Academic Standards Act

Introduction

Americans can only reclaim their K-12 public schools, and restore effective and depoliticized education, if the fifty states reform all four of their major academic standards—English Language Arts, Mathematics, Sciences, and Social Studies.

State standards are the single most influential documents in America’s education system. Since state academic content standards became widespread among the states in the 1990s as a response to the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983), state education departments have used them to provide guidance to each public K-12 school district and charter school as they create their own courses. State standards also influence what textbook authors write and what assessment companies such as the College Board test for in their advanced placement examinations. They affect teacher training and they provide the framework for teachers’ individual lesson plans. Private schools and homeschool parents also keep an eye on state standards. School districts and teachers maintain significant autonomy, but they can only depart so far from state standards.

Radical national higher education organizations, unfortunately, have produced politicized and inferior academic standards that have proven all too influential in ruining state academic standards. The Common Core State Standards initiative produced English Language Arts and Mathematics Standards; several organizations jointly produced the Next Generation Science Standards; and the National Council for the Social Studies produced the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. These four standards jointly cover K-12 education’s four core disciplines.

All four of these standards have produced politicized and inferior education—critiques of their effects include Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for America, The C3 Framework, and Climbing Down: How the Next Generation Science Standards Diminish Scientific Literacy. They also have been adopted, administratively or by statute, in the large majority of the states. Federal bullying played a role in coercing the state standards to adopt the Common Core standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics, but state education bureaucrats have also enthusiastically adopted these standards. The standards allow state bureaucrats to radicalize standards and curriculum with the excuse that, We’re just implementing national standards. Once the state links its own standards to these national standards, whether administratively or by statute, it also serves as a way to veto any attempt to reform standards. The Common Core, the NGSS, and the C3 Standards confine public K-12 education in a radical straitjacket.

Opponents of the radical education establishment have suffered from the lack of a practical alternative. Most such opponents rightly oppose any national standard as a homogenizing infringement on state and local powers to determine their own curricula. Yet this opposition has also allowed the radical establishment to win partly by default, since no one has presented a plausible alternative to their model.

Since 2022, the Civics Alliance, the National Association of Scholars, and Freedom in Education have drafted alternative model state K-12 standards for all four core disciplines, crafted to be suitable for local adaptation by states and school districts: American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standard (2022); The Franklin Standards: Model K-12 State Science Standards (2024); The Archimedes Standards: Model PreK-12 State Mathematics Standards (2025); and The Hawthorne Standards: Model PreK-12 State English Language Arts Standards (2026). These four standards are collectively referred to as The 2026 Standards.

The Academic Standards Act reforms academic standards in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Sciences, and Social Studies upon the models provided by American Birthright, the Franklin Standards, the Archimedes Standards, and the Hawthorne Standards. The Act:

1. removes all statutory and administrative requirements and alignments with the Common Core, NGSS; and C3 Framework academic standards;
2. substitutes, as models to inform new state standards, American Birthright, the Franklin Standards, the Archimedes Standards, and the Hawthorne Standards;
3. prohibits the inculcation of discriminatory concepts and the use of service-learning.

The Act frees schools, teachers, and students from the politicized, inferior standards provided by the Common Core, NGSS, and the C3 Framework. The prohibition of the inculcation of discriminatory concepts and the use of service-learning (the pedagogy that underlies action civics) will prevent the worst politicization of new standards. Each state will be free to build their own standards, but based upon better models.

Notes

Other Disciplines. We have not provided replacement standards for subjects such as World Languages, Technical Education, Fine Arts, Physical Education, or Social Emotional Learning. Policymakers should inspect and revise all academic standards—and we believe they would do great good by depoliticizing and removing service learning from all academic standards. We believe policymakers should address these four academic standards first, since they are the core of K-12 education—but any academic standard can be politicized, and all of them should be reformed.

Discipline Names: “English Language Arts” and “Social Studies” are the creations of progressive pedagogy. We would prefer that public K-12 schools ultimately return to teaching “English Literature” and “History.” Yet state statutes now generally refer to “English Language Arts” and “Social Studies,” and it would require an additional political campaign to change that language as well. This model Act pragmatically preserves the names “English Language Arts” and “Social Studies,” but we encourage state policymakers to follow up on this initiative by renaming and redefining these disciplines to purge them of progressive nomenclature and ideology.

Interrelations. These academic standards should be reformed together. Common Core English Language Arts standards damage social studies instruction and Common Core Mathematics standards damage science instruction. Education reform will be far more effective if all four academic standards are reformed in tandem.

Execution. State education departments may well fail to follow legislative intent if they are delegated responsibility to craft new standards. Governors and legislators should consider creating independent commissions to create their states’ new academic standards. The Act should be complemented by other policymaker initiatives, to ensure that education administrators put it into effect as intended.

Local Decision: School districts should be able to apply flexibly, or even opt-out from, state standards—including these model standards. We strongly urge state policymakers to give school districts significant flexibility/opt-out provisions vis-a-vis state standards—but since local authority provisions vary from state to state, we have not included such provisions in this model Act. State policymakers will know best how to apply the principle of local school district autonomy.

Model Legislative Text

SECTION A [ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS]

1. The {State} Department of Education shall remove all statutory and administrative requirements and alignments with K-12 Common Core English Language Arts State Standards from all rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development.
2. The {State} Department of Education shall use The Hawthorne Standards: Model PreK-12 State English Language Arts Standards, as it existed on {July 4, 2026}, to inform all future English Language Arts standards, and align all related rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development, to these new standards.

SECTION B [MATHEMATICS]

1. The {State} Department of Education shall remove all statutory and administrative requirements and alignments with K-12 Common Core Mathematics State Standards from all rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development.
2. The {State} Department of Education shall use The Archimedes Standards: Model PreK-12 State Mathematics Standards, as it existed on {July 4, 2026}, to inform all future Mathematics standards, and align all related rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development, to these new standards.

SECTION C [SCIENCES]

1. The {State} Department of Education shall remove all statutory and administrative requirements and alignments with the Next Generation Science Standards from all rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development.
2. The {State} Department of Education shall use The Franklin Standards: Model K-12 State Science Standards, as it existed on {July 4, 2026}, to inform all future Science standards, and align all related rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development, to these new standards.

SECTION D [SOCIAL STUDIES]

1. The {State} Department of Education shall remove all statutory and administrative requirements and alignments with the National Council for the Social Studies’ College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and Historyfrom all rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development.
2. The {State} Department of Education shall use American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards, as it existed on {July 4, 2026}, to inform all future Social Studies standards, and align all related rules and materials, including academic standards, curriculum development, textbook requirements, licensure, and professional development, to these new standards.

SECTION E [DEPOLITICIZATION]

1. The State Board of Education may not include in any academic standard any requirement, that teaches, instructs, trains, requires, or advantages any teacher or student to practice, adopt, or affirm a belief in:
   1. any discriminatory concepts, or in any pedagogies that require assent to any of these discriminatory concepts;
   2. the so-called systemic nature of racism, or like ideas, or in the so-called multiplicity or fluidity of gender identities, or like ideas, or in any pedagogies that require assent to any of these concepts;
   3. concepts such as allyship, diversity, social justice, sustainability, systemic racism, gender identity, equity, or inclusion, or to any ideology or pedagogy that classifies individuals within identity groups, divides identity groups into oppressed and oppressors, or prescribes advantages, disadvantages, or segregation based upon identity group membership, or to any other ideology, pedagogy, principle, concept, or formulation that requires commitment to any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy; or
   4. service-learning, or any other pedagogy that involves social or public policy advocacy.

SECTION F [DEFINITIONS]

1. “Discriminatory concepts” means any of the following concepts:
   1. one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; 
   2. an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; 
   3. an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s race; 
   4. members of one race cannot or should not attempt to treat others without respect to race; 
   5. an individual’s moral standing or worth is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; 
   6. an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; 
   7. an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; 
   8. meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; 
   9. fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex; or
   10. that the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States; or
   11. that, with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.
2. “Service learning” means a method— (A) under which students or participants learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service that— (i) is conducted in and meets the needs of a community; (ii) is coordinated with an elementary school, secondary school, institution of higher education, or community service program, and with the community; and (iii) helps foster civic responsibility; and (B) that— (i) is integrated into and enhances the academic curriculum of the students, or the educational components of the community service program in which the participants are enrolled; and (ii) provides structured time for the students or participants to reflect on the service experience.

SECTION G [SEPARABILITY]

If any provision of this chapter, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this chapter and the application of its provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.

Existing State Statutes and Proposed Bills

• Iowa: HF 2545 (2024) [Requiring the State Board of Education to Review and Revise the State’s Social Studies Standards]
• Ohio: HB 103 (2023) [Ohio Social Studies Standards Task Force]

The National Association of Scholars, in consultation with other supporters and friends of the Civics Alliance, drafted these model bills to translate into legislative language the principles in the Civics Alliance’s Civics Curriculum Statement & Open Letter. Just as these bills have been drafted with the expectation that different states will modify them as they see fit, they also have been drafted with the expectation that not every supporter of the Civics Alliance will endorse these bills or every part of them. Individual Civics Alliance signatories and supporters should not be assumed to have endorsed these bills, unless they say so explicitly.