Evaluating the Support of Teacher Choice in State History Standards

The culture wars concerning what history should be taught in U.S. schools are often played out through the release of new state or national history/social studies standards or the textbooks aligned with those standards. Despite their oft-politicized status, every state now has history standards. However, these standards take on different forms in the states, and the amount of perceived control that history teachers have over content topics to teach varies from state to state. Studies have shown that standards can play an important role for teachers in deciding how and what is taught in classrooms. However, with the rise of the standards and accountability movements over the past few decades, less is known about how history standards present choice to teachers in what content they teach. In this study, the authors use a content analysis of fifty-one secondary history state standards to advance an argument about the role that history content standards can play in history teaching and teacher education. While teachers may perceive state standards as necessary burdens to bear or obstacles to be avoided, the authors begin with the principle that they can be a tool that empowers teachers to make reasoned planning and instructional decisions that meet the needs of their students--however, as the study found, the degree to which the standards function in this way currently varies among states.