Connecticut Proceeding Full Steam Ahead in Building First Statewide Curriculum on Black and Latino History

Part 2

Connecticut is moving ahead with development of a year-long curriculum in African American/Black and Puerto Rican/Latino studies to be offered to high school students, in accordance with a new law – Public Act 19-12 - passed by the state legislature last year. The State Education Resource Center (SERC) is coordinating the effort, with a nucleus of five staff members supported by three people representing the State Board of Education and an Advisory Group numbering nearly 150 individuals with a broad range of expertise.

The Advisory Group, described by officials as “passionate, knowledgeable and stellar…including individuals who have lived the history,” has agreed on course objectives and is in the midst of completing the draft units of study.

Plans are for the draft of the model curriculum to be completed by the end of September, presented to the State Board of Education for feedback at the end of November, with any revisions that arise to be made and a final version to be presented to the State Department of Education by mid-December.

Local Boards of Education can offer the new curriculum to students as soon as the fall of 2021; they are required to do so by the fall of 2022, as the law states. Students are not required to take the course, although schools must offer it. Under current plans, still being finalized, the one-year course would be open to and encouraged for all students, with the suggestion that it be offered for Juniors and Seniors after completion of U.S. and World History, although it could be offered to any interested student in grades 9-12.

The Advisory Group includes numerous college and university presidents, Director of African American Studies at Central Connecticut State University, Associate Provost/VP for Equity and Diversity at Eastern Connecticut State University, and UConn Professors of Latin American and Latino Studies and other disciplines. Members also include the president of the CT Council for the Social Studies, directors of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, Students for Educational Justice, the UConn Hartford campus and Connecticut Humanities, and numerous historians, state legislators, retired and current high school teachers and district leaders, students and organizational leaders of various education organizations in the state.

Even as COVID-19 barraged the state, the SERC team on this project moved ahead with virtual focus groups, in concert with the Advisory Group, which has been working primarily through nine smaller committees. The Advisory Group’s initial meeting was held last November, and a second session in January. Plans for a March meeting were cancelled as COVID-19 hit Connecticut, replaced by a virtual meeting in May. Plans are now in place for meetings in July, September and November.

From March through the end of May, 12 focus groups were held, and in total the various committees met more than a dozen times. The Puerto Rican/Latino Content Development Committee, for example, met six times, the Infrastructure Support Committee and African American/Black Content Development Committee each met three times, and the Course Syllabus Committee met twice. Committees continue to meet; the African American/Black Content Committee meets next on July 7.

SERC also developed and conducted a Curriculum Survey, which brought responses from 350 individuals. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the responses were from teachers from a variety of districts and school sizes. Of those responses, 62% indicated readiness to teach the curriculum when it is developed and requested that comprehensive curriculum development and professional learning be provided.

A survey of 162 focus group participants, including three dozen students, brought suggestions for the group’s consideration. Among them: Include a deeper study of the subjects of the course; teach beyond the stereotypes; include a study of existing inequalities in American society; don’t just teach victimization: teach resistance; teach about racism as a social construct/institutional racism; Include varied backgrounds of Latin American countries; teach the “real” history: historical events from different perspectives; include an emphasis that differences are a strength - not a weakness; and include the state and local context.

Teachers, under the guidance being discussed, would be a member of the school staff rather than an adjunct or part-time instructor, to foster school-wide integration of the curriculum. If a qualified teacher is not available, hiring a qualified person of color would be highly recommended.

SERC is a quasi-public agency established by state statute to serve the Connecticut State Board of Education in supporting educational equity and excellence. SERC provides professional development and information dissemination in the latest research and best practices to educators, service providers, and families throughout the state, as well as job-embedded technical assistance and training within schools, programs, and districts.

The full-year course, as presently designed, would have a content focus in the first semester on African American/Black history, the second semester on Puerto Rican/Latino history. It is being built as a one-year, one credit course, consistent with the legislature’s intent.

Content objectives now being considered for the curriculum include:

Understand the construct of race, why and how it was developed.
Investigate the evolution and development of African American and Latino identities including intersections wit Indigenous and other identities.
Analyze how race, power, and privilege influence group access to citizenship, civil rights and economic power.
Examine the scope and legacy of resistance that has been integral to African American, Puerto Rican and Latino histories.
Articulate the integral role African American, Puerto Rican and Latino communities have played in shaping US society, economy and culture.
Reimagine new possibilities and more just futures for our country and our world drawn from the legacy of African American, Latino and Indigenous experiences, intellectual thought and culture.
Explore local and regional African American and Latino communities and compare/contract them with national histories.
Examine examples of African American and Latino action in addressing issues impacting their communities.
Identify resources and opportunities for active engagement, learning, and civic responsibility.
Use the inquiry cycle to take informed action.

In order to develop guidance for district and school level decisions to achieve consistent implementation across state, various infrastructure priorities are under discussion. Schools would be urged to follow the statewide model curriculum and maintain rigor, relevance, and relationships for students through instructional design. Interdisciplinary integration, guest speakers, and field trips to fortify learning would be strongly encouraged.

As part of the ongoing curriculum development effort, in recent months SERC staff members have reviewed curriculum from several other states, along with information gathered from nearly 20 school districts with African American or Latino Studies courses currently in place.

Connecticut’s law was approved unanimously by the State Senate and by a margin of 122-24 in the House, and was subsequently signed into law by Governor Ned Lamont on June 21, 2019. It reads, in part, “For the school year commencing July 1, 2021, and each school year thereafter, each local and regional board of education shall include African-American and black studies and Puerto Rican and Latino studies as part of the curriculum for the school district.”

NEXT: Looking ahead to the 2021 legislative session, when legislators will have an opportunity to review the new model curriculum for high school students, some education officials – and others - are giving thought to whether instruction on these topics ought to begin sooner than high school. That possibility is explored next, in Part 3.