Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
Agency
Department of Education
 
Board
State Board of Education
 
Guidance Document Change: In 2021, the Virginia General Assembly passed House Bill 1904 and Senate Bill 1196, and was signed into law by Governor Northam. The law establishes new requirements to support culturally competent educators in the Commonwealth. The Guidance on Cultural Competency Training for Teachers and Other Licensed School Board Employees in Virginia Public Schools was developed for the Board to fulfill the statutory mandate to provide guidance on the minimum standards for the local training requirement.
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12/23/21  1:46 pm
Commenter: Greg Letiecq

Vague language, will drive inconsistent results
 

The language in this directive frequently uses vague terms subject to wildly varying interpretations, which will result in very non-uniform policy development across the commonwealth. The document vaguely references nonspecific "academic" definitions of key terms, avoiding any opportunity to describe what terms like "cultural inclusiveness" even means.  Without a common understanding of what these mean, the public, various school districts and public officials will inevitably come to different and often inconsistent beliefs about what schools should or should not do.

No concrete goals or outcomes are identified in order to direct local policy development which could help to guide policy development and institutional approaches.  If a school is questioned about whether they are in compliance with this directive, there are no programs that they would implement which could provide evidence, nor will any data be available to indicate positive or negative achievement of goals.  A school can simply attest that they are engaged in culturally inclusive instruction without any supporting evidence, and it is doubtful any challenge to that claim could reasonably be made.

This is a consistent problem with politically driven directives such as this.  There is no way to quantify success or failure nor is there even broad understanding or agreement of what the purpose of this actually is.  At best, this will result in a waste of taxpayer money establishing policies that won't have any impact on classroom instruction.  At worst, this can be used as a cudgel to demand teachers engage in whatever groupthink a school system is promoting at any particular time.

 

CommentID: 117469