“You Can’t Say That!” Curriculum Control Policies in America by Melissa Zipper

The fight over the American public-school curriculum is a decades old debate (Shelton, 1979). At issue is not only what should be taught, but who should regulate that curriculum. Whether control is at the national level, the state level, or at the individual district and school level, teachers are often left wondering what control, if any, they have over the curriculum they teach in their classrooms. This issue is a nuanced one, with numerous factors leading to the creation of policies meant to control, suppress, and dictate what is being taught in American schools. The curriculum control bills introduced in Kentucky–my home state–and throughout the United States within the last year seem intent on maintaining the status quo.  With an increase in public awareness about the Black Lives Matter movement, and the murder of Breonna Taylor, locally, these bills are what lawmakers have served as a response.  Even more recently, the call from conservatives to ban drag shows for their supposed indoctrination of children has led to banning any talk around gender identity, and specifically banning transgender students the rights afforded to cisgender students in the classroom. My first instinct as an American, and as a Kentucky educator, is rage. However, by understanding the historical context around the issue of curriculum control and exploring the underlying ideology around the current policy efforts, we educators can arm ourselves for the fight ahead. We will be on the front lines of the battle over what we can and cannot say in our classrooms.    

Historical Framing of the Issue  

In order to understand the current issues being raised about the curriculum in public schools, one must first understand the historical context around this issue, especially within the last 50 years.  Until the 1980s, most of the debate about curriculum had been at the state level, with states and local school districts deciding on the curriculum, and educators enjoying relative freedom in what they decided to teach, so long as it was within the state and district constraints. However, if a teacher was to violate those constraints, the state would enforce a punishment.  Garber’s 1969 article, “Curriculum Control Belongs to the States, Court Hints,” discusses a case that an Arkansas teacher appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. The teacher at the center of the case taught a chapter from a textbook about evolution, which at the time, was in violation of a state statute. If a teacher was found using a textbook that taught “such doctrine,” (Garber, 1969, p.78) they would be fined and lose their position.  The Supreme Court ruled against the lower courts, citing the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the state decision was reversed, the majority opinion stated: “By and large, public education in our nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities. Courts do not and cannot intervene in the resolution of conflicts which arise in the daily operation of school systems…”  (Garber, 1969, p. 81).

A little over a decade after the Court declared state control over curriculum was routine, and federal control was unlikely, the rhetoric of the failure of America’s public schools as a whole began. Beginning in the early 1980s, the public perception about schools began to shift.  National reports claimed that schools were failing, and teachers needed to be held accountable (Hlavacik & Schneider, 2021).  It was no accident that policy makers capitalized on the language of failure.  Fowler (2013) states, “One of the best ways to draw attention to an issue is to associate it with a real or perceived crisis” (p. 165). Policy makers used this perceived crisis to set agendas in education policy (Hlavacik & Schneider, 2021), reforming issues that had normally been decided at the state level, like curriculum, and now putting it in the hands of the federal government.   

Current Efforts of Curriculum Reform  

Within the last year, news sources have printed headlines proclaiming: “Nearly a dozen states want to ban critical race theory;” “Four things schools won’t be able to do under ‘critical race theory’ laws;” and “Local school boards are banning critical race theory,” (O’Kane, 2021; Pendharkar, 2021; Sawchuk, 2021). Those same headlines have now made their way to my home state of Kentucky.  Senate Bill 1 states, “no public or public charter school offer[s] any classroom instruction or discussion that incorporates designated concepts related to race, sex and religion” (KY Legis. Assemb, 2022). The bill goes on to say that a penalty of $5,000 will be imposed on anyone who violates this bill, recalling the Arkansas ruling of over 50 years ago. Kentucky lawmakers are capitalizing on the racialized events of the past few years by making this their issue dujour.  As the history of education has shown us, the debate over public school curriculum is not new; what has changed is how that curriculum is named. Whether it is over foreign language in 1923 (Meyer v. Nebraska), evolution in 1968 (Epperson v. Arkansas), or ethnic studies in 2017 (Gonzalez v. Douglas) (Underwood, 2019), the underlying issue is control, and the deep ideological divide among the American people.   

Educators who deem to teach the history of our country, are positioned as out to destroy the public school system with their radical anti-racist ideas.  Senate Bill 1, and others like it, are ways of exercising power by restricting certain groups from being a part of the agenda setting and debate. A strong bias against the participation of teachers, and against any group who recognizes that marginalized Americans deal with systemic inequalities are being mobilized against participation in this debate. The power and capacity of educators is being dismantled instead of being built up.  

Future Policy Recommendations  

Teachers do have power as policy actors (Fowler, 2013).  One of the types of power include control over classroom, which is working to be destroyed by conservative policy actors. However, teachers can still mobilize against these policies.  Rogers et al. (2009) argue for teachers to join together as groups of professionals who “cycle through the stages of research, education, action, and reflection in a recursive manner” (p. 130).  They have seen success in teacher-led resistance to neoliberal policies like the expansion of charter schools and the privatization of education. Teachers can actively work with lobbying groups who represent their beliefs and will fight against curriculum control policies.

Teachers also have power over work stoppages and work slowdowns (Fowler, 2013).  Tactics such as those have already worked once before in Kentucky. The first “sickout” that Kentucky teachers staged was in 2018 when the previous governor, a Republican, introduced legislation around pension reform (McLaren, 2019). Since Kentucky teachers are not allowed to strike, a sickout was their only recourse. The sickouts required school districts to close, and the bill to eventually be dropped. The same could, and should, happen when it comes to curriculum control bills. Policy actors like the Kentucky Education Association and the Jefferson County Teachers Association should join with educators in this fight.  Instead of shying away from the role of education lobbyist, today’s teachers need to embrace this new calling.  

Finally, a focus on the root cause of why public perception of America’s schools is that they are failing, even when research shows they are not in any significant way (Hlavacik & Schneider, 2021), needs to be addressed. Educators have a responsibility to call out the political nature of the campaigns around failure, accountability, and curriculum control. The broader social inequities that undergird the public education system, and America’s social structure in general, are not being addressed by policy makers who introduce bills solely based on ideology.  If these root causes are not attended to, policies that are piecemeal instead of comprehensive, and ideological instead of evidence-based, will continue to be the norm. 

Conclusion  

History has shown that educators will always be involved in public policy, as schools in America are public institutions partly funded with taxpayer dollars. Due to this fact, many actors think they deserve to play a role in the policy that governs these public institutions, and in fact, it will take a concerted effort by all actors to create true education reform.  Deschenes et al. (2001) writes, “Humans have created the structure of schools and humans can change them, however much of the status quo seems to be etched in stone,” (p. 541).  The harsh and divisive political climate may seem bleak, but there is hope if educators arm themselves with knowledge about how policy is created, the many actors involved in the process, and what role they can take in shaping the next 50 years of education reform (Fowler, 2013).  Let our rage be the fuel that lights the path for the work to come.  

About the Scholar

References

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