Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased?

A journalist I have known for decades and have great respect for recently asked me a question that required me to think, click on a bunch of websites, and re-read the work of a popular historian who died in 2010.

The Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews has written about education for nearly a half-century.* He emailed me the following question:**

Hi Larry—I hope you are well. In any of your wonderful excursions into actual classrooms, have you ever tested the thesis that US history teaching has gotten kind of lefty in recent decades? I think it’s untrue but I have no data.—jay**

Here is my response to Mathews:

Hi Jay,
Hope you and your family are in good health.

When I got your query, Jay, I looked up the most obvious “lefty” influence insofar as textbooks and readings are concerned: Howard Zinn and his People’s History.

The Poynter Institute  did a piece on Zinn’s influence on teaching U.S. history in 2015 (see: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/apr/15/rick-santorum/book-howard-zinn-most- [politifact.com]  ). There is no data on how many teachers in U.S. public schools use the book, popular as it has been since CONTINUE READING: Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Improve Reading Achievement. Teach More Social Studies | Live Long and Prosper

Improve Reading Achievement. Teach More Social Studies | Live Long and Prosper

Improve Reading Achievement. Teach More Social Studies

OUR STUDENTS/SCHOOLS AREN’T FAILING

Using the “failing schools” trope has long been a tactic of school “reformers” to claim that privatizing education is necessary. It was called out again in an article in Hechinger Report where we were told that…

Only a third of American students are reading proficiently at grade level, according to national benchmark tests.

(The article continues by suggesting that the failure to teach phonics is the reason for the poor test scores, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

This description of the apparent desperate condition of the nation’s readers comes from the NAEP test, the Nation’s Report Card. Diane Ravitch, a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board, has frequently reminded her readers that “proficient” on the NAEP is equivalent to “a very high level of academic achievement,” like a grade of A, and that a score of “basic” is not terrible.

When I served on NAGB for seven years, the board understood very well that proficient was a high bar, not a pass-fail mark. No member of the board or the staff expected that some day all students would attain “NAEP Proficient.” Yet critics and newspaper consistently use NAEP proficient as an indicator that “all students” should one day reach. This misperception CONTINUE READING: Improve Reading Achievement. Teach More Social Studies | Live Long and Prosper