Board of Education Considers Colorado Social Studies Standards

On June 9, the Social Studies Standards Review and Revision Committee presented its final recommendation to the Colorado Board of Education, suggesting curriculum changes that would exclude many explicit mentions of LGBTQ people and other minority communities.

The committee, comprising co-chairs Sarah Hurd and Jenny Pettit as well as 33 members who are primarily teachers, had been charged with revising current standards to comply with HB19-1192, a bill that passed the Colorado Legislature in 2019 and mandates that schools include minorities in social studies teachings, "including but not limited to the history, culture, and social contributions of American Indians, Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals within these minority groups; the intersectionality of significant social and cultural features within these communities; and the contributions and persecution of religious minorities," according to the bill.

In a draft presented in November, the committee had proposed an expansive list of minority groups and topics to be discussed, and that created some major blowback. "Numerous concerns were raised about the age-appropriateness of referencing LGBTQ in lower grades," according to a committee report, and as a result, it removed all references to LGBTQ below fourth grade in its revisions.

But Gillian Ford, communications director for One Colorado, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ Coloradans, and a member of the LGBTQ community herself, suggests that referencing LGBTQ people in lessons is not inappropriate, but rather a simple acknowledgment that the community exists. "We’re not talking about any sort of inappropriate dialogue," she says. "We are simply talking about acknowledging that your friend across that desk across from you has two moms or two dads. Children are aware of these things, and children are very perceptive."

Not learning about the LGBTQ community affected her life negatively, Ford says. She grew up in a conservative household in the Southeast, where she was taught that only heteronormative, cisgender relationships are acceptable. "Had I been exposed to it, had I been allowed to explore in the way we know a child can understand, I think it would have been a much healthier process for me growing up," she notes. Instead, all she knew was that exploring sexuality and gender identity was off limits, making the process of coming out in her twenties much harder.

When revising the November draft, the committee considered grade-level appropriateness, the applicability to the evidence outcomes or grade-level expectations, the availability or access to historical evidence that teachers would have in order to teach those topics, and public comment, according to Hurd.

The November draft had included this inquiry as part of fourth-grade history standards: "Why did people of various cultures such as African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ, and religious minorities migrate to and settle in Colorado?" The committee's current recommendation is to remove LGBTQ from that question "because it doesn't align with the inquiry question about migration and settlement," Hurd told the June 9 meeting.

Ford disagrees with this decision and said she has actually had historians reach out to her who are researching LGBTQ people in Colorado's history. "We do know they are a part of history," she said.

Genocide was also another area of discussion. "When the standards were revised and approved, it included a label with each of the genocides that said either ethnic or religious, and those labels have been removed," Pettit told the board. "Based on feedback from the Holocaust Museum as well as the Anti-Defamation League, the labels were viewed as oversimplifying the causes of genocide, and it could lead to historical inaccuracies."

But the board wasn't satisfied with this revised version, either. "I believe we as a board have a shared value, and that shared value is student safety and well-being. What that looks like, I don't think we agree on, but I think we have the shared value. When I looked at the changes the committee recommended, I don't think we hit the compromise correctly," said Colorado Board of Education member Rebecca McClellan.

Boardmember Steve Durham also expressed concerns regarding the 154-page document of standards and revisions. "I think by dealing with the volume of things...we really are not accomplishing the objective of teaching essential elements in American history," he told his colleagues. "We're trying to cram all of these things. ... It doesn't do any good to provide all this stuff in a history lesson if children can't read and understand what they're reading. There are only so many hours in the day, and so what are we going to try and accomplish in first grade?"

The recommendations are still subject to amendment by boardmembers, who will take a final vote in December.

In the meantime, see the recommended revisions in this document: Anything in black is the current standard, the red text was added in the November draft, and anything with a red line through it was proposed for deletion.