Required Instruction in Public Schools
Each district school board is responsible for providing all courses required for middle grades
promotion, high school graduation, and appropriate instruction designed to ensure that students
meet State Board of Education (SBE) adopted standards in reading and other language arts,
mathematics, science, social studies, foreign languages, health and physical education, and the
arts.
Public school teachers are required to teach efficiently and faithfully, using the books and
materials required that meet the highest standards for professionalism and historical accuracy,
and employing approved methods of instruction, certain prescribed courses of study, including
health education and character development. The SBE is encouraged to adopt standards and
pursue assessment of the requirements for prescribed courses of study and methods of instruction
employed by public school teachers.
SBE rule regarding required instruction and reporting requires that instruction on the required
topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events,
such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and
the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country. Examples
of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with SBE-approved standards
include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory,
meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is
embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white
persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define
American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal
principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.
