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The national standards Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree (and Ed) wrote are available on Amazon:
National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present (National History Standards Project Series)
National Standards for History: Basic Edition
National Standards for History for Grades K-4
National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience
This is probably the whole list.
and:
Gary's account of the culture wars: History on Trial
I have to say... Lynne Cheney's been great on math, but she seriously blew it on the history standards.
She ambushed the standards - she really did just kill them. I'm forgetting details of the story now, so I shouldn't work from memory, but the one part I do remember clearly is that the only two parts of the standards she openly cited as being anti-American were social studies-type lessons history teachers had written. I think they were included in an appendix.
Those lessons were easily removable, and were there, as I recall, in order to get the document through. (They had massive conflict with the social studies people, as you can probably imagine.)
And: the lessons weren't standards.
They were lessons.
The whole things was trumped up.
After having commissioned the standards, and having been in the loop and involved throughout the entire long drawn-out process of getting them written and vetted, Cheney had not made any criticisms.
Everyone on Ed's side of the affair assumes her motivations had to do with political opportunism, but no one knows. (I think Gingrich was ascendant at that point ? .... Clinton may already have been in office ..... I'll have to read the book.)
These standards, along with New York's science standards, are the one thing standing between me and the abyss.
The only reason any schools are teaching any content now, in the wake of 20 years of constructivist teaching in the ed schools, is decent state standards.
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Check out Minnesota's state history/social studies standards:
http://education.state.mn.us/mdeprod/groups/Standards/documents/LawStatute/006219.pdf
There were quite a few fireworks about these (Cheri Yecke was our acting Commissioner of Education at the time, if I recall correctly). These earned an overall "A" from the Fordham Foundation.
The Minnesota science standards are found here:http://education.state.mn.us/mdeprod/groups/Standards/documents/LawStatute/000282.pdf
They reflect a 6th grade curriculum in physical science, 7th grade in life science, 8th grade in earth science, then an overall 9-12 content.
The newly revised math standards (not yet adopted but I think they will be) are here:
http://education.state.mn.us/mdeprod/groups/Standards/documents/Publication/031308.pdf
All of these seem to happily emphasize content. Where I see the problem, however (from my myopic vantage point as parent and concerned citizen) is in implementation. State test development necessarily lags behind the adoption of standards, and changes in local curriculum are even slower, if they come at all.
Example: St. Paul adopted citywide Everyday Math at a time when the Minnesota math standards were fuzzy. EM was chosen because of its excellent alignment with these standards.
Then, the state math standards were overhauled. They became more content-focused and reflective of cumulative skill acquisition. Did the district follow by making a curriculum change? No, from what I can see they responded by preparing complex spreadsheets showing where the new standards mapped onto the EM curriculum. Rearrangement (and possibly supplementation??) of material is necessary if a teacher wants to cover the grade-based standards. And still we have EM.
No, from what I can see they responded by preparing complex spreadsheets showing where the new standards mapped onto the EM curriculum.
help me....
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