Rob Krupicka's Election Eve Disaster

People are expecting an open Senate seat this year in the 30th District currently held by Patsy Ticer.  The candidates already positioning themselves for a run are Delegate Adam Ebbin, Alexandria Councilman Rob Krupicka and Arlington School Board Chairman Libby Garvey.

But on the eve of the biggest race of his political career, Krupicka's service on the State Board of Education is coming under national attention. 

Virginia's textbook scandal began last year when a parent in Williamsburg picked up a number of errors in her child's textbook.  Now the report on our textbooks is out- and it's much worse than expected.  Ouch.

But unfortunately for Krupicka it gets a lot worse than poor oversight from the State Board of Education he serves on.  The factual errors are actually in official state documents approved by the Board of Education while Krupicka served on this board. 

As Daily Kos first pointed out yesterday: "The official position of the commonwealth's Department of Education is that while slavery was one of the four issues that divided the nation before the Civil War, the war itself was primarily a matter of states' rights".

So does Rob Krupicka deserve a promotion to the State Senate after this massive scandal involving the oversight of the State Board of Education?  Or do Democrats need a Senator from Alexandria who thinks the Civil War was a "states rights" issue?

UPDATE:  Krupicka just told me on Facebook that "I think its clear that slavery was the primary driver of the civil war. You just have to read the statements by the states that broke off from the union to know that."  So why is that not the position of the State Board of Education- and has anyone paid enough attention to attempt to change that?  Talk is cheap, and it is absolutely unacceptable that this is the official state policy in Virginia.  It shouldn't take a national scandal to get our facts right- isn't that why we have the State Board of Education?

Comments

[DCCyclone]

The quoted DailyKos blog post language, cited here by Ben, is incorrect.

Let me preface by saying I'm extremely hostile to crypto-racists like Sons of Confederate Veterans and others who defend the confederacy or downplay slavery or, at times, even defend slavery. Slavery clearly was the primary driver of the Civil War.

But I have a daughter starting kindergarten in Fairfax County public school next fall, and this is of great personal intereset and concern to me for the next 15 years through both my kids' public schooling, so I looked it up.

But I looked at the state standards myself, and no place do they say or even suggest that states' rights were "the primary" driver of the Civil War. Nowhere is states' rights juxtaposed with the word "primary" or any other word close to a synonym.

Indeed, where the 4 "causes" of the Civil War are listed in the state standards, they are listed vertically down a column with slavery at THE TOP. States' rights is mentioned under the heading "Constitutional issues" which is the LAST item on the list. In between those are "cultural issues" and "economic issues."

The only place where the standards caused me to pause was in a statement that read, "While the Civil War did not begin as a war to abolish slavery, issues surrounding slavery deeply divided the nation." This is correct taken literally, but misleading. It's true the war didn't begin to abolish slavery, but it DID begin to PRESERVE slavery. Slavery was the primary driver for the South, even though not the North. And it's a bit of misdirection to say in the same breath that slavery "deeply divided" the nation as if it was in the background. Still, this is juxtaposed against identifying slavery explicitly as one of four separate causes, and by visually (i.e., putting it at the top) giving it priority on the list of causes.

On balance, the state standards' references to slavery are accurate and fair in explaining slavery's significance.

[BOB]

At the time states rights were about slavery and taxation. Both were issues leading up to the war. To say that states rights were the issue is basically saying that slavery was the issue. At the time those two issues were interchangeable.

[Another Not Ben]

I think you may be jumping the gun a bit. I don't know this person or most of the other candidates but before attacking him for how the Board voted I think you should have at least investigated how he actually voted when the Board came to that decision.

If the Board voted for it but he voted against it there is no issue here. If he actually voted along with the Board then I agree with your comments but you don't actually give us the proper information to arrive at a decision.

[Dan]

Unfortunately, it isn't too surprising to see neo-Confederate claptrap being taught as history in Virginia schools. There is a vigorous movement to rewrite history according to their fantasies. You know, slavery wasn't so bad. It was a benign institution. The happy darkies really didn't want to be free. Thousands and thousands of them fought to maintain the status quo because they were so pleased to remain in bondage. The war didn't have anything to do with slavery anyway. All that nonsense.

More than that, how can you approve a textbook that gets basic facts like the number of states in the Confederacy and the year we entered World War I incorrect. Did the text at least place us on the correct side or did they have us fighting against the French and British? Did the woman who wrote it graduate from Junior High? This is really unbelievable.

It is absolutely hilarious that the author of this text describes herself as a fairly well respected writer and that she stands by her work. But she is not a historian and she admits that she got this nonsense "off the internet". This is something we caution young students about. To be careful about" information" they find on the internet. To find other sources to verify its accuracy and reliability because their is so much online that is inaccurate or just plain crazy or slanted to support an agenda.

I guess any of us could sell textbooks to Virginia. Just include the proper headings to cover the required areas and then find some stuff "on the internet" to fill up the pages. And, most importantly, come in at the lowest price. The contract is yours!

This is scandalous and a lot of people should lose their jobs over this.

It's a shame the state can't get it's money back from the publisher. But since these idiots approved it in advance I guess there is no legal basis to seek a refund.

[Not Larry Sabato]

Cyclone- thanks for looking into that, I'm going to do some additional digging on what the DK post cited.

Another Not Ben- Krupicka voted for this on March 10th of this year, here's a link to the agenda and minutes from that meeting:

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2010/03_mar/agenda.shtml

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2010/03_mar/minutes.pdf

The vote was under agenda item "F". (Wonder if there was some irony intended there?)

[James Young]

Not that I'm defending a Democrat, but I don't think you're being fair to Krupicka, and "DCCyclone" makes some good points: no one who reads for follows the standards could conclude OTHER THAN that slavery was a primary mover for secession (and, of course, the belittling caricatures spewed by Dan demonstrate that the modern Liberal welfare state has a lot more in common with some Confederate, paternalistic rhetoric --- Jefferson Davis' views come to mind --- than anything). The notion that slavery was not the major issue is as idiotic as revisionist history regarding the decision to use the atomic bomb.

[Gretchen Laskas]

I'm not speaking to the politics, as Ben is here, but as a mother of a son in VA public schools who has taken VA history in PW County and Fairfax County (and will take it again before he graduates) I do have some thoughts on the overall subject.

First, I am not, in any way, condoning errors in the textbooks. Those should be corrected immediately.

But I can speak to the curriculum in general, and can say that it is sound. This isn't to say that a poor teacher couldn't ruin even a perfect curriculum, but my son has never had one.

Also, textbooks today are a much smaller part of children's learning than they once were. Students in the VA history classes that my son has taken use more interactive, group, and hands on learning. In fourth grade, my son put together a note book full of pictures, flashcards, matching games, etc to learn history. He very rarely was working straight from a textbook.

Finally, I do caution some that you may not realize this, but there has been a mini war in Virginia over history for quite some time, and pushing this will only feed into the side that wants to eliminate the emphasis we place on history. Right now, we are one of the only states in the US that treats history as important a subject as math and reading. I believe we are the only state that tests regularly on it. And there are plenty of people out there who would like to see the time, effort and money we spend on it eliminated to we can concentrate on "the basics."

So please be careful -- those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. Don't let that be Virginian students!

[Ghost of Henry Howell]

Gretchen: Well spoken.

[Anonymous Is a Woman]

I agree with Ghost of Henry Howell. Gretchen's comments are spot on

[Another Not Ben]

Thanks for the link,Ben.

[Melissa]

Hardly a disaster. The sooner the kiddies learn to weigh and verify facts and opinions, like the overly dramatic rant above, the better. As far as I'm concerned, this simply underscores the need for parental oversight.