Wisconsin has released a mediocre “civics scope” … Georgia has gone back and forth on AP African American Studies … the College Board is softening their standards … All this and more in the latest Resolute!
Wisconsin: Civics
Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction released a civics and social studies scope and sequence. We’ve now examined these documents—three separate documents, for elementary school, and high school. These are meant to accompany standards, rather than being standards themselves. They are blandly progressive rather than in-your-face radical like Minnesota or Rhode Island. A great deal of action civics, a great deal of identity politics, a great deal of education-school jargon, very little patriotism or liberty or subject-matter content, and of course it’s nothing but questions. Not the worst that’s out there—but that’s hardly cause for Wisconsinites to be joyful.
These civics standards include a really interesting note about the nature of K-8 social studies teaching in Wisconsin.
We have seen an increase in the number of teachers licensed as generalist for K-8, and a decrease in the number of K-8 generalists who have a minor in any content area. There is also an increase in the hiring of K-8 generalists at the middle school level. What this means is that there is an increase in licensed educators who have little experience with social studies content – or more importantly, social studies pedagogical content knowledge – because they received no training or support in it. This, along with the decrease in social studies time K-8, has impacted students’ understanding of social studies content, skills, and dispositions.
Education reformers should be aware of this as a general background—an ever-increasing number of social studies teachers, especially K-8, “who have little experience with social studies content.” Everything we do should be done with that background in mind.
Georgia: AP African American Studies
A note from the summer: Georgia went back and forth on whether the state would fund AP African American Studies. The tergiversation helpfully reminds us that not all policymakers are as staunch as Governor DeSantis of Florida, who stuck to his guns about cutting support for the radical activism of AP African American Studies. We must do our work firmly and constantly, and know that politicians do sometimes go wobbly.
College Board: Chester Finn On Their Softening
Chester Finn of the Fordham Institute has been soft on action civics, but he’s quite good at examining the evidence that the College Board has been softening its advanced placement exams.
Three decades ago, the College Board “recentered” the SAT. Now it’s “recalibrating” Advanced Placement. … I’m not saying the College Board is monkeying with AP scores for non-psychometric reasons. I’m saying I understand why one might suspect that they are. And until they produce a transparent explanation of why they’re making these changes, along with clear evidence of why we should have greater confidence in the new system and the resultant higher scores than in the old, we must expect allegations that they’re defining educational deviancy down.
Finn is more charitable toward the College Board than I would be. Education reformers should presume that the Advanced Placement exams indeed have defined educational deviancy down, absent positive evidence to the contrary.
Recent Developments
- The Jack Miller Center has founded a Civics Foundations Graduate Consortium, dedicated to graduate education for K-12 teachers in American civics and history.
- ACTA has launched a National Commission on American History and Civic Education, to promote the establishment of a required U.S. history course throughout higher education.
- Heritage has published its 2024 Education Freedom Report Card.
- Heritage also has published its Choose College With Confidence.
- The American Historical Association has published American Lesson Plan, a report on secondary history education. While somewhat politicized, there is a lot of very useful information.
- AIR’s Social Studies Standards Map provides a great deal of useful information about social studies standards in each state.
Testimony
Would you like to be on a list of people prepared to give testimony in favor of a state bill to reform civics education? If so, please get in touch with me: randall@nas.org. We need people ready to testify in all 50 states—ideally, with some personal tie to the education system, but testimony from any citizen would be good.
State Social Studies Standards: What’s Coming Up
- Alaska: Alaska’s Department of Education contracted with the American Institutes for Research to provide draft social studies standards. These draft standards were scheduled to be submitted to the State Board of Education and posted for public comment in March of 2024.
If you have news we don’t please write in and say! But as far as we can tell, that is the state of play for the present moment.
Civics Alliance Now Has Ten State Affiliates
The Civics Alliance is building a network of state affiliates—groups dedicated to removing action civics in their states, whom we will list on our website. Our newest state affiliate is Nebraska, run by Dennis Applegarth. Welcome, Dennis and Nebraska! We now have ten affiliates, in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. If you would like to form such an organization, or suggest an existing organization, please get in touch with David Randall (randall@nas.org).
Monthly American Birthright Zoom Meeting
The Civics Alliance will have its monthly Zoom session devoted to social studies standards reform on Monday, October 7, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. Please email randall@nas.org if you would like to join these monthly Zoom meetings.
Social Studies Standards Revision Schedule
2024/Current: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky (partial), Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
2025: Kentucky, Nebraska, Texas
2026: Colorado, Maryland, North Dakota, South Carolina
2027: Hawaii, Kansas
2029: Louisiana
2030: Minnesota
2031: Illinois
No Revision Currently Scheduled: California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.
Please email David Randall (randall@nas.org) if you are interested in further information about your state’s social studies revision process, and what you can do to participate.
Continuing Priorities: Federal Legislation
At the federal level, the Civics Secures Democracy Act threatens to impose action civics nationwide.
The Civics Bill Tracker
Civics Alliance supporters may now use the Civics Bill Tracker to track all proposed federal and state legislation related to civics.
Public Action
We encourage Civics Alliance supporters to inform the public and policymakers about the stakes and consequences of action civics bills.
David Randall is the Executive Director of the Civics Alliance, and Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars
Photo by Gary Fultz on Unsplash
