Happy 2026!

Happy 2026! Happy 250th Anniversary! And welcome to the first Resolute of the New Year. Loyal readers will have noted, wistfully, the lack of Resolutes for a month or two. That’s because there were Winter Holidays—and because there just wasn’t much news in the world of civics and social studies education. We publish when there’s actually enough news to justify a newsletter! Now that the spate of new state legislation has started coming down the pike for the New Year, we have something to write about.

Iowa: Strengthening Core Curriculum

Iowa policymakers have submitted a new bill, A bill for an act relating to general education requirements, core curricula, other functions of regents institutions, and including applicability provisions (HSB543 and SF2033). This importantly strengthens the previous legislation, which established a general education requirement in American history and government, by making two required courses in American History and American Government. It also assigns significant responsibility for these gen-ed courses at the University of Iowa to the mission-friendly Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa—although by way of compromise, the more establishment-oriented Center for Cyclone Civics has the responsibility at State University, as does the Center for Civic Education at the University of Northern Iowa. The bill also works to establish intellectually pluralist lecture and debate series at all three centers. The bill finally gives the Center for Cyclone Civics and the Center for Civic Education the duties to report directly to Iowa legislatures—which reads as a way to make it possible for these centers to free themselves from subordination to the education establishment.

Resolute readers should recollect that Iowa has been engaged now in several years of steady education reforms, including establishing the Center for Intellectual Freedom last year and (more on this below) reforming K-12 social studies standards. This legislation is significant as follow-up legislation—legislation as part of a steady, multi-year campaign to engage in education reform. A great many states are still struggling even to have pioneer education reform succeed. Iowa (as, notably, Florida and Texas) is one of a few states which has the luxury to think of Stage B education reform legislation—what second steps to take. Education reform is still new enough and vulnerable enough, even in states that have gotten to Stage B. But Iowa’s policymakers are providing a valuable model to their peers throughout the nation who are still struggling to enact the first round of education reform legislation.

Iowa: The K-12 Empire Strikes Back

Iowa also provides a valuable lesson about how first-round education reform legislation can be subverted. Iowa in 2024 enacted legislation (informed by Civics Alliance model legislation) to reform K-12 social studies standards. Best to quote the recent, detailed public comment by NAS and the Civics Alliance:

Iowa’s Department of Education, unfortunately, crippled the revision process by using the same process and personnel, in alliance with the same status quo national organizations and their affiliates, that produced Iowa’s original, catastrophically flawed social studies standards. Even more unfortunately, the Department decided to hire a consultant associated with the highly politicized AIR to lead Iowa’s social studies standards revision process. One cannot expect a different result by using the same radical methods and personnel that caused the problem the legislature and governor were seeking to solve. …

Iowa’s policymakers should start the social studies standard revision process over again. We recommend that they direct the Department of Education, following the successful example of states such as South Dakota that have successfully revised their standards, to appoint an independent commission to redraft Iowa’s social studies standards. 

Resolute readers will learn another cogent lesson from Iowa: first-round education reform legislation can be stymied by the education establishment, which can use its control of bureaucracies to defend the status quo. This is not the end of the story! We have written this public comment, not least to alert Iowa citizens and policymakers to what is very much a defiance and a subversion of legislative intent. We are learning, as Resolute readers should learn, how to conduct a long-term campaign against the redoubts of a resourceful foe.

Iowa: “Cultural Liberty”

The far-left education establishment always has been fertile with new euphemisms to camouflage their activist program. The rise of laws and executive orders banning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and “critical race theory” (CRT) particularly has given activists an incentive to come up with new disguises. The new Iowa social study standards have introduced a phrase, “cultural liberty,” which seeks to disguise itself in education reformers’ preferred language of liberty and freedom. Cultural liberty simply is radical identity politics. An extract from Iowa’s social studies standards illustrates this nicely:

  • Examples of how human rights and cultural liberty have been taken away may include but are not limited to: slavery, treatment of indigenous peoples, Japanese-American internment camps, gender, sexual orientation, and women’s rights, people with disabilities, immigration, abolition, race, workers’ rights.
  • Cultural liberty is defined as: the ability of individuals and groups to choose their cultural identities, express themselves, and participate in society without fear of discrimination or exclusion based on their culture.

We cannot trace every radical perversion of the English language—but readers of Resolute should note this coinage, abusing the concept of liberty, which has the potential to be a very effective means of radical deception.

Vermont: A New Front in the Culture War

More conservative states frequently see bills with such ends as requiring display in public schools of the Ten Commandments—and, more rarely, successful legislation. This year there’s a radical equivalent in Vermont: An act relating to the creation of the Student Secular Bill of Rights (House Bill 705). This has the appearance of a bill that will soon appear, in one form or another, in a great many states. Readers of Resolute should be aware that this sort of proposal likely will rise on the political agenda—and likely will become law in one or more blue states.

Nebraska: What’s Good for the Goose …

A satiric member of Nebraska’s legislature has submitted a bill to Require members of the Legislature to complete a civics assessment (Legislative Bill 1066). This is presumably part of the war against requiring high school students to prove even minimal civics knowledge, by take the civics test provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. If you policymakers aren’t willing to take the test yourself, why would you require it of high school students? And there are easy answers to this—school, after all, is the appropriate time and place to learn such knowledge, and legislators do have other calls on their time. That said, we hardly object to more such tests of adult citizens! Although our own priority would be to require them of teachers and college professors. Resolute readers, in any case, should be aware of such satiric bills.

A note: asking high school students to pass these civics assessments actually is a really low bar. They really should be required of 8th graders, or even 6th graders. It’s probably not practicable in the short run, but education reformers should consider whether to transform these civics assessments from high school requirements from high school requirements into middle school requirements.

Texas: Slowly Wending Social Studies Reform

Yours truly serves as a Social Studies Content Advisor for Texas’ reform of its state standards (TEKS). I can’t say too much about our deliberations, but Resolute readers should look at the outline agenda just publicly presented to the State Board of Education (pages I-127 to I-200). This is a collaborative work, with contributions from advisors of varying intellectual commitments and preferences. All in all, I think it is a good outline, which—with State Board of Education approval—points toward good final social studies standards. Resolute readers should take heart—and should find it useful to see what an outline of social studies standards looks like.

West Virginia: K-12 Social Studies Reform

West Virginia policymakers have just introduced the American Civics and History Act (House Bill 4104), to reform K-12 social studies instruction. It marks the extension of education reform in West Virginia, and in the nation—a reminder that opportunities to improve our social studies and civics education bubble up around the nation. Resolute readers should take from this: hope! Good things continue to happen for our cause, in state after state. There are ups and downs, but we continue to make gains. And that is a good takeaway, as we enter 2026, and our nation’s 250th anniversary.

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.

Civics Alliance Now Has Twelve 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. We now have twelve affiliates, in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, 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, February 2, 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

2026/Current: Colorado, Maryland, North Dakota, South Carolina; continuing: Arizona, Kentucky, Montana, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming


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.

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 Anival Torres on Unsplash