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Overall, a (dismaying) 20 percent of fourth-graders, 17 percent of eighth-graders and 12 percent of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency (in history) on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test* (also known as the National Report Card) released Tuesday, (June 14, 2011). In total 30,000 students were tested.

 

NOW, let’s go back four months and read about  our state history standards.

 

The following are excerpts from the February 16, 2011 Fordham history standards study:**

The students in our institutions of higher education have less grasp, less understanding, less knowledge of American history than ever before. I think we are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate.

What they found is discouraging: Twenty-eight states—a majority—deserve D or F grades for their academic standards in this key subject. The average grade across all states is a dismal D. If states don’t even set the right destination for their history curricula, how surprised should we be that kids don’t learn much of this subject?  

Ohio’s standards claim to outline the “essential knowledge” that students should acquire through the social studies curriculum. Unfortunately, the state does not seem to consider substantive historical content to be “essential,” since very little is included. Ohio’s 2011 history standards received a “D” grade for clarity, specificity, content and rigor.

It is essential for all young Americans to learn U.S. history content — to graduate from high school with a clear understanding of our nation’s rich history. After all, only history can provide the intellectual context on which our democracy depends for its survival. Only history can provide young Americans with an understanding of the values and traditions which unite us in spite of persistent divisions and tensions. And only history can enable students to understand how hard our predecessors fought for advances such as free speech, religious tolerance, the right to vote, minorities’ and women’s rights, and constitutional restraints on government power — advances that were daring and radical in their time, even if we now take them for granted

That is why K-12 U.S. history standards are so critical. When properly implemented (and assessed) — and when adequate classroom time is assigned — it is these standards that provide the foundation upon which districts, schools, and teachers build their curricula and that drive their instruction. Contrary to conventional wisdom, mandating strong standards need not stifle teacher creativity. Laying out key content does not dictate how that essential content should be taught; it merely provides a roadmap to help guide the way. By failing to set clear, rigorous, and comprehensive history standards, states fail to take the first and most important step toward ensuring that their schools graduate historically literate American citizens.

Exposure to the full truth about complex historical events is essential if students are to learn to avoid simplistic and politically correct finger-pointing and instead achieve genuine understanding of historical causality.2 

Source:
* US history troublesome for nation’s students. By Sam Dillon, The New York Times. Published in The Enquirer 6/15/11 A2 

**OHIO • U.S. HISTORY Featured Fordham Publication: The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011 February 16, 2011 http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2011/20110216_SOSHS/SOSS_USHistory_Foreword.pdf

“How unpardonable it would be for us,” the eminent historian David McCullough declared at Hillsdale College in 2005, “with all that we have been given, all the advantages we have, all the continuing opportunities we have to enhance and increase our love of learning — to turn out blockheads or to raise blockheads.”1

Unpardonable or not, we have mounting evidence that American education is doing just that — creating a generation of students who don’t understand or value our own nation’s history. Dunderheads if not truly blockheads, one might well conclude, at least in this domain. Source: FOREWARD by Chester E. Finn and Kathleen Porter-Magee.

1 Bruce Cole, “The Danger of Historical Amnesia: A Conversation with David McCullough,” Humanities, 23 (2002).

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This week’s release of the Nation’s Report Card in history underscores the findings of this recent study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Reviewers evaluated state standards for U.S. history in grades K-12. What they found is discouraging: Twenty-eight states—a majority—deserve D or F grades for their academic standards in this key subject. The average grade across all states is a dismal D. If states don’t even set the right destination for their history curricula, how surprised should we be that kids don’t learn much of this subject? Among the few bright spots, South Carolina earns a straight A for its standards and six other jurisdictions—Alabama, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia—garner A-minuses. (The National Assessment’s own “framework” for U.S. history fared quite well, too.) Read on to learn how your state scored. (And then click on “Download Copy” for the startling report and state of affairs)

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.   U.S. students are less proficient in their nation’s history than any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released Tuesday,…
.   Overall, 20 percent of fourth-graders, 17 percent of eighth-graders and 12 percent of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Federal officials said they were encouraged by a slight increase in eight-grade scores…
.   The tests were given last spring to a representative sample of about 30,000 students nationwide.
.   History advocates contend that students’ poor showing on the tests underlines neglect shown the subject by federal and state policy makers, especially since the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act began requiring schools to raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject. The federal accountability law, advocates say, has given schools and teachers an incentive to spend less time on history and other subjects.
.   ”History is very much being shortchanged,” said Linda K. Salvucci, a history professor in San Antonio who is chairwoman-elect of the National Council for History Education.

Source: US history troublesome for nation’s students. By Sam Dillon, The New York Times, published in The Enquirer 6/15/11 A2

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The State of State U. S. History Standards 2011

Thomas B. Fordham Institute 
February, 16, 2011.
http://www.edexcellence.net/publications-issues/publications/the-state-of-state-us.html
.
OHIO • U.S. HISTORY

GRADE D

SCORES:
…Content and Rigor ….. 2/7
…Clarity and Specificity 1/3
Total Score 3/10
——————
Ohio Academic Content Standards:
Social Studies, PreK–8, U.S. history
segments (2010)
Accessed from:
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/
.
Overview:
.
Ohio’s standards offer, at best, an exceedingly broad and basic outline of U.S. history.
Huge swaths of history are covered in a few brief strokes, and specific events and people are all but absent.
.
Goals and Organization:
.
Ohio’s social studies standards provide grade-specific outlines for pre-K–8. Each grade is assigned a topical “theme” (e.g., “Communities: Past and Present, Near and Far,” “Ohio in the United States”) with a short explanatory paragraph. Each grade outline is then divided among four strands—history, geography, economics, and government—and each strand is divided into thematic or chronological “topics,” many of which are repeated across grades.
.
Finally, each topic is provided with grade-specific “content statements” which constitute “the essential knowledge to be learned at each grade level or within each course.”
High school organization is largely identical, save that subject-specific courses replace the strands, and each topic receives a brief introductory paragraph. The courses are not assigned to any specific grade.
.
Kindergarten through third grade focus on broad concepts of community and change over time. Fourth grade introduces Ohio history. Fifth grade turns to a general overview of the entire Western hemisphere’s early history.
American history enters in eighth grade and covers the period from pre-settlement to Reconstruction. The high school course continues from Reconstruction to the present.
.
Evaluation:
.
Ohio’s standards claim to outline the “essential knowledge” that students should acquire through the social studies curriculum. Unfortunately, the state does not seem to consider substantive historical content to be “essential,” since very little is included.
.
In the elementary grades, Ohio’s standards place little emphasis on U.S. history. Early grades’ guiding themes include such general concepts—typical of the “expanding environments” approach to social studies—as “The Classroom Community” (pre-Kindergarten), “A Child’s Place in Time and Space” (Kindergarten), “Families Now and Long Ago, Near and Far” (first grade), “People Working Together” (second grade), and
“Communities: Past and Present, Near and Far” (third grade). The history strand in these grades is divided between “historical thinking and skills” and “heritage” topics. A small number of very general content statements touch on basic concepts such as change, THE STATE of STATE U.S. HISTORY 118 STANDARDS 2011 OHIO • U.S. HISTORY culture, and the impact of individual actions. The only specific reference is to a few American national symbols.
.
In the fourth-grade Ohio history course, the history strand offers a few modestly specific references to U.S. history (the Native American presence, African American immigration, the Northwest Ordinance, and technological innovation) but fails to offer a coherent historical outline. The other strands add generic references to diversity and constitutional government, but no additional U.S. history specifics.
.
In the fifth grade’s general glance at the early Western
hemisphere, the content statements are again exceedingly few,
brief, and general. The history strand, for example, includes
a topic subheading on early civilizations, which contains
just a single content statement referring to the “unique
governments,” “social structures,” “religions,” “technologies,”
and “agricultural practices” of the Maya, Inca, Aztec, and
Mississippian cultures. A statement under the heritage
topic adds that “European exploration and colonization had
lasting effects which can be used to understand the Western
Hemisphere today.” The other strands add no further specifics.

.Eighth grade turns at last to American history but, even here,
the outline provided is entirely inadequate as a substantive
guide to teachers or students. After a historical thinking and
skills topic, the history strand is divided into four chronological
headings: “Colonization to Independence,” “A New Nation,”
“Expansion,” and “Civil War and Reconstruction.” But these
topics combined receive a mere twelve content statements.
There are passing references to pre-contact Native American
cultures, European exploration and colonization “for economic
and religious reasons,” competition between European
empires, the rise of slavery, Enlightenment ideas, and
“dissatisfaction with colonial rule” that led to the American
Revolution. But these brief and general statements are devoid
of specific events or dates, and they do not include the name of
a single individual.
.
There are equally shallow references to the Articles of
Confederation, early presidential administrations (again
with no names), and westward expansion. The sectional
crisis is reduced to “disputes over the nature of federalism,
complicated by economic developments in the United States,”
resulting “in sectional issues, including slavery, which led to
the American Civil War.” Reconstruction is likewise reduced
to “changes to the U.S. Constitution, an affirmation of federal
authority and lingering social and political differences.”
The other strands add equally superficial references to the
Constitution and the Industrial Revolution. This is the only
coverage of American history through 1877 offered anywhere
in Ohio’s standards.
.
In the high school U.S. history course (no longer divided into
strands), each topic receives a brief introductory statement.
But these offer only broad generalities on each era’s issues.
The statement on “Industrialization and Progressivism
(1877–1920)” for example, mentions the start of “large-scale
industrialization…in the United States during the late 1800s…
ignited by post-Civil War demand and fueled by technological
advancements.” “Growing industries,” it continues, led to
“foreign immigration” and “urbanization,” giving “rise to the
American labor movement,” expanded western settlement,
and a “period of progressive reform” in response to “political
corruption and practices of big business.”

.Such topic summaries are marginally useful, but within the
topics themselves, there are only twenty-eight very general
content statements for the entire course. The aforementioned
“Industrialism and Progressivism” receives five such content
statements, referring to industrialization, urbanization, laissezfaire,
post-Reconstruction racial systems, and Progressive
response. But that is all there is—general references, entirely
without specifics or historical individuals. Foreign policy
from 1898–1930 receives just two content statements,
mentioning the Spanish American War, World War I, and
the failure to join the League of Nations. The topic’s
introductory paragraph says only that the “industrial and
territorial growth of the United States fostered expansion
overseas,” and that “greater involvement in the world set the
stage for American participation in World War I and attempts
to preserve post-war peace.”
.
Four content statements cover domestic developments from
1919 to 1941. Three more cover foreign affairs from 1930 to
1945: America’s entry into World War II is mentioned only in
the topic’s brief textual introduction, which refers to “tyrannical
governments” in “certain nations” and to Pearl Harbor without
context or explanation. The remaining ten statements seek
to address the Cold War (McCarthyism, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, and the fall of Communism all appear), post-war
social change (civil rights, the economic boom, population
movement, and debates on federal power are mentioned
only in passing), the modern global economy, and the
post-9/11 world.

.The government and economics courses include a few
broad conceptual generalities but add no substantive
historical coverage.
.
Ohio is now preparing optional “model curricula” to guide
teachers through the official standards. These are meant to
add some explanatory text about each of the content
statements, but the statements are themselves so broad
that even this voluntary supplement is unlikely to provide
anything substantive.
.
THE STATE of STATE U.S. HISTORY STANDARDS 2011 119
OHIO • U.S. HISTORY
.
Content and Rigor Conclusion:
.
There is little American history content or educational rigor
in Ohio’s standards. Before eighth grade, there is effectively
none. The eighth-grade course offers a bit, attempting to cover
the entire period in a handful of broad content statements.
The high school course, while marginally more sophisticated,
is still exceedingly brief and general; at best, it offers a very
basic outline. There are no dates beyond the topic titles;
hardly any specific events are mentioned and not a single
person is named. Historical explanation and context are all
but absent, leaving teachers and students largely on their own
in constructing courses or comprehending the content. And
even the limited improvement in rigor at the high school level
applies only to U.S. history after 1877. Ohio’s content earns a
two out seven for Content and Rigor. (See Common Grading
Metric, Appendix A.)
.
Clarity and Specificity Conclusion:
.
Ohio’s American history sequence is clear. Unfortunately, it is
also inadequate. Little attempt is made to introduce anything
of substance before middle school. Ohio history is ostensibly
covered in fourth grade and the early history of the Western
hemisphere in fifth grade, but neither is given more than a few
generalizations with occasional references to facts or events.
Eighth grade is meant to cover U.S. history to 1877, but offers
only the most meager specifics; high school’s coverage of 1877
to the present, though somewhat better, is still short on detail.
Ohio’s lack of detail and near-absence of meaningful sequence
in the elementary grades leaves it with only one out of three
for Clarity and Specificity. (See Common Grading Metric,
Appendix A.)
.
http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2011/20110216_SOSHS/SOSS_USHistory_Ohio.pdf