Resolution #22-02-01
To Encourage and Support the Study of Controversial Public Issues in Our Nation’s Classrooms

Sponsor

The National Council for the Social Studies Issues-Centered Education Community.

Co-Sponsors

Colorado Council for the Social Studies; Florida Council for the Social Studies; Maine Council for the Social Studies; New York State Council for the Social Studies; Association for the Teachers of Social Studies/United Federation of Teachers—New York City; National Social Studies Supervisors Association; Elementary/Early Childhood Education Community

Rationale: The mission of the NCSS Issues-Centered Education Community is to inform teachers about a curricular and instructional approach to teaching history, government, geography, economics, and other subject-related courses through a focus on persistent controversial public issues. Controversial public issues are complicated topics embedded in school subjects and society that raise an array of open-ended, probing questions with no “right answers.” Issues-centered education may thus be defined as curricula in schools or colleges organized around or infused with reflection on controversial public issues of the past or present, emphasizing persistent questions of or relating to human society. The focus is on problem posing or probing questions that need to be addressed and investigated in depth in order to increase social understanding and active participation toward social progress. Probing questions may address problems of the past, present, or future, and involve disagreement over facts, definitions, values, and beliefs arising from the study of any of the social studies disciplines or other aspects of human affairs. The approach draws on a long history of attention to controversial public issues in social studies education theory, research, and practice including the works of Dewey, Rugg, Hunt and Metcalf, Engle and Ochoa, Oliver and Shaver, Newmann, Freire, Parker, Evans and Saxe, Hess, and others (Evans, 2021). In our view, controversial public issues are inherently engaging, exciting, problematic situations with multiple perspectives and conflicting points-of-view. Issues raise student interest and motivation and touch students’ lives. As implied above, the heart of our rationale is our normative position that the study of controversial public issues can help in the quest for social improvement and in the pursuit of social justice. This is a reconstructionist, meliorist rationale, based on the belief that teachers, schools, and citizens can play a significant role in contributing to social betterment.

WHEREAS, during the past year, an increasing amount of criticism from school boards, state and local legislators, and parental groups, has influenced social studies educators to diminish, avoid and/or remove controversial issues from the social studies curriculum and other courses, by means of protest, administrative rulings, or legislation. Laws passed in a number of states restrict teachers from teaching controversial public issues related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other important topics. One study of the local impacts of the controversy over Critical Race Theory (CRT) reported that 36 states have made efforts to restrict education on racism, the contributions of specific racial groups to U.S. history, or related topics. The same report estimates that 35% of students in K–12 schools have been negatively impacted (Pollock & Rogers, 2022). The CRT controversy and subsequent actions sent a chill across the nation’s schools, the result being that many teachers will abstain from teaching topics on or related to race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, or anything that might be seen as controversial; and

WHEREAS, it is a goal of NCSS and its affiliated state and local social studies councils to advocate for the social studies on the national, state, and local levels; and

WHEREAS, The National Council for the Social Studies upholds the philosophy that social studies education must be viewed as a relevant part of any school’s curriculum, that the role of inquiry into the social science curriculum provides students with the content and prerequisite skills that are required of all graduating students, that the study of relevant social and political issues provide students with the critical thinking and communication skills to intelligently communicate through speaking and writing; now

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, The National Council for the Social Studies should continue its support for the study of controversial public issues in American schools.

References

Evans, R. W. (2021). An introduction to teaching social issues. In R. W. Evans (Ed.), Handbook on teaching social issues (2nd ed.). Information Age.

Pollock, M., & Rogers, J. (2022). The conflict campaign: Exploring local experiences of the campaign to ban “Critical Race Theory” in public K–12 education in the U.S., 2020-2021. UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.

Resolution #22-04-01
Support for Upholding Plyler v. Doe

Sponsor

National Council for the Social Studies College and University Faculty Assembly

Cosponsors

Florida Council for the Social Studies; New York State Council for the Social Studies; Association for the Teachers of Social Studies/United Federation of Teachers—New York City; National Social Studies Supervisors Association; Elementary/Early Childhood Education Community

Rationale: We reaffirm NCSS’s commitment to the principle that free public education is a right of all children. Through the creation of an informed and participatory public, a free public education for all is integral to the upholding of the United States’ democratic laws and traditions.

After the Plyler decision, the United States has an established legal history of providing free public education to all children, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s plan to deny free public education to undocumented children is illegal, cruel, and antithetical to the country’s democratic values.

In 1975, the Texas State Legislature changed its education laws to deny funding to any public school who admitted children who were not “legally admitted” to the United States. These revised education laws also allowed school districts to deny entry to any children not “legally admitted” to the country (United States Courts, n.d.).

In 1980, a United States District Court in Texas struck down these laws, noting that “the absolute deprivation of education should trigger strict judicial scrutiny, particularly when the absolute deprivation is the result of complete inability to pay for the desired benefit.” The Court also said, “the illegal alien of today may well be the legal alien of tomorrow,” and that without an education, these undocumented children, “already disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices … will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class” (Plyler v. Doe, 1978).

In 1982, the United States Supreme Court determined that the Texas law denying public education was unconstitutional. The majority’s key argument noted that the Texas law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Plyler v. Doe, 1982b).

WHEREAS, in 1975, the Texas Legislature passed a law that denied the enrollment of undocumented migrant children in public schools; furthermore, withholding state funds to educate children who were not “legally admitted” into the United States; and

WHEREAS, in 1982, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, stated that it was unconstitutional to deny undocumented children access to free and public education in districts where they resided due to their immigration status; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court in the Plyler v. Doe (1982) decision found that the Texas law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, noting, that “education has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society” and “provides basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives to the benefit of us all”; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court in the Plyler v. Doe (1982) decision noted that children should not bear the punishment for a parent’s actions noting that this “does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice”; and

WHEREAS, Justice Marshall in a concurring decision argued that there is a “close relationship between education and some of our most basic constitutional values,” Justice Blackmun argued that “when a state provides an education to some and denies it to others, it immediately and inevitably creates class distinctions of a type fundamentally inconsistent with” the purposes of the Equal Protection Clause because “an uneducated child is denied even the opportunity to achieve,” thus violating the constitutional rights of children; and

WHEREAS, the primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world (NCSS); thus, we are to teach all children regardless of their immigration status and prepare them for active citizenship; and

WHEREAS, Yale law professor Justin Driver (2019), in his book The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, noted that the Plyler v. Doe decision ensures that the “schoolhouse door cannot be closed to one of modern society’s most marginalized, most vilified groups” (p. 354), thus, helping all children achieve the NCSS purpose of learning social studies; and

WHEREAS, there have been attempts to undermine or repeal the Plyler v. Doe decision including California’s Proposition 187 (1994), the Gallegly Amendment (1996), the State of Alabama’s attempt to collect data on the immigration status of students (2011), unsuccessful attempts in the Arizona and Tennessee legislatures to pass laws that would deny state funding to schools that admit undocumented children in 2011 and 2021 respectively, and the May 2022 call by Governor Greg Abbott, Texas, for the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the Plyler decision; now

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Council for the Social Studies issue a position statement that supports the rights of all children, especially the children from marginalized communities, to have access to free and public education in the communities where they reside, including noting the unequivocal support of the National Council for the Social Studies for the Plyler v. Doe decision that children of undocumented immigrants have a constitutional right to access to education; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the National Council for the Social Studies increase access of resources to teachers about the Constitutional rights of all children to a free and public education, including online resources, professional development, and informational sessions during the annual conference.

References

Crosbie, J. (2022, May 5). Greg Abbott reveals the GOP’s plan after killing Roe v. Wade: killing public education. Rolling Stone Magazine. www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greg-abbott-plyler-doe-public-education-1348208/

Davies, D. M. (2022, May 16). Texas matters: Why Abbott wants Plyler v. Doe overturned. Texas Public Radio. https://www.tpr.org/podcast/texas-matters/2022-05-16/texas-matters-why-abbott-wants-plyler-v-doe-overturned

Dias, I. (2022, June 15). First Roe, then Plyler? The GOP’s 40-year fight to keep undocumented kids out of public school. Mother Jones. www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/first-roe-then-plyler-the-gops-40-year-fight-to-keep-undocumented-kids-out-of-public-school/

Driver, J. (2019). The schoolhouse gate: Public education, the Supreme Court, and the battle for the American mind. Vintage.

McGee, K. (2022, May 5). Gov. Greg Abbott says federal government should cover cost of educating undocumented students in Texas public schools. Texas Tribune Online. www.texastribune.org/2022/05/05/greg-abbott-plyler-doe-education/

Plyler v. Doe, 458 F. Supp. 569 (E.D. Tex. 1978). Tarlton Law Library. University of Texas. https://tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/ww_justice/documents_2/Plyler_opinion_1_1978.pdf

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982a). Justia. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/202/

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982b). Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/457/202#fn1

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982c). Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/80-1538

United States Courts. (n.d.). Access to education—rule of law. United States Courts Educational Resources. www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/access-education-rule-law