GOLDEN, Colo. — Will history be rewritten by the winners?

That was the question parents and students were asking in school hallways, in online PTA forums and on boulevards up and down this suburban Colorado school district on Friday, a day after the school board’s conservative majority voted to change how the district reviews parts of its curriculum. It was the climax of an impassioned debate over censorship, academic freedom and what to teach students about American history.

After two weeks of student protests and a fierce backlash across Colorado and beyond, the Jefferson County School Board backed away from a proposal to teach students the “benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” while avoiding lessons that condoned “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” But the board did vote 3-to-2 to reorganize its curriculum-review committee to include students, teachers and board-appointed community members.

The Jefferson County schools superintendent, Dan McMinimee, who suggested the compromise, said it represented the “middle ground” in a fevered debate that pitted the board’s three conservative members against students, parents, the teachers’ union and other critics who opposed the effort to steer lessons toward the “positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.” The board members who supported the proposal said they did not want to censor or distort history.

But the compromise allayed few critics. On Friday afternoon, hundreds of parents and students lined the streets in the Jefferson County School District — Colorado’s second-largest — to criticize the board’s actions as the latest in a series of divisive moves.