Is Mississippi really removing civil rights history from its teaching standards?
In recent months, conservative lawmakers and leaders alike have vowed to ban critical race theory from being taught in Mississippi’s public schools.
So when a Twitter user pointed out in late December that the Mississippi Department of Education had quietly proposed changes to the state’s social studies standards, many expressed their dismay at the new language.
For example, an objective for fourth grade teaching on civil rights that previously said, “Name important people of the modern Civil Rights Movement, including Mississippians. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Charles Evers, etc.” would now say, “Identify important figures of the modern Civil Rights Movement including Mississippians.”
An eighth grade objective that reads, “Examine the Southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms, including: Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, Ku Klux Klan, etc.” would change to “Analyze southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms.”
In Mississippi, public schools follow standards that outline learning objectives and subject material by grade level. Social studies standards are broken into five categories described as strands: history, civics, geography, economics, and civil rights.
At a Dec. 16 meeting for the state Board of Education, members approved the first step in revising the standards. It was approved in a block without discussion, a standard practice from the board on this kind of item, but all the proposed changes are included here.
The 309-page document has many changes like this across the strands, which remove specific names or descriptions for broader, more vague terms. There are also verb changes, like swapping “describe” to “determine how,” or “explain” to “contrast.”
On social media, people questioned why these proposed changes weren’t announced or discussed by the board. Some called the move cowardly, others disturbing, and one person even described the new language in the document as fascism.
The pushback was so strong that on Wednesday, the department announced it would hold a public hearing on Jan. 28 for concerned individuals to address the changes.
Chauncey Spears is the education policy specialist at the Mississippi Center For Justice, which was in the process of trying to get a public meeting with MDE before they announced the January event. A former social studies specialist at the department, Spears said he and his organization want to understand the “academically defensible” reasons for the changes and ensure the public gets a say.
“We would think a document like this that serves as the basis for instruction in classrooms would need to have some sort of consensus about what history instruction would look like in order to ensure, or at least hold to account educators around the state to render a full and honest teaching of the history of the state,” Spears said. “Because if it’s too broad, then you run the risk of teachers looking at these different events in history and depending on the level of comfort and expertise in some areas, students not learning about some things.”
In an interview with Mississippi Today, MDE officials who worked on these changes said this is a process that’s been going on for more than a year, and anything removed from the standards will exist in a separate document. The social studies standards in place now were created in 2018 by a 35-member committee comprised of educators in public schools, MDE and individuals who worked in the Research and Curriculum Department at Mississippi State University.
The state has revised these standards before, once in 2006 and again in 2011, according to Wendy Clemons, executive director of the Office of Secondary Education and Professional Development at MDE.
In November 2020, the department assembled a group of U.S. History teachers who were on that 2018 committee to create additional documents for educators to use, said Jen Cornett, director of social studies at MDE. What was supposed to be a midterm review of the standards grew into a new committee to update the standards themselves, Cornett said, after the department received feedback from those educators.
Cornett said she’d heard from teachers that the social studies standards from 2011 were too broad, so what was adopted in 2018 included a lot more specifics. When educators tried to put the new standards into practice, they found “the pendulum swung too far,” Cornett said.
Soon the work spread to a full committee, and in August and September 2021 the group worked through the many proposed revisions to the current standards. These standards exist for teachers to use as a framework to identify learning goals for their lessons, rather than a mandate for what should go in every lesson.
“With our 2018 document, it was so content heavy that the teachers found it challenging to simmer down what the point of the students’ lesson should be,” she said.
Thus, the changes were made. The goal was not to add content or take anything away, she said. “We just cleaned things up.”
Additionally, information that is removed from the existing document will be included in a separate instructional planning guide the department plans to publish in May of this year, she said.
“When you see that information may be pulled from the document, it hasn’t gone away,” she said. “It’s just going to be presented in a more effective way to teachers.”
Kenneth Anthony, a Mississippi State professor of elementary education and a committee member who reviewed the 2021 standards, said that Mississippi’s social studies standards are not as prescriptive or descriptive as other states.
“I wish they were a bit more specific, but good people disagree on the topic of how specific standards should or shouldn’t be,” Anthony said.
When asked whether removing specific details and individuals could technically absolve districts and educators from teaching them entirely, Clemons responded: “If we tried to be explicit in writing all of our standards, we would have a laundry list of specific historical figures and historical events that we have put in there.” Since these standards are not actually curriculum, “we have to be careful about getting into specificity in the actual framework.”
“I sympathize with the idea of things being too prescriptive from the state,” said Spears, who was involved in the 2011 standards. “But at the same time, we have to also consider the political and historic context under which we educate our children in the state.”
In the Legislature, House Education Committee Chair Rep. Richard Bennett said Wednesday he’s heard there have been “a number of requests” for legal staff to draft bills about critical race theory, but he’s not sure what will specifically be in the bills yet.
As for the language changes (“inspect” to “analyze,” “contrast” to “assess,” etc.), Cornett said the committee suggested them so that they better align with the learning goal and level of rigor for a specific grade.
State Board member Angela Bass told Mississippi Today she read the revisions before they came before the board and didn’t see anything alarming, and that it’s a common practice for standards to be revised every 3-5 years.
With the board’s approval in December, the revisions were put out for public comment and anyone can write in their opinion. To submit in writing, mail to Jen Cornett at 359 N. West Street, Post Office Box 771, Jackson, MS 39205-0771, or email her at jcornett@mdek12.org. The deadline to submit is 5 p.m. on Feb. 4. Public comments will be presented to the board for discussion at the Feb. 17 board meeting.
For the Jan. 28 hearing, people can sign up to address MDE at this link, but the deadline to do so is Jan. 25.
“Hopefully, a public hearing will spark a community based conversation about what education looks like in our classrooms throughout the state,” Spears said. “The governor’s voice should be no stronger than the sanitation worker’s voice who has a child in a public schools.”
Kate Royals and Julia James contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: The Mississippi Center For Justice President and CEO Vangela Wade serves on Mississippi Today’s board of trustees.
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Most colleges starting semester as planned as COVID surges
As COVID-19 cases reach a record high in Mississippi, some colleges are delaying or moving classes online while most will start the spring semester as planned.
Mississippi University for Women has pushed back its semester start-date to Tuesday, Jan. 18 from Jan 6. Jackson State University and Mississippi Valley State University will start classes virtually this Monday, Jan. 10.
JSU will hold online classes for two weeks, and MVSU will stay virtual for one week.
In a letter to the campus community, MVSU President Jerryl Briggs wrote that moving classes online will give MVSU “additional time to further enhance safety measures in all buildings and classrooms.”
“I want to remind you NOT to let your guards down,” Briggs wrote. “COVID-19 concerns and challenges are not over yet and we must continue to do all we can to keep yourselves and our campus as safe as possible.”
For students moving back into the dorms, MUW and JSU are going to require proof of a negative PCR test. MUW says it will offer free rapid COVID tests on Jan. 17, the day that residence halls are now scheduled to open.
Alcorn State University is starting classes as scheduled on Jan. 18 and says it will extend “protocols that require masks indoors and outdoors regardless of vaccination status.”
At Delta State University, the “administration has indicated plans to re-evaluate protocols for all DSU students, staff and faculty sometime next week,” Brittany Davis-Green, the communications director, wrote in an email to Mississippi Today. The only change Delta State has currently made is to allow student athletes to follow the less stringent quarantine guidelines announced in December by the Centers for Disease Control.
Officials from University of Mississippi and University of Southern Mississippi said they’re starting the semester as planned without changes due to the omicron wave. Mississippi State also did not respond to Mississippi Today by press time, but its site says classes are scheduled to start on Jan. 18.
In a statement, University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce told Mississippi Today that classes are starting on Jan. 18 as scheduled.
“At the same time, we are fully aware of recent developments with the pandemic,” he said. “I will share additional guidance with our campus community soon about how we will work diligently to keep our community as safe as possible while maintaining our residential campus experience.”
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Who gets abortions in Mississippi?
Following the recent U.S. Supreme Court hearing on a Mississippi law that challenges Roe v. Wade, Mississippi Today examined who is most likely to be impacted if abortion is prohibited or made more difficult to obtain.
Abortions have been declining in the U.S. since the 1990s. Amanda Jean Stevenson, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder studying reproductive health, said this decline is generally attributed to increased use of contraception (and an increase in the variety of contraceptives used), as well as increases in self-managed abortions and stigma around getting an abortion. Stevenson said that abortion restrictions are not associated with the decline in the abortion rate through 2017.
The rate of abortions occurring in Mississippi saw an initial spike after Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed a pregnant person’s right to choose, but has always been lower than the rate of abortions nationwide. Mississippi saw a decline of abortions in the 90s, similar to national trends, and has held steady at a rate under 5 abortions per 1,000 reproductive-age women since 2005.
Mississippi has one of the lowest abortion rates in the country, with 4.3 abortions occurring in the state per 1,000 reproductive-age women in 2017. The rate of Mississippi residents receiving abortions is nearly double that, at 8.3 per 1,000 reproductive-age women, according to the Guttmacher Institute. This indicates that a number of Mississippi women are likely seeking abortions in other states.
The Mississippi Department of Health does not provide information about the income or family size of abortion recipients or the gestational age at which those abortions occur. Nationally:
- 75% of abortion recipients live in poverty
- 59% of abortion recipients already have at least 1 child
- 65% happen before eight weeks, and 95% of abortions happen at 15 weeks or earlier (the point of the Mississippi abortion ban)
MSDH does report information about Mississippi residents regardless of where their abortion was performed.
Age statistics are very similar and do not differ significantly from national averages. Women in their 20s make up the majority of women receiving abortions.
The number of Black Mississippians receiving abortions is higher than the national average, but the number of Mississippi residents that are Black is also higher than the national average (37.8% of Mississippians are Black, compared to 13.4% nationally).
Overall, educational attainment is relatively similar in Mississippi and nationally. Women who have attended some college make up the largest category of abortion recipients. The number of Mississippi women with college or advanced degrees receiving abortions is lower than the national average, and the number of Mississippi women with high school degrees receiving abortions is slightly higher.
Due to differences in data reporting, comparisons cannot be easily made about the unmarried Mississippi residents receiving abortions. But both nationally and for Mississippians, most women receiving abortions are unmarried.
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Podcast: Mississippi’s bowl game busts
The Cleveland boys catch up from the Holiday break with thoughts on Ole Miss and Mississippi State’s losses in their bowl games, bid farewell to several notable players who have opted for the draft and look ahead at the future of both programs. Rick and Tyler also give predictions for the national championship.
Stream all episodes here.
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Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has COVID-19, prompting concerns about Capitol outbreak
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has tested positive for COVID-19 just one day into the 2022 legislative session, prompting concerns about an outbreak at the Capitol.
Hosemann, the Senate’s presiding officer, has no symptoms. He has been vaccinated and also received the booster shot, according to his office. Though Hosemann had no symptoms, he decided to get tested after learning he had come in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
Hosemann’s office is in the process of contacting people who he might have been exposed during the opening day of the 2022 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 4.
Those who were exposed include senators and many members of the media. Hosemann was seen without a mask on Tuesday speaking in close proximity with several prominent members of the Senate.
After the first day of the session concluded, Hosemann answered questions for about 20 minutes from members of the media in the crowded, small Capitol press room.
Senate Appropriations Chair Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, also has tested positive. He also had the coronavirus previously.
Most people in the Capitol eschewed wearing masks on Tuesday, the opening day of a scheduled 90-day session. Lawmakers and staffers at the Capitol are under are no mask mandate.
House Clerk Andrew Ketchings said there is one House employee who has the virus, but that she has not been at the Capitol in recent days, since before testing positive. There are no other reports of House members or staffers testing positive.
The 74-year-old Republican previously contracted the coronavirus during the summer of 2020 while the Legislature was in session. House Speaker Philip Gunn also tested positive during that time period as did about 50 legislators and staffers.
That outbreak was one of at least two Capitol COVID-19 outbreaks since the pandemic began in early 2020.
Hosemann has spoken openly about the severity of his symptoms from his first coronavirus illness and has been outspoken in urging people to get vaccinated.
Hosemann’s office said he will quarantine for five days per guidelines from the state health officer and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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As omicron rages through Mississippi, treatments are in short supply
The omicron wave in Mississippi is in full-swing, with the Mississippi Department of Health reporting 4,840 new cases and 37 deaths on Tuesday. The state’s daily average for new infections has increased by more than sixfold over the past two weeks, from 577 to 4,100.
Mississippi has not seen such a sharp spike in new COVID-19 cases throughout the pandemic. The omicron variant is significantly more infectious than all previous variants of the virus, but evidence suggests that it causes less severe symptoms and illness.
Though hospitalization and death rates are lagging indicators, the increases in those outcomes have been far less pronounced thus far in the omicron wave. Over the past two weeks the number of COVID-19 patients in ICU’s has increased nearly 107%. The number of patients on ventilators has increased 54%.
“The number of patients with COVID-19 in ICU care has not risen in this recent surge at the same rate as the increase in the overall patient count and, for the most part, the severity of COVID-19-related cases – including in the ICU – is less severe than in previous surges,” Marc Rolph, executive director of communications and marketing at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said in an email statement.
Though Mississippi hospitals have not yet been overwhelmed like they were during the delta wave last year, patients seeking care at hospitals or at home will see their options limited due to the national shortage of monoclonal antibody treatments and antiviral pills.
Only one of the three monoclonal antibody treatments approved for use in the United States, sotrovimab, has been shown to be effective against omicron in lab tests. Mississippi received just 283 doses of this treatment this week.
Mississippi also received 270 doses of the Ely Lilly monoclonals and 336 doses of REGEN-COV monoclonals. Though neither of these treatments are effective against omicron, MSDH still recommends they be utilized while the delta variant is still present in the state.
Mississippi is also set to receive a limited supply of two antiviral medications that can be used to treat COVID-19 in an outpatient setting: Molnupiravir and Paxlovid. In clinical trials, the former has demonstrated a 30% reduction in severe illness while the latter showed an 89% reduction.
MSDH anticipates the state will receive additional allocations of these drugs in mid-January, but fewer than 3,000 doses have been allocated to Mississippi thus far.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said on Tuesday that the limited supply of monoclonals and antivirals will be primarily distributed to MSDH’s 48 COVID Center of Excellence partners, and their use will be targeted to those at the highest risk for severe outcomes, such as people 65 and older and people with compromised immune symptoms.
“We’ve always said that monoclonals are Plan B and the vaccine is Plan A, and you don’t want to rely on your backup plan when Plan A is still an option,” Dobbs said during a press conference last week.
The unvaccinated still make up the vast majority of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the state. Between Dec. 7 and Jan. 3, unvaccinated Mississippians made up 98% of cases, 88% of hospitalizations and 72% of deaths.
Health experts across the state and nation are in nearly universal agreement that the best method for protection against omicron is getting fully vaccinated, and then a booster dose if you’re eligible. With only 49% of residents fully vaccinated, Mississippi is still lagging behind most of the country in vaccinations.
Over 446,000 Mississippians have received third or booster doses, and another segment of the population will likely be eligible to receive them soon.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of COVID-19 booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine in 12-to-15-year-olds on Monday.
“Based on the FDA’s assessment of currently available data, a booster dose of the currently authorized vaccines may help provide better protection against both the delta and omicron variants,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “In particular, the omicron variant appears to be slightly more resistant to the antibody levels produced in response to the primary series doses from the current vaccines.”
The FDA also reduced the period of time fully vaccinated people have to wait before getting a booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine from six months to five months. If a person wants a Moderna booster, they still have to wait the full six months.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must still approve these new policies for them to go into effect. A decision could come soon after a CDC advisory panel meets later this week.
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Marijuana, taxes, teacher pay: Where top leaders stand on major 2022 legislative issues
House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann seem to agree on the issues that need to be addressed during the 2022 legislative session, but the devil might be in the details of how those items are resolved.
The two presiding officers offered few specifics Tuesday — the opening day of the 2022 legislative session — but said they anticipate taking up taxes, providing teachers a significant pay raise and reenacting medical marijuana after the voter initiative legalizing medical marijuana was struck down this past May by the state Supreme Court.
In terms of quick action, both indicated that the plan to redraw the state’s four congressional districts to adhere to population shifts gleaned from the 2020 U.S. Census might be one of the first items taken up. The quick action is needed because the deadline to qualify to seek one of the four House districts is March 1.
READ MORE: The top issues lawmakers could address in the 2022 legislative session
Here’s what Gunn and Hosemann said about key issues after they adjourned for the day on Jan. 4.
Medical marijuana
“Candidly, that is not a top issue for us (the House),” Gunn said of medical marijuana.
“That is something the Senate is taking the lead on and we don’t have a bill. We’ll have to see what the Senate passes — we’ll just have to wait and see,” Gunn said.
Asked about Reeves’ opposition to allowing patients to receive up to 3.5 grams of cannabis a day, Gunn said: “We certainly have been trying to move it into a more conservative direction. The House has taken the position that we want it to be as close to a true medical program as we can get it.”
Hosemann said Tuesday additional committee hearings will be held on the issue and it is likely that the fall agreement reached by House and Senate leaders will face some changes.
On Tuesday, the Mississippi Cannabis Patients Alliance held a rally on the steps of the Capitol, urging lawmakers to reinstate a medical marijuana program — after voters approved it, but the state Supreme Court shot it down.
Taxes
Hosemann did not offer any details, but discounted the possibility of passing a bill similar to the one proposed last year by Gunn. That bill would have phased out the personal income tax, reduced by half the 7% tax on groceries and increased the sales tax on most other retail items by 2.5 cents for each $1 purchase.
“I anticipate the Senate will have a tax relief bill,” Hosemann said. “We were not persuaded by a tax swap. We want tax relief.”
Gunn said some “tweaks” will be offered to his proposal, but that it remains his top priority.
“We believe we have a solid plan,” Gunn said. “We believe there is no downside to putting money back into the pockets of Mississippians.”
Gov. Tate Reeves also has criticized Gunn’s plan as a “tax swap” and said he oppose increasing sales and other taxes.
Gunn said: “There have been some misrepresentations made about that bill. It is not a tax increase. It is a net tax deduction, reduction … We are not married to our proposal, but unfortunately, no one else has come forward with an idea. We don’t want a mere token to check the box to say we passed some sort of tax reform. We want something that puts real dollars back into the pockets of Mississippians.”
Teacher pay
Gunn said the House will have a teacher pay raise proposal, but would not specify the amount or details.
“You’ll see it when we bring it out, but I think it’s going to be a very good plan,” Gunn said.
Hosemann said he anticipates the Senate will support a teacher pay increase proposal larger than the roughly $1,000 salary hike approved by the Legislature in the 2021 session.
He also said that plan could be unveiled this week if Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, releases his teacher pay bill as expected.
Ballot initiative
Both Hosemann and Gunn advocated for reenacting the initiative process where voters can gather a mandated number of signatures to place issues on the ballot. That process was struck down when the state Supreme Court ruled invalid the medical marijuana initiative.
Both said they would prefer the process be used to amend general law and not the state Constitution. They both pointed out that when items are placed in the Constitution, they are more difficult to change or remove.
“I think that is too inflexible for us,” Hosemann said of initiatives to amend the Constitution.
“You have to have the ability to tweak things as circumstances change,” Gunn said.
It is not clear, Hosemann said, that citizens would have to vote to reenact the initiative process if it is going to be used just to amend general law and not the Constitution. He said research is being conducted on whether that could be done by a simple act of the Legislature.
Medicaid expansion
“I just don’t think that Medicaid expansion is realistic,” Gunn said. “Personally, I’m not for it. I’ve been very clear that I’m against it. I don’t see that as a way forward in Mississippi. We need to be looking for ways to get people off Medicaid, not put them on Medicaid. But the bottom line is it’s all an academic discussion until you’ve got the votes, and I don’t think the votes exist.”
Hosemann continues to refuse to utter the phase medical expansion, which is allowed under federal law to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor. But he continues to say he supports the working poor having access to health care. He even referenced an instance where a woman working as a store clerk died of cancer because she could not afford health care, leaving two children and a husband who is a mechanic.
Hosemann said similar tragedies occur throughout the state because of the lack of health care access.
Asked if there will be an effort this session to enhance health care access to poor Mississippians, Hosemann said, “We are working on it for as soon as we can do it.”
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