Are our Students Learning What They Need to Know About U. S. History | Eastern North Carolina Now

Even after spending a quarter of a million dollars

    Back in December Commissioner Hood Richardson raised an issue about a quarter of a million dollar grant the school system has to improve the teaching of U. S. History. The school system responded by, as Hood says, "flooding us with paper that meant very little." In an Open Letter to the School Board, Hood said: "My concern, and that of other commissioners, is not only whether our students are learning U. S. History but whether they are learning the right things in U. S. History. So that is why I asked for a report from the School Board." We still don't know the answer to those two questions." So the Observer went to work on those questions.

    Turns out Hood has good cause to be concerned.

    We got a copy of the grant (technically, the proposal that ultimately led to the grant award). You can read the entire document here. As you can see, the idea behind the grant is to help better prepare "25 self-selected high (school) history teachers and eighth grade social studies teachers..." to improve student performance on End-of-Course tests. The teachers take seminar courses during the summer.

    One of the issues Hood raised was whether the content of the seminars was appropriate. For that he got accused by School Board Chairman Robert Belcher of "trying to micromanage the school system." Turns out better management was indeed called for.

    The grant. says on Pages 5-6:

      During the three summers encompassed by the grant cycle (2008, 2009, 2010), the National       Humanities Center will help organize a series of three, five-day history institutes that integrate       resources from the following four NHC Seminar Toolboxes: The Triumph of Nationalism/The House       Dividing: America, 1815-1850; The Unresolved Conflict: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1851-1877       (Available 2008); The Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870-1912; The Making of African American       Identity: Volume II, 1865-1917. These topics were targeted based on disaggregated NC end-of-       course test data indicating low student knowledge of the period in American history between       1850 and 1917 in all four counties served by this project. (emphasis our's).

    If you want to see more about the NHC Toolboxes you may do so by clicking here. Not only does this link allow you to see the details about what each topic contains, you can also see the choices that were available.

    When Hood saw that the grant focused on the time period of 1815 through 1917 he questioned why the Founding Period, involving the period leading up to the American Revolution and the development of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, was excluded. That is when he was chastised by Chairman Belcher.

    So we asked that question again. We were told that the 1815-1917 period was selected, as the quote above says, because the test data showed students less proficient in that area than in the Founding Period. So we asked to see the data. We have made repeated requests and after nearly two months we have not been provided the data. We do not believe it existed at the time the grant was written (because of technical reasons that existed in the state's testing program at that time). But what we do know is that the school system has failed to provide the documentation to support the claim that, in effect, there was not as much of a need to focus on the Founding Period as there is on later periods. You will also note that the Toolbox "Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1789" was not available.

    So we took a look at the U. S. History textbook now being used at the high school level. As you can see from the Table of Contents an argument can be made that the Founding Period (Chapters 1-6) makes up about one-sixth of the content. But one might also just as easily argue that Chapters 5 and 6 (1781-1816) is a relatively weak treatment of what some would argue is the most important part of American History for Americans to understand.

    We then turned to the Standard Course of Study (SCS)--the state mandated curriculum--for Eleventh Grade U. S. History. And there we found an amazing fact.

    There are 54 objectives specified in the SCS for U. S. History. Only 3 of those objectives focus on the Founding Period (1789-1820). Being an old U. S. History teacher ourselves we were astounded.

    You should also know, at this point, that the End-of Course tests given in all courses are tied to these objectives. The more (or less in this case) objectives the more test items there are on the EOC. Of course we could not get access to the U. S. History EOC tests, but based on this information we would speculate that less 15% of the questions on the EOC test students' knowledge of what is arguably the most important part of U. S. History.

    Thus, it is theoretically possible that most of our students could have missed every single test item from Goal 1 and without the data on the items missed it is impossible for them to know whether the students have even minimal knowledge of the Founding Period.

    Even more astounding as you look at the content of the U. S. History objectives you find that the word "constitution" or its derivatives shows only one time in the entire U. S. History curriculum objectives! (Objective 12.02).

    So it would appear that the N. C. U. S. History curriculum does not teach much if anything about the development of or the content of the U. S. Constitution or Bill of Rights.

    Believing that this could not possibly be, we called the N. C. Department of Public Instruction. The nice lady we talked to would not talk to "a reporter" because their policy permits only the media person in that bureaucracy to do that. But she did tell us that the reason the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not covered extensively in U. S. History is "because we have a separate course in Civics that does that." Whew, we were relieved.

    So we took a look at Civics textbook and Tenth Grade Civics Standard Course of Study. And sure enough, the Constitution and Bill of Rights gets pretty heavy emphasis. We were relieved, but we wondered why that had not been the answer the School System gave to Hood when he raised the issue.

    So we started looking into the question of whether the EOC test data shows that our students are learning what they need to know about the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    What we discovered is that in 2009 one third of our students failed the Civics EOC. Ditto 2008. In 2007, 37% failed. In 2006 only a little more than half (58%) passed. So the data would suggest that from half to a third of our students don't learn what they need to know in Civics. And that is just measuring the minimum passing rate, not fluency of understanding.

    But we found another anomaly in both the Civics and U. S. History test data. There was significantly wide variance in the number of students being tested at each school each year. So we asked: "why is that?" We have yet to receive an answer. But we are suspicious. We suspect that some schools are playing a shell game. To improve the scores they move the courses with low scores later in the curriculum so the weak students who drop out will not be around to take those tests and pull the school's average down. We know they have done that with mathematics and it looks like they're doing it with U. S. History and Civics.

    So we asked the school system if they have ever done an analysis to see if there is a correlation between students who take Civics and how well they do in U. S. History. It's called a cohort ratio.

    Turns out they can't produce any such data either.

    So the theory that the Constitution and Bill of Rights is "not emphasized in U. S. History because they get it in Civics..." cannot hold water. They don't know whether that is true or not.

    Nor do they have any data on how big the "crack" is that students who drop out fall thru without learning what is taught about the Constitution and Bill of Rights-- the Founding Principles of our nation--before they drop out. And that is about a third of our students.

    Commentary

    Some, especially certain individuals in the school system (board), are prone to criticize Hood Richardson for raising questions about the quality of education our children are getting in the Beaufort County Schools (and how the School System spends its resources). This case perfectly illustrates, it seems to us, why Hood has good reason to question school officials. And the way they responded to his questions about the U. S. History grant is a rather astonishing example of nothing short of arrogant incompetence on the part of Chairman Belcher. He should have seen to it that the school system provided an appropriate response to Mr. Richardson.

    They spent $250,000--$10,000 per teacher--that is not going to address what is obviously one of the very important weaknesses in the system.

    The School Board approved a staff development activity and they have no data to show whether what they focused on was what should have been emphasized. Thus, the correct answer Mr. Belcher should have given to Mr. Richardson when he asked: "are our students learning about the founding principles of our U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights?" should have been: "we don't know." We have no doubt what Hood's next question would be: "so you mean you spent $250,000 and you don't know whether it was spent on what it needed to be spent on?"

    All students should learn the fundamentals of the founding of our nation. They should be knowledgeable of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That should go without saying, much less debate. And the school system should know how well they are accomplishing that task. Moreover, they should be very careful to see that the one third of our students who drop out are at least going to get some basic civics background before they slip through the cracks.

    And as an old U. S. History teacher myself, I have to question the idea that students can be expected to understand U. S. History without first having learned about the Founding Principles upon which our nation is based. You can't understand the Civil War unless you understand how federalism developed from 1776 until 1825. You can't really understand the causes of the Civil War (Missouri Compromise in 1820) without knowing about the 3/5 compromise in 1787. That's like expecting a student to know how to factor equations without knowing how to multiply fractions.

    I don't think our U. S. History teachers should be expected to teach a course that is built on the concept that students will have knowledge that they cannot be expected to know if the pre-requisite course is not available to them. No wonder our U. S. History EOC scores are so low. That is amazing to me, both as a history teacher and as a former high school principal.

    Now if the school system had good data to support what they were doing that would be one thing. But they don't. To write a grant that spent a quarter of a million dollars to fix a problem that they don't have the data readily available to support is .... well we'll leave it to you to characterize that.

    But we're still left with the corollary to Hood's question of whether our students are learning what they should be learning about U. S. History. The answer is: There is no evidence they are.

    So the corollary is: What does Beaufort County Schools intend to do about it?

    And no, Mr. Belcher, that is not "trying to micromanage the school board." That is pointing out the obvious. That is expecting the School Board to do its job of seeing that our students learn the important principles upon which this nation is based. And the School Board (chairman) has not done its job to see to that...and that is the chairman's responsibility.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.