AP History Recall Campaign
by Michael Cain
It’s mid-summer in Colorado, which means that it’s citizen initiative season. Time to get the titles for ballot issues approved and start collecting signatures. In addition to statutes and constitutional amendments, in Colorado there are initiated recall elections. I live in Jefferson County, which has a large county-wide school district where three of the members of the district board are likely to be up for recall come November.
Some back story. The three board members who won their nonpartisan elections in 2013 pretty much ran as a group, pooling resources and sending out shared advertising. Their platform was, broadly, fiscal responsibility, greater transparency, and expanded opportunities, phrased in about that much detail. Also on the ballot that year was Amendment 66, which would have increased state income taxes on wealthy tax payers to support public education. All three opposed that amendment, which failed badly in the state-wide election (Jefferson County’s vote on the amendment closely mirrored the state-wide results). The three newly-elected board members formed a conservative majority of the five-member board.
While there were controversies, none of them exceeded what might normally be expected for the board of a large school district [1] that covers areas from inner-ring suburbs to rural mountain valleys. Then, in 2014, the majority decided to take on Advanced Placement® US History. The student protests that followed made the national news. The board members eventually retreated a long way from their initial position; far enough that the district will almost certainly meet the College Board’s standards in the foreseeable future. The damage had been done, though. A bunch of parents of college-bound students were incensed.
The kick-off event for the campaign to recall the three board members was held at the county fairgrounds earlier this month and drew nearly 2,000 people. According to reports filed with the Secretary of State, the group organizing the campaign has already raised more than $43,000. They claim to have more than 2,000 volunteer signature collectors (each recall petition requires signatures from approximately 15,000 voters registered in the county). The organization predicts that they will have enough signatures some weeks before the early-October cut-off date.
Of the four things that can be done by direct initiative in Colorado – statutes, referendums, amendments, and recalls – recalls are the only one that make me uncomfortable. The others, pretty much described in the Arizona v. Arizona case in the Supreme Court this year as making the citizens a parallel legislative body are fine by me. Recalls, OTOH, are a second-chance to pass judgment not on policy but on policy makers. They often happen in elections where there are no other legislative races on the ballot, as will be the case if the Jeffco petitions are successful, and small-turnout off-year elections can be captured by a motivated minority of voters [2].
There’s no other real alternative in the case of a Colorado school board, though. The state constitution makes the boards near absolute powers within their districts, determining what will be taught and how [3]. Changing the constitution to reduce school boards’ authority, or to make their decisions subject to referendum and initiative, would require multiple changes to the constitution and would probably run afoul of the current single-subject limit for amendments. District school boards don’t pass statutes or laws that could be overridden individually by referendum or direct initiative. The only way to guarantee reversing the decision in what parents of current high school juniors and seniors consider to be a timely fashion is to replace the board members with people who will do the reversing. That is, not fixing the US History class for two years makes it more difficult for two years worth of students to pass the AP exam for college credit. I sympathize.
So, assuming that the recalls make this November’s ballots, how should I vote? Despite my feelings about recalls generally, in this case I’ll vote to remove the board members. Because I think that people who have so little grasp of the tactical reality they were facing don’t deserve to be on the board. “Let’s make a change in course content,” I hear some one of them saying. “Let’s pick a class that only students intending to go to college take, that matters to some extent to college admissions decisions, and that has a near-direct fiscal impact on their middle-class parents. What could go wrong?” What could go wrong indeed.
[1] Jeffco and Denver Public Schools go back and forth as to which is the largest in the state, each with around 85,000 students. Both are in the top 40 largest districts in the country.
[2] So I’m not entirely consistent. Write good comments.
[3] Colorado struggled to win much Race to the Top funding despite outstanding scores in almost all regards because those dollars came with policy strings attached and the state can’t guarantee that individual school boards will implement those policies. One of the broad complaints leveled at Race to the Top was that it unfairly favored older states where decentralization was much less part of the culture in determining how state and local authority was divided.
About my only concern with regard to recalls is we probably set the bar to initiate one poorly. Which is understandably a tough bar to set; too high & you hit a “why bother” point since only the moneyed efforts can hope to bring one; too low & you can end up wasting time & resources dealing with spurious recalls instead of governing.Report
Ditto. Recalls are a good governmental check (though maybe not EVERY year — have it that you get one recall on someone, and then you have to wait two years before another…)Report
I tend to agree with you about recalls but, in this case, I’d make an exception. From what I’ve read about the Colorado AP history case, the board members in question were generally pushing for American history as hagiography, angry that AP history presented the country’s past in a far too negative light.
I’m glad to see citizens taking action here. From what you’ve written, a recall seems to be their only major recourse. Good for them.Report
@michelle
I got to give credit to right-wing politicians for their chutzpah. They always have liberals in the corner with accusations of liberal bias in teaching but they have no problems putting their own biases in when in control.
Maybe we should call them on their bluff?Report
It’s possible that a court case could have forced the board (or shamed them) into guaranteeing an AP US History class taught to the College Board’s spec. CB notified the district that a US History class taught with the board’s proposed changes could not be billed as “AP”. Any class taught to the board’s changes would fail to perform the function of the AP class: improve the chances of scoring high enough on the AP exam to get college credits, and possibly improved admission consideration. I can think of a couple of legal theories that a court might agree with.Report
And to clarify, any student may take any AP test they feel like (provided they can pay for it, and can get to a location where it is offered). It is not necessary to have taken an “AP” class; it’s just that those classes are focused on teaching to the AP test, so students would be better prepared (theoretically, anyway).Report
A better phrasing would be “these classes follow the AP curriculum”.
“teaching to the test” has an entirely different connotation these days.
AP classes attempt to cover the material on the AP exam in addition to the material required for that grade by the state.
For instance, in AP Calculus we…studied more Calculus than was required for the regular Calculus class. Same with AP Mechanics and AP Chemistry.
Even AP composition was geared towards pushing juniors or seniors to write with acceptable skill for college freshmen.
Testing methodology and the like weren’t covered. A mock AP exam was offered in some classes, but just one. What made an AP class “AP” was the extra material, above and beyond the state standards. (The material needed to cover the college-level class, in fact).Report
I had both kinds of AP classes. My AP History class was explicitly taught to the AP test, so much so that the class ended after we took the test- we had 2-3 weeks of “history-themed” movies after that. (With a very loose interpretation of “history-themed”: my class watched Dr. Strangelove and Far and Away, among others.)
My AP calculus class, on the other hand, sounds closer to what you described; we learned calculus in a pretty standard order, at a pretty standard pace, in a manner that enabled most of us to do pretty well on the AP test, but was probably only minimally influenced by the test itself. It was very similar to first year Calc at my eventual university.
AP English was somewhere in between, but the class we took the most practice tests in. Chemistry was similar. I did hear that there was some competition and posturing that went on in the faculty lounge regarding whose classes performed the best on the test, so that may have something to do with some classes emphasizing the test more than others.
Anyhoo, my point was simply that it isn’t required to take a class with an “AP” designation in order to take an AP test. All you need is some $$ and nothing better to do with 2-3 hours on a Saturday.Report
True. My AP history class was a bit similar — no high school history class tracked the AP curriculum closely enough to simply ‘expand’ (basically cover more material to a greater depth, as in a college class) mostly because, I suspect, Texas has some weird history requirements at the High School level.
Instead, during the year labeled ‘World History’ we were given supplementary materials and instruction. Quite a bit of it. I believe the class itself went more in depth into European history than the regular World History classes did to begin with, but it wasn’t sufficient for the AP test. (Which was, IIRC the credit I got, about European history…I think. It’s been a long time!).
But the district I went to (and my wife now works for) doesn’t tolerate that sort of shenanigan. Admittedly, they all bow to reality (you can’t get work out of seniors after mid-May if they’re exempt from finals, and you can’t get work out of anyone after finals or mid-terms), but if there’s three weeks of school left you’re learning.
It might be lighter lessons with more of an emphasis on enjoyment, but they’re not going to waste 15 days of instruction just because the AP tests are over.Report
Yes, I should have been clearer about those things, thanks for putting that in here. In Colorado, the state administers a program for low-income students that reduces the total fee (last year, from the list $91 per exam to $12 per exam).Report
Are there any academic requirements for the subsidy? Or limits? Or can a student get as many of them subsidized as s/he chooses?
I do remember my parents flinching at the cost of all my AP tests, although in my case it was worth every penny.Report
I also am not a fan of recall elections, but sometimes this is apropos:
“I say you take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
— RipleyReport
Washington DC?Report
How much talent does nuking the entire site from orbit take?Report
Well, if you can use Google and can do some basic orbital mechanics…Report
I’m a big fan of recalls. Politicians know that if they piss off voters and there is no recall option, it’s a long way to the next election. Lots can happen between than, if only voter forgetfulness/dulling of the outrage.
Additionally, it’s a nice timely feedback system. Even if you fail in the recall, it serves as cautionary reminder to the politician not to go too far.Report
Well, hopefully.
Scott Walker seems to feel it was a mandate to do it more, even harder.Report
What do you expect for someone who cheats on elections and doesn’t get sent to jail?
Bush did the same thing, yes? Cheat once, good. Cheat twice, push your luck.Report
After all, having survived the recall, he could not be re-recalled until the next election and therefore was beyond the reach of the recall. Debatably, it made Walker a stronger politician, if you believe in the fire-up-your-base-ignore-the-other-side Rovian brand of politics; it’s certainly propelling Walker up to the top tier of Presidential contenders despite his late entrance to the fray.Report
Meh, what speech I hard from him was “uninspiring” at best.Report
Good piece Michael. It just so happens that my old superintendent here in California spent years as the superintendent at this Colorado district. He left due to the more glaring conservative expectations you noted above.
I also agree that recalls are a rather imperfect and problematic way of making change in this regard, but I will be interested to hear how you eventually decide to cast your vote.Report
Correction: Signature collection has to be completed by early September, not October.
Update: In a story published by the Colorado Statesman this afternoon, representatives of the petition campaign said things are going so well they expect to have the necessary signatures in hand by the end of this weekend.Report
Update: The recall campaign turned in its petitions this morning. They had more than twice as many signatures as required, although some of those will certainly be disqualified. Yesterday they had a table set up outside the grocery, and there was a line of people waiting to sign. 27 years in Colorado and I’ve never seen that before.Report