississippi educators helped craft the revisions.

“Academic standards outline the skills and knowledge expected of students in each grade and subject. Local school districts set their own curriculum,” the press launch acknowledged.

MDE will now have a public listening to permitting folks to weigh in on the proposal, a listening to Spears and the Mississippi Center for Justice requested.

”And there could also be believable explanations, we simply didn’t see them within the doc,” Spears defined. “We hope to get insight into why some of the changes were made, and how some of the things that seem to be taken out are going to be incorporated into the instruction, and how those things will be protected so that the teachers and the students can learn about those things, have those discussions, have those free-flowing ideas in those classrooms.”

If anybody needs to talk on the listening to, you could register by 9 a.m. on January 25.

Speakers are anticipated to handle the content material of the Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards for Social Studies 2021.

The listening to will happen at 9 a.m. January 28 on the Mississippi Agricultural Museum Sparkman Auditorium in Jackson.

If the revisions are authorized, the standards would go into impact for the 2022-23 college yr.

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