Flip through Michigan's newly proposed social studies standards - which help shape curriculum and guide teachers in K-12 classrooms across the state - and you'll see plenty of changes.

Gone is the term "core democratic values," replaced simply with "core values."

Climate change was stripped from a section detailing expectations for 6th grade geography, and instead was used as one possible example of a contemporary global issue that can be taught.

And references to the LGBT community, American Indians, Latinos, immigrants and people with disabilities, were dropped from a portion of the standards where teachers are urged to discuss the accomplishments and setbacks of minority groups. New wording focuses on how the expansion of rights for some groups can be viewed as an infringement of the rights and freedoms of others.

Two subject-matter experts who helped write the standards said some of the changes were pushed for by state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, and other conservative advocates he invited to participate in a focus group that reviewed the standards.

One of those subject matter experts - Carol Bacak-Egbo, a special lecturer at Oakland University who specializes in elementary and middle school social studies education - says she no longer supports the standards in the wake of the changes.

"We lost things near and dear to teachers that they had worked very hard to incorporate," she said, pointing specifically to the elimination of the term core democratic values. "That had become an important phrase in Michigan, and it meant something to kids and teachers."

The changes to the standards were first reported Tuesday by Bridge Magazine.

The new standards have prompted a backlash, with Democrats calling them "revisionist history." Others have launched a Facebook group urging residents to speak out against the standards at upcoming public meetings, and an online petition has been launched urging the State Board of Education to vote against the standards when they come before the elected-body for approval.

To see the changes made to the standards, click here

Colbeck, who's running for governor, has defended the proposed standards.

He was invited by the Michigan Department of Education to participate in a focus group examining the standards after he and 17 other members of the state House and Senate sent a letter to the State Board of Education expressing concerns that the proposed standards weren't neutral.

In a statement, Colbeck said he had a civil conversation with those who wrote the standards and the focus group that reviewed them, and that "after much debate and time," a consensus was reached that he and other members of the group were pleased with.

Bacak-Egbo disputes that.

"It's harmful when standards are not clear, when they're biased," she said. "That isn't going to help a teacher, and ultimately that's going to harm kids."

Bridge reported that Colbeck invited several conservative advocates to sit on the focus group tasked with reviewing the standards. Conservative organizations with members on the group include the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit law firm based in Ann Arbor that focuses on Christian issues, as well as Citizens for Traditional Values, according to the proposed standards.

Oakland Circuit Court Judge Michael Warren, who sits on the board of the group Patriot Week, also was a member of the focus group.

The standards are currently up for public comment through June 30. MDE is also hosting "listen and learn" sessions about the standards on June 18 in Flint, June 19 in Saginaw, June 20 in Waterford and June 26 in Sault Ste. Marie.

When asked about the department's stance on the standards, MDE spokesperson Bill Disessa said: "We're in the Public Comment process and continue to facilitate the development of the Social Studies standards. They remain in development at this time."

The state board, which has authority to approve or turn down the recommendations, is next scheduled to meet in August.

State Board of Education Co-President Casandra Ulbrich, D-Rochester Hills, said she would not vote in favor of the standards as they are currently written. The state board's other co-president, Richard Zeile, R-Dearborn, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Other changes in the standards include scaling back references to the Ku Klux Klan and reducing the number of times the NAACP was mentioned in the context of the civil rights movement.

Rebecca Baker-Bush, one of 14 subject-matter experts who assisted in writing the standards, said Colbeck and his colleagues were strong advocates for changing the standards to reflect what they felt was politically neutral language.

Because the standards rewrite has been ongoing since 2015, she said she couldn't specifically recall who pushed for alternations of the KKK references or the conversations surrounding those changes.

But, she added: "I think that push to leave that out probably came from him (Colbeck) or his colleagues."

"I say that because the social studies leaders, the ones like myself who are consultants, who have been doing this for 20 years and who work with classroom teachers, I can't think of one us that would advocate for elimination of the KKK," said Baker-Bush, a social studies consultant at Ottawa Area ISD.

Colbeck's statement, released in response to the Bridge Magazine story, states that Colbeck alone didn't have authority to remove references to the KKK or other civil rights movements.

In his proposed changes to the standards, posted on his website, Colbeck says the KKK was founded as an "anti-Republican organization not an anti-black organization."

"It just so happened that the majority of Southern blacks were in fact Republican due to the strong antislavery stance of Republicans," Colbeck's proposed revision says.

Despite the controversy over the changes, Baker-Bush said she believes the proposed standards are clearer and, in many instances, more rigorous than the current standards and should be adopted by the state board.

She said educators can still teach climate change and discuss the KKK or NAACP even if those terms were eliminated or scaled back, she said.

"You have a lot of folks who have put - I cannot begin to tell you - how many hours, even nights and weekends, that we have spent on a lot of the wordings of these phrases," she said.

What impact would the proposed standards have in the classroom?

Standards are used as the basis of curriculum and lesson plans, but teachers may deviate from them slightly, said Wilson Warren, a professor of history at Western Michigan University who serves as member of the Michigan Council of History Education.

He predicted that many history teachers, for example, would think it's "silly" to replace the term "constitutional democracy" with "constitutional republic."

"They will go ahead and still teach democracy," he said.