Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Sandy Creek teacher: Ga.’s new history curriculum far from best

The Atlanta Journal & Constitution recently reported, “During an hourlong discussion, the state board [of education] put together a public statement that calls for all areas of the state’s new curriculum to be world-class, beginning with the full inclusion of the recognized national standards in each curriculum area.”

I applaud this statement because I believe it reflects an honest desire on the part of people in positions of authority to improve the quality of public education in Georgia’s schools for all of our children.

Having said that, I would respectfully suggest to the people in positions of authority that the best way to achieve a curriculum that is world class is by emulating those states that have achieved the greatest success.

Taking this logic one step further, I believe that the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is the nationally-recognized benchmark used by most experts in assessing the quality of a given state’s educational system, be used to identify those states that are the very best.

In the 2002 election, Republican candidates for governor and state school superintendent made Georgia’s dismal showing on the SAT a key issue in their successful campaigns. In 2003, Georgia finished 50th out of 50 states when the SAT scores were released. On average, Georgia students underperformed the nation by 122 points.

Since I teach high school history, I am particularly interested in the standards that impact my own discipline. Recently, State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox unveiled the new history standards for kindergarten through grade 12. While Superintendent Cox described these standards as “world class,” others criticized the standards, suggesting that they represent a step backward rather than a step forward.

McIntosh High School’s Joseph Jarrell concludes that our proposed high school history curriculum is “nothing more than a dumbing down of world history and U.S. history courses.”

Georgia State University’s Clifford Kuhn states, “In addition to their dubious ideological underpinnings and associated teaching exercises, many of the standards suffer from unclear, sloppy phrasing and just bad history.” So, who is right?

In an effort to make sense out of the proposed high school history curriculum, I recently attended a social studies conference eager to learn what research our own state had done.

At this conference, the state’s coordinator for social studies education was asked which states Georgia had based its history curriculum changes on. She cited three states.

I researched how these states actually performed on the most recent Scholastic Aptitude Test by going to the website for The College Board and printing the results of the 2003 SAT for all 50 states. Two of the three states in question finished in the bottom five while all three states finished in the bottom 15.

Given that our state Department of Education’s curriculum changes were announced after these results became public (Aug. 26, 2003), I am left wondering why Georgia would model its history curriculum on three states that performed so poorly?

Suspecting that I lacked the wisdom and judgment of our state’s elected leaders and their trained bureaucrats, I went to websites of several of the departments of education of those states that finished in the top 10 on the SAT to compare their curriculum with Georgia’s.

When I examined their high school history curriculums, I could not help but be impressed by how much better their standards were than ours.

In states finishing at or near the top, standards were expressed with a clarity and coherence sorely lacking in our own state’s high school history curriculum.

These top-performing states standards do not suffer from what Clifford Kuhn describes as “unclear, sloppy phrasing and just bad history.” Rather, they outline a sweeping vision of what their students need to know and what it will take to teach it to them. Most importantly, these states set high expectations for all students, which is something I believe our proposed high school history curriculum fails to do.

I do agree wholeheartedly with Superintendent Cox when she states, “Yes, there has been a ‘dumbing down’ of Georgia’s students; it has been taking place over the last 20 years.”

If, however, we are to end this “dumbing down,” the question we need to be asking is: Why not the best?

I question the logic and the wisdom of a high school history curriculum that omits so much historical content of such critical importance such as all history prior to the age of exploration in world history and the period from the origins of our nation to the end of reconstruction in U.S. history.

Our state superintendent writes, “We have incorporated more world history than ever before.” What she fails to explain is why high school history teachers, such as myself, who have taken graduate-level courses to develop our knowledge base and enhance our students’ understanding, are being asked to teach less while elementary teachers, who have less background in these content-rich subject areas, are being asked to teach more. I do not see this same logic at work in those states whose performance puts our own to shame.

Having had the privilege and the honor to teach some of Georgia’s young adults, I believe them to be capable of rising to whatever challenges we set. It is the job of our elected leaders to set the bar as high as possible. We should not settle for moving from 50th place to 49th, or 48th, or even 47th. Yet this is what I fear will happen if we emulate those states whose own practices place them near the bottom.

We can do better. Our elected leaders can do better too. The time to begin is now. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Let us think anew.” The state Department of Education needs to set high expectations for all and the place to begin is with a comprehensive examination of the standards and tasks outlined by those states that have already made excellence their benchmark.

Tony Pattiz

Peachtree City, Ga.

[Pattiz is social studies chairperson at Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone, Ga.]