Illinois
Reconstruction Vignette
In 1874, the Illinois General Assembly passed this bill, titled “An Act to Protect Colored Children in their Rights to Attend School.” It mandated free public education for Black children in the state, including penalties for denying them access, but did not call for school integration. The number of Black children attending public school increased greatly after this bill passed, but often in segregated and inadequate schools.
Illinois
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Nonexistent
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 0 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Illinois’ standards is nonexistent. The Illinois State Board of Education approved its current education standards in 2016. Illinois is a local-control state. Its standards are broad and skills-based with no content-specific standards. They “are designed to build on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that elementary and middle schools have nurtured to prepare students for college, career, and civic life which involves questioning, investigating, reasoning, and acting responsibly based on new information.”
Although the Constitution receives specific mention, slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction do not. An Illinois African American History mandate requires that “Every public elementary school and high school shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of Black History.” However, it is up to each school board to determine how much instruction time fulfills the mandate.
Because Illinois’ standards provide so little information about whether and how districts and schools should teach Reconstruction, we chose to investigate curricula at the district level. The Local Snapshot below is not meant as a judgment of the district’s approach to Reconstruction. It was chosen largely at random and is not factored into the grade the state standards receive. The brief analysis of district-level curricula that follows is intended simply to provide a snapshot into how state standards, or lack thereof, can shape Reconstruction pedagogy in the classroom.
Local Snapshot
Evanston/Skokie (District 65)
Grade 7
Reconstruction is the final unit of grade 7 instruction for the social studies course. The unit, titled “The Nation Attempts to Reunite,” covers a variety of themes, topics, and questions including:
The Civil War resolved some conflicts but not others.
The process of rebuilding the nation after war (e.g., Civil War) presented many opportunities and challenges, as well as intended and unintended consequences.
Interpreting the “success” of Reconstruction involves evaluating its social, political, and economic goals and outcomes from different perspectives.
How does war transform a nation?
What happens after war? (e.g., the Civil War)
How does a nation rebuild?
Did reconstruction “work”? (How successful was it and for whom?)
Educator Experiences
Teachers who responded to our survey emphasized that the state standards did not present a barrier to pursuing innovative and engaging approaches to teaching Reconstruction. Nhora E. Gomez, a Chicago high school teacher, explained that “there is little in the official curriculum but teachers have freedom to choose what and how to teach it.” Many teachers reported using outside resources from the Zinn Education Project, Facing History, and the Stanford History Education Group.
The primary obstacle, mentioned by nearly every respondent, was time and timing. Brett Unruh, a middle school teacher in Algonquin, explained that Reconstruction “is the last unit of the year and we do not always get to it. No, it is generally the most skipped and summarized units in our curriculum.” One middle school teacher noted that they had chosen to teach Reconstruction “at the expense of our Westward expansion chapter and possibly even our Imperialism chapter.”
Lindsey DiTomasso, who teaches in the western suburbs of Chicago, noted, “We have strong state standards for U.S. History and Social Studies. The challenge that remains is doing justice to any unit in a U.S. History survey class. For example, when we add instructional days for Reconstruction, that means we lose days for the Vietnam War or the Progressive Era. It’s a tough balancing act.”
DiTomasso went on to describe the inquiry approach in her classes that include Reconstruction. “The students initially examine the institution of slavery, the strengths and limitations of the abolition movement, the causes of the Civil War and the mythology of Reconstruction and the Lost Cause. After assessing the historical narrative of Reconstruction as a ‘positive failure,’ students engage in research around one system — voting, education, health, housing, economics, or justice — in hopes of identifying how one’s identity potentially confirms or complicates the myths and realizations of the American Dream in the post-Reconstruction era. The research culminates in a seminar presentation for their peers which synthesizes student research of their findings. The semester concludes in a discussion of the content students learned from each other, how the systems ‘talk to’ each other, and viable solutions in moving forward together.”
Assessment
Illinois’ standards on Reconstruction are nonexistent. Districts and teachers are left with no guidance as to the content to include in their social studies curricula. As teachers mentioned in their responses, time, timing, and a general lack of attention to Reconstruction are the biggest obstacles to teaching an effective history of the period. Because most middle school social studies courses conclude with a unit on Reconstruction, teachers often gloss over the topic or skip it entirely.
In Evanston/Skokie, the learning objective to interpret the success of Reconstruction by evaluating its goals and outcomes from different perspectives is strong. The unit could be improved by discussing Black political and economic advocacy and successes and by explicitly mentioning white supremacist terrorism as a primary cause of the defeat of Reconstruction. This school district and others that cover Reconstruction in depth would still benefit from stronger state guidance that emphasizes Black people as the driving force of Reconstruction and white supremacy as the main force that destroyed it.
Without guidance around key Reconstruction-era history, many students will not learn about the intensification of white supremacy, the Black Codes, the KKK, debates over who would control land and labor, and Black agency and political organizing. Teaching Reconstruction effectively requires centering Black people’s struggles to redefine freedom and equality and gain control of their own land and labor during and after the Civil War. Any discussion of Reconstruction must also grapple with the role of white supremacist terrorism in the defeat of Reconstruction and the negative and positive legacies of the era that persist to this day.
In March 2021, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed HB2170, a law aimed at “improving access and racial equity in the state’s education system.” In addition to many other provisions, the new law “creates a 22-person Inclusive American History Commission to help ISBE revise its social science learning standards to ensure instruction is not ‘biased to value specific cultures, time periods and experiences’ over others and to examine ways to find and use resources in teaching of ‘nondominant cultural narratives and sources of historical information.’”
The standards’ revision currently underway under the authority of HB2170 offers an important opportunity to improve coverage of Reconstruction in Illinois schools. If the Inclusive American History Commission seeks to ensure that classroom instruction is not “biased to value specific cultures, time periods and experiences,” then including robust coverage of Reconstruction is essential.
In 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced HB5495 and HB5505, bills designed to ban teaching about racism, sexism, and other “certain concepts” in schools. They introduced a similar bill in 2023, but none have passed. Still, their introduction is troubling. Several respondents to our survey expressed concern about the possible chilling effects on classroom education that such bills can have around the country, particularly on discussions of the history and legacies of Reconstruction.