Much has been written and said about the increasing diversity of the United States in recent decades, with minorities expected to become the majority in the country by 2044 (and children expected to be the majority by 2020). These changes have already extended to the school system, with fall 2014 marking the first time that minority schoolchildren are collectively the majority in the K–12 system. Despite these demographic shifts, the literacy curriculum in K–12 schools remains steeped in the Western Anglo canon. There are certainly exceptions. Some schools have been using dual language programs that support language acquisition in multiple languages instead of the traditional English-only model that builds fluency in English at the expense of a student’s first language. Some schools have developed curricula focused on recognizing a student’s cultural and linguistic background, despite conservative backlash threatening this work. Nonetheless, many in charge of curricular decisions continue to be from a privileged Anglo background and help uphold a model that does not include minority voices in K–12 curriculum.
The most recent large-scale example of this ignorance is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a set of standards developed over the past few years and currently being implemented in states across the nation. Interestingly, a number of states rejected the standards from the beginning or later dropped out—but not because of concerns over diversity. Instead, many conservatives rejected them as a federal takeover of education. On the left, however, the CCSS have been criticized for a variety of other reasons, including their tie to high-stakes assessment as well as their ignorance of an increasingly diverse student population. For instance, the 20.6 percent of K–12 students (and 68.9 percent of Latina/o students) who report speaking a language other than English at home were very much overlooked in the creation of standards aimed at helping create a level playing field for all students and helping all students become college- and career-ready. The CCSS literacy standards state, “It is also beyond the scope of the Standards to define the full range of supports appropriate for English language learners and for students with special needs” (CCSS 2010, 6). In another area, Jane M. Gangi and Nancy Benfer called out the CCSS for failing students of color in the CCSS's recommended booklist, noting, “Of 171 texts recommended for elementary children in Appendix B of the CCSS, there are only 18 by authors of color, and few books reflect the lives of children of color and the poor.”
The CCSS superficially embrace cultural and linguistic diversity with lines like “Through reading great classic and contemporary works of literature representative of a variety of periods, cultures, and worldviews, students can vicariously inhabit worlds and have experiences much different than their own” (CCSS 2010, 7). However, alongside this mention, we see a continued orientation toward the Western canon with lines like “Along with high-quality contemporary works, these texts should be chosen from among seminal U.S. documents, the classics of American literature, and the timeless dramas of Shakespeare” (CCSS 2010, 35). Instead of using the CCSS as a way to dramatically reshape English literacy education in the United States, we see a model that continues to uphold the Anglo Western canon. Although the Department of Education has noted that minority high school graduation is improving, one wonders if more could be done with a larger-scale investment in programs and curricula that offer the potential to further engage minority student populations to support their graduation from high school and transition into postsecondary education.
Todd Ruecker is assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of New Mexico.
