RCAS leadership wary of proposed statewide curriculum standards

At a Jan. 31 study session, RCAS Interim CEO Nicole Swigart, the district's Director of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Valerie Seales, and three school board members questioned the new standards, especially how they were drafted and proposed. 

Drafting the new standards

When the South Dakota Department of Education will make a decision on the standards is unknown. Typically, South Dakota educational standards are evaluated every five to seven years. The current social studies standards were approved in 2015 and the revision process began in 2021. However, Gov. Kristi Noem ordered the suspension of the process that same year.

The original working group was formed similarly to the state's previous revisions through an application and nomination process then chosen by the Department of Education.

The 2021 revision work group had consisted of 40 to 50 educators from across the state and represented every grade level.

Instead, Noem replaced the work group with the Social Standards Revision Commission, of which its members were appointed through the Governor's Office.

In the Tuesday meeting, Swigart pointed out the 15-person committee included only two South Dakota educators — both of which have spoken out against the process.

"For our current standards, there were dozens of educators and a lot of training prior to going through the normal revision process versus these standards which were written and delivered to a 15-member committee, so there was no training," Swigart said. 

The working draft of the social studies standards was created by William Morrisey, a retired professor from Hillsdale College — a private conservative institution in Michigan. The state paid Morrisey $200,000 to develop the proposed draft.

When asked about this out-of-state intervention, Swigart compared it to how the state handled Common Core.

"Common Core, though we are not doing that anymore, came from out of state. The difference being when those standards were introduced, groups of trained educators came together to make them fit what we wanted in South Dakota," she said.

Past social studies committees would draft standards that are vertically aligned across grade levels to ensure topics are taught according to the appropriate stage of students' development. Swigart and Seales said no such consideration was included in the new proposal.

Differences between the standards

At the Jan. 31 meeting, a presentation slide of the two grade level subjects were shown side-by-side, comparing the current social studies standards with the proposed ones.

Swigart and Seales said the most notable change in the proposal standards would be their chronological study of subjects.

The presentation provided an example of how elementary students would learn American history. The current standards take into consideration a student's learning style based on understanding of topics for their age group — known to educators as "Bloom's Taxonomy," Seales said. The new standards however, rely entirely on a chronological presentation of history and do not take into consideration the student's ability to understand, she said.

The two administrators presented sub-points from the proposed standards, which were revised by the state Department of Education on Jan. 13. The Department of Education described the sub-points as "intended to provide clarity for teachers in their planning and instruction."

The sub-points from new standards suggest first-grade students be able to tell the story of the Punic Wars, Roman civil wars, and the triumvirates. Second-grade students should be able to identify the developments and achievements of the high Middle Ages, including the power of the papacy and the founding of mendicant orders.

Ryan Rolfs, executive director of the South Dakota Education Association, released a statement criticizing the new standards.

"The lower-grade standards call for a level of memorization that is not cognitively appropriate for our state’s early learners," he said.

During the Jan. 31 meeting, RCAS Board of Education member Michael Birkeland, a former math teacher at Central High School, offered first-grade math standards for comparison.

"Students can add and subtract within 20... and tell that a triangle is a three-sided, closed shape," he said. "These math standards give us an idea of, developmentally, where they're at."

Paying for the implementation

Swigart and Seales expressed budgetary concerns regarding the implementation of the proposed standards.

Noem allocated $800,000 from a 2021 initiative to provide support and technical assistance to schools in the state for the implementation. Seales said the allocation is not enough to pay for the changes in curriculum material and teacher training for the new standards.

"Our last secondary [schools] social studies adoption was in 2016," Seales said. "That middle school and high school adoption exceeded the $800,000."

The $800,000 wouldn't cover the expenses for RCAS, Swigart said, not to mention the state as a whole.

"Remember that training would also have a cost to the state, so that $800,000 would be spent very, very quickly," she said.

Implementing a statewide K-12 curriculum would cost between $2 million and $3 million, Swigart said. The excess cost of implementation not covered by the allocation would come out of the district's Capital Outlay Fund.

This would mean fewer dollars available for building improvements and maintenance, Swigart said.

If the curriculum was instituted, South Dakota would be the only state with such standards, Swigart said. This could cause issues with available materials and national testing proficiency.

"Curriculum companies have not yet written material that matches these standards because the curriculum doesn't exist anywhere else," Swigart said. "Regarding AP U.S. history and AP government — that test is not going to change for our students. That test is going to be a national test.

"That's going to cause our students and teachers to have to determine [if] they teach the South Dakota standards that are being brought down, or do they teach their students what they need to know to pass the test?"

The South Dakota Board of Education Standards will host the Feb. 10 public hearing on the new social studies standards in Rapid City. The hearing begins at 9 a.m. at the Rushmore Hotel, 445 Mount Rushmore Rd.

To sign up for public testimony, either in-person or on Zoom, persons must email Ferne.Haddock@state.sd.us.

Those interested must provide their full name, who they represent, agenda item they wish to address, and whether they are an opponent or proponent to the standards.