Indigenous Peoples’ Day removed, then readded, to Virginia education standards [Video]

Groups of Virginia education leaders want answers about why Indigenous Peoples’ Day was removed from state standards dictating what students should learn about American history since the state Board of Education adopted the revised standards two years ago.

While the holiday was omitted during the revision process, it was put back in before the final adoption of the standards in 2023. Last week, some education leaders noticed that Indigenous Peoples’ Day was missing in the online versions of the standards for the state’s youngest schoolchildren.

“What else is in the standards [that] has been changed or removed?” asked Chris Jones, executive director for the Virginia Association for Teaching, Learning and Leading, or VATLL, an education advocacy group. He said the holiday’s removal has led leaders to suspect changes could have also been made to the instructional guides meant to help teachers implement the history standards into their lessons, which could …