A state's academic standards are the recipes from which its education system cooks. A gifted chef may produce tasty dishes without great cookbooks, but most people's food isn't apt to be much better than its recipes. In K-12 education, state standards drive the curriculum, the assessment and accountability systems, the selection of textbooks, training and certification of teachers, and much more. That's why we at Fordham have kept harping on them over the years, periodically evaluating them and then, as states revise them, re-appraising them.
This week we released our first - to our knowledge, America's first - evaluation of state standards for U.S. history. In the post-9/11 world, it's more important than ever for young Americans to learn their nation's past, the principles on which it was founded, the workings of its government, the origins of our freedoms, and how we've responded to past threats from abroad.
Standards alone cannot assure that this will happen. A state may have superb standards yet its children end up learning little. Conversely, a child blessed with a gifted and knowledgeable teacher, or fortunate enough to be enrolled in a terrific school, may end up knowing lots of U.S. history even though his state has dreadful standards. Such is the complexity and variability of American education.
Yet standards may well matter more in U.S. history than other subjects. Because this field is so often submerged within "social studies," and because social studies in most places is deeply present-oriented and a-historical, if not anti-historical, the state has a singular obligation to serve as counter-force, spelling out what it expects its schools to teach and its children to learn about their country's past.
To conduct this appraisal, we turned to an eminent American historian, Sheldon M. Stern, recently retired historian at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. He set three broad criteria:
First, do a state's K-12 standards expect U.S. history to be taught comprehensively, including the most important political, social, cultural and economic events and major historical figures? Do they set priorities for what students need to know and spell them out so that curriculum directors, textbook authors, test developers, parents, and teachers can organize their own work on the basis of these standards?
Second, do the standards present U.S. history in a coherent and structured sequence that begins with a solid introduction in the early grades and is cumulatively reinforced through high school?
Third, are they evenhanded - reasonably free of hero-worship and glorification of the past at one extreme, and of politically correct posturing, distortions and omissions at the opposite extreme? Do they place historical events in context, avoiding presentism and moralistic judgments?
After recruiting some expert help, Stern reviewed the history or social studies standards of 48 states (Iowa and Rhode Island had none) plus the District of Columbia, to determine how well they handle U.S. history.
He found some good and a lot of bad.
The good news is that six states have done an outstanding job and earned "A" grades. They are Indiana, New York, Alabama, Arizona, California, and Massachusetts. Five more states (DE, GA, KS, OK, VA) earned Bs.
The bad news: a whopping 23 states got Fs, eight received Ds, and seven Cs.
Bottom line: U.S. history standards can be done well, even superbly, but most places aren't doing this. Despite the controversy that typically surrounds the writing of standards in contentious fields such as history, it's possible for states to emerge with first-rate recipes for their education systems to take into the curricular kitchen. Yet three-quarters of them have bungled the assignment.
This is at least part of the explanation for the many assessments that show young Americans knowing less about history than any other subject. For example, the fraction of students (in grades 4, 8 and 12 alike) who reach NAEP's "proficient" level is smaller in history than in any other field. The situation has not improved in the sixteen years since Diane Ravitch and I wrote What Do Our 17-Year Olds Know?
Though U.S. schools include some superb history instructors who are as effective in the classroom as they are passionate about their subject, far too many teachers of history are people who never seriously studied this field themselves. (They may have been certified as "social studies" teachers after majoring in sociology, psychology, or social studies pedagogy.) That's another reason standards matter. The less skilled the cook, the more crucial the recipe.
Fortunately, states can solve the problem of weak standards by revising them. Since Stern's evaluation, for example, Minnesota has already issued new (draft) social studies standards that appear to be light years ahead of the wretched version he reviewed. (And of course they've come under fire for being too "pro-American." Check out the links below.) We've also discovered that Virginia supplements its state standards with a fine curriculum framework that supplies teachers with detailed information about what students should know in U.S history.
The new Fordham report, Effective State Standards for U.S. History: A 2003 Report Card, can be found online at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=320. You may also obtain a hard copy by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 or emailing [email protected].
We're proud to note that this report was unveiled yesterday at a path-breaking Senate hearing on "intellectual diversity" in U.S. education. Witnesses included Diane Ravitch, whose latest book, The Language Police, does so much to reveal the shortcomings of textbooks and tests in fields such as history, and Sandra Stotsky, recently retired from a key post at the Massachusetts Department of Education, where she did huge good in developing the Bay State's generally exemplary academic standards.
Senators Judd Gregg and Lamar Alexander say that yesterday's hearing is only the beginning. We wish them well in this worthy cause.
"State tops nation in teaching U.S. history," by Kim Hooper, Indianapolis Star, September 23, 2003
"Across the nation, educators battle over best way to teach social studies," by Scott Stephens, Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 23, 2003
"U.S. students need better civics education, experts say," by Peter Brownfeld, Fox News, September 16, 2003
"Proposed school standards draw fire," by John Welsh, St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 23, 2003
