The West Virginia Board of Education is scheduled to vote Wednesday on changes to high school social studies course requirements and other areas, though some proposals have been rescinded or further modified following a public comment period.
Unlike the version of the proposed new Policy 2510 that the board placed on a normal 30-day comment period in February, the new iteration attached to the board's meeting agenda would no longer allow high schoolers to take geography in place of a requirement for either world studies or any other Advanced Placement social studies course.
State Department of Education officials also have backed off on allowing students to use AP art history to substitute for one of the four social studies credits required for graduation.
AP courses are generally harder than normal high school classes, but can award students college credit if they perform well enough. As current policy requires, counties would still have to offer geography as an elective and could choose to offer AP human geography.
Matthew Cox, an AP European history and 10th grade U.S. studies teacher at Capital High in Kanawha County, wrote in a public comment that geography and world studies "are not close in their content coverage" and that world studies "is not simply a study of ancient history, it covers world forces that have shaped mankind and the United States," including revolutions, global trade and slavery patterns.
But Joshua M. Fix, who identified himself in the public comments as a Charleston Catholic High teacher, wrote that "while history is important, it cannot do what geography does in terms of real-world application of relevant skills, including cultural literacy, issues of religious conflict, development, etc. Geography is an interpretive application which focuses on 'why' things are 'where' they are."
Though the ability to substitute non-AP geography for world studies has been removed from the proposed policy, Cox criticized another new substitution that's still in the proposal: high schoolers could take U.S. studies-comprehensive, which covers all of U.S. history in one course, instead of U.S. studies, which Cox said has standards focusing on Jamestown to World War I.
"The suggestion of a comprehensive, one-year class taught at the general level creates a more rudimentary study of the nation's history," he wrote. "... Cramming four hundred years of history into a thirty-six week class for standard level students, would make it nearly impossible for social studies educators to teach their students to grasp the complexities of historical causation, to respect particularities, and to avoid excessively abstract generalizations."
Joey Wiseman, the state education department's executive director of middle and secondary learning, has said all the revisions included in the originally proposed version of Policy 2510 came from a group that included teachers, principals, superintendents and representatives of both higher education and Regional Education Service Agencies. He also said counties had requested flexibility to personalize student education.
Education department staff responses to the public comments do note that while U.S. studies-comprehensive has been added as a possible substitute for U.S. studies, the ability to replace either with just any AP social studies course has been restricted to specifically allow only AP U.S. history to take their place.
The current policy requires students to take contemporary studies - the course spanning World War I to the modern day - or a substitute AP social studies course. The new policy would relegate contemporary studies to an elective that counties still must offer, but which students could substitute with the economics or geography electives counties are also required to offer and other optional social studies electives like psychology.
In response to public comments on this issue, the education department added a footnote to the proposed policy saying "best practice encourages" students who opt for U.S. studies also take contemporary studies, thus getting a fuller span of U.S. history.
Cox told the Gazette-Mail that with the greater freedom for students to not take contemporary studies, "in some ways the policy diminishes the accomplishments of minority races, and also women."
The originally proposed new version of Policy 2510 would have also incorporated and expanded existing rules that enable students to receive high school music credit for working with private instructors. The rules would have been expanded to include other fine arts, like dance and visual art, but the new iteration of Policy 2510 would get rid of the private instructor credit pathway altogether.
"The original policy was put in place in 1983 when there were few to no offerings in schools for the Arts," Wiseman wrote in an email to the Gazette-Mail. "Since then all schools are required to offer various level of arts courses. The Arts professionals, certified teachers, and community members all commented and felt this policy was no longer needed and arts credits should be provided to students through certified professional instructors."
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.