Teachers, school officials, historians and advocacy groups are expressing anger this week after a new draft of the Virginia social studies standards appears to have largely thrown out a version of the draft that experts spent months developing.
“I don’t see this as a re-draft, I see this as a new draft,” said Norfolk State University’s Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a history professor and co-chair of the Virginia Commission on African American History Education. Newby-Alexander was involved in the development of the original 2022 standards which were released this summer.
“There are a lot of things that I find very problematic and concerning in this new iteration,” Newby-Alexander said. “First and foremost, because it is not a redraft, it is a new draft, it should go through the same process as the other one that was presented to the board.
