Despite over a thousand opposition comments submitted online, and dozens of educators voicing their opinions at four public hearings, the state Board of Education Standards approved new social studies standards on Monday. Those standards go into effect in two years.
Joe Graves is the secretary of the Department of Education. Looking ahead, he said don’t expect these standards to change much.
“There’s always room for standards to change, but its not very likely," Graves said. "Basically, we’ve been through a year-long process on this and adopted them. Frankly, I think these are pretty much stable now, and we’ll be perusing them and training in them, and if we find an area we need to boost or something then we can come back. But that would be a minor change, and there probably won’t be any changes at all between now and the next two years.”
Graves said the next steps begin this summer.
“The state is going to be launching an implementation process," Graves said. "This is a voluntary process, school districts can engage in all of our activities or none of them, or some but not all – however they want to do that. We’re adjusting the content of these now that the standards have been implemented, we planned to do these things no matter what standards were implemented or passed.”
That process involves a new social studies summit, scheduled for June in Sioux Falls.
“This will occur in June 23 and June 24 with the social studies summit," Graves said. "We’re going to be having lots of speakers and breakout sessions and historical reenactors and other activities. The idea is to give people more background in American history and civics.”
Along with the summit, the state has “road trips” planned across West and East River over the next two years that will further inform the implementation process.
