RICHMOND — Beginning in April, the Virginia Department of Education plans to resume rolling out the long-awaited instructional guides that will prepare teachers to instruct students in the state’s updated history and social studies standards, the agency revealed Wednesday.
Educators have been waiting for some of the guides for nearly three months, a pause that prompted concerns about whether one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders focused on teaching history influenced any changes in Virginia’s teaching materials.
However, at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting, Interim Superintendent of Public Instruction Emily Anne Gullickson ensured board members and the public that the agency made no recent language changes to the history standards or the instructional guides. She said staff only added web links to primary and secondary sources to the instructional guides.
Gullickson, former deputy secretary of education, sat with the board for the first time at Wednesday’s work session, which had directed her to prioritize the instructional guidelines after she replaced Lisa Coons, who resigned nearly two weeks ago.
“We wanted to make sure that there was alignment with the clarity that really matches up well with Virginia’s guiding principles, which is nonpartisan, factual resources and the true telling of history, which is what this (department) has really prided itself on,” Gullickson said.
Education department staff members provided an overview of the gradual release of the instructional guidelines at the meeting and how the agency plans to help teachers get ready, noting that they had paused dissemination of the guides in December.
Public concerns about the guidelines and the standards grew after some education leaders noticed a change between the board-approved 2023 history and social science standards and the online versions, where “Indigenous Peoples Day” was missing from the Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 versions.
The agency has since fixed the issue and the observance is present in all the standards. Schools are slated to start teaching students using the updated standards in the 2026-2027 school year.
Sources added to instructional guides
The history instructional guides released between November 15, 2024, and December 5, 2024 now include additional resource links. These resources will help teachers access primary and secondary sources that confirm the facts of the teaching materials.
Web links to primary and secondary sources, including the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, were present in a history instructional guide released in November and a draft guide for civics and economics that the Mercury reviewed.
The agency said in its overview to the board on Wednesday that the instructional guides are “living, breathing documents that will continue to grow and undergo technical edits as well as expand the number of high-quality instructional materials” as it works with its partners including museums and other cultural institutions.
The agency also said it will provide in-person and virtual regional professional learning sessions from May through the fall to ensure that teachers and educational staff will learn about the instructional guides’ purpose, intention, structure, content and context for implementation.
Educators and advocates say standards’ implementation should be pushed back
Some education leaders called for a one-year delay to start teaching the updated standards, because they were concerned that the release of the instructional guides would be too late.
Danyael Graham, president of the Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium, signed a joint letter requesting a delay along with more than a dozen educational organizations, including the Virginia Association of Colleges and Virginia Association for Teaching, Learning and Leading.
Graham said some schools will be closing for the summer by the time the rollout begins. She said the current school year should have been when teachers could have tried out both the standards and the instructional guides.
With the instructional guides expected to roll out gradually starting in April and, the window for teachers to review the instructional materials before the next school year is tighter, she said.
“Our teachers are off contract over the summer. They shouldn’t be spending their summer trying to grapple with these 50 to 75-page guides,” Graham said, adding that the gradual rollout will greatly impact smaller school districts without dedicated social studies offices.
“It does not provide ample time to provide some sort of high-quality professional development,” Graham said. “This doesn’t feel very responsive to the needs of our educators, and the fact that they’re not even hearing the requests of 13 organizations is a bit concerning.”
Chris Jones, executive director for the Virginia Association for Teaching, Learning and Leading, asked “what is the harm” in delaying the rollout, considering some school divisions, teachers and schools are already preparing for the upcoming school year by collecting resource materials and coordinating professional development in May.
“I just think when we consider that the department has had two years to put the guides together, and then, essentially, for some of our school divisions, they will only have two months with the guides in hand, I just think it’s even further evidence that we’re simply not ready for an effective implementation of the standards,” Jones said.
Despite the request, the education department intends to proceed with its plan to launch the standards next school year.
“If we were producing standards right now and had not solidified those standards, that would be a completely different conversation for in terms of implementation timeline, (but) we are not moving the goal post,” said Board President Grace Creasey, an appointee of Gov. Glenn Youngkin. “This is just to support the instruction of the standards that we already have in place, so I don’t see that the board is going to do anything to change the timeline of implementation for the history standards.”
Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.
