The Great Divide: States Write Their Own History
Picture this: a student moves from Texas to California and suddenly discovers that the Civil War was fought for completely different reasons. There is no national curriculum for teaching United States history, and there are no national social studies standards to mandate what topics or historical figures students must learn about. The state social studies standards are a document or documents that detail what public school students are expected to know in specific states. Every state, federal district, and US territory has adopted some form of academic standards for history and social studies instruction in public schools between kindergarten and twelfth grade (K-12). This means that what kids learn about America depends entirely on where they happen to live. It’s like having fifty different versions of the same story, each with its own spin on what really happened.
Slavery and Civil Rights: The Missing Conversations
Here’s where things get uncomfortable, and honestly, pretty shocking. CBS News found that seven states do not directly mention slavery in their state standards and eight states do not mention the civil rights movement. Think about that for a moment. How do you teach American history without talking about slavery or civil rights? It’s like trying to explain a hurricane without mentioning the wind. Only two states mention white supremacy, while 16 states list states’ rights as a cause of the Civil War. Historians have said it is only after the war when the institution of slavery was abolished that southerners began listing “states’ rights” as a cause for the Civil War. The gaps in these curricula aren’t accidents – they’re deliberate choices that shape how millions of students understand their country’s past.
The Power Players: How Texas and California Shape Everyone’s Education
Ever wonder why your history textbook seemed to have a particular slant? Historically, California and Texas have driven the K-12 publishing industry, and now Florida is also influencing the market. This trio of states basically decides what the rest of America learns because they’re such huge markets. Experts suggest that decisions like these, often made by those overseeing public school curricula in a small number of highly populated states, have an outsized influence on what children are learning throughout the country. Publishers can’t afford to create fifty different textbooks, so they often cater to the biggest buyers. It’s like having three people at a restaurant table of fifty decide what everyone else is going to eat.
The Culture Wars Enter the Classroom
The past few years have turned history education into a battlefield. The AHA, our members, and other historians find ourselves on the front lines of a conflict over America’s past, confronting opponents who are actively promoting ignorance in service of misleading notions of unity. Through Teaching History with Integrity, the AHA leads or participates in several initiatives to provide resources and support for history educators facing intensifying controversies about the teaching of the American past. Similar controversies have happened in other states, including Texas, Florida and Virginia. While the culture wars and debates around education standards happen outside of the classroom, the results are felt within. Teachers are caught in the middle, trying to do their jobs while politicians argue about what version of history kids should learn.
The Research That Changed Everything
In 2024, something remarkable happened. The AHA’s 2024 report shares findings from the most comprehensive study of secondary US history education undertaken in the 21st century. AHA researchers appraised standards and legislation in all 50 states, conducted a survey of over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators, interviewed over 200 teachers and administrators, and reviewed thousands of pages of instructional materials from small towns to sprawling suburbs to big cities. There was no factual basis for the contentious debates over history education that have attracted attention from state legislators, school boards, parents, and media across the country. Beyond anecdotal evidence, no one actually knew what was happening in classrooms in different parts of the country. Finally, we had real data instead of just heated arguments.
State Adoption vs Local Choice: Two Different Worlds
State textbook adoption policies can be broadly divided into two categories: state adoption states and local adoption states. In the 19 states with state policies, state-appointed boards are responsible for reviewing textbooks and creating lists of “adopted” or “approved” textbooks for districts to consider. In the remaining states, districts are largely left to shift for themselves based on their own criteria. Policy across the 19 state adoption states varies greatly. Imagine if every restaurant either had to choose from a state-approved menu or could serve whatever they wanted – that’s basically how textbook selection works. Some states control everything; others leave it up to local districts.
The Professional Development Problem
Here’s something most people don’t realize: even when schools have good textbooks, that doesn’t mean teachers are using them effectively. Even when districts adopt a textbook from a state-approved list, our research indicates that only a third of teachers use that textbook regularly with little or no modification. More commonly, teachers heavily modify the textbooks they are provided, assembling lesson plans that draw from multiple sources. For states looking to increase the amount of actual classroom instruction driven by high-quality materials, influencing local adoption is only the first step. Louisiana was one of the first states to take a more assertive role to not only inform district textbook adoption but also pair adoptions with high-quality supports for teachers. It’s like giving someone a recipe but not teaching them how to cook.
The Florida Math Textbook Controversy: A Warning Sign
In 2024, Florida made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April, the Florida Department of Education initially rejected 41% of all K-12 mathematics textbooks submitted for state adoption approval — the most in Florida’s history. The dismissal of the 54 textbooks — including 71% of K-5 math materials — stems from several claims: references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core and “unsolicited” inclusions of Social Emotional Learning. Math textbooks were being rejected for mentioning social-emotional learning – think about that for a second. If math isn’t safe from political interference, what subject is?
The Standards Revolution That Never Happened
The 1970s saw an accountability movement in American education, Jackson writes. Policymakers, scholars and others argued that American schools were falling behind, largely because no one was held to account for what schools taught or what students were required to learn. The influential 1983 publication “A Nation at Risk” urged adoption of standards for various subjects. That resulted in the adoption of standardized testing in the 1980s and laid the groundwork for the No Child Left Behind Act. While there are no national standards on history education, it is not for lack of trying. We’ve been trying to fix this problem for decades, but politics keeps getting in the way.
What Teachers Actually Want
Teachers want to understand and learn the complexity of the history that many of them did not learn in their own education experience because the curriculum that was taught to them while they were in school was distinctly different—very whitewashed curriculum—that has changed and transformed over time. This is the reality nobody talks about: many teachers are learning accurate history for the first time along with their students. Professional historians aren’t often deeply affected by these standards, but students are. The people making the rules often aren’t the ones dealing with the consequences. “Let’s think critically about what it is we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” Jackson said. “And hopefully students can think about it critically and come up with their own thoughts on what they would like to learn about.”
The C3 Framework: A Glimmer of Hope
In 2013, the AHA joined a coalition of fifteen professional organizations to create the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. As of 2024, 38 states use academic standards that quote, reference, or are modeled after C3 and its inquiry-based approach. This framework focuses on asking questions rather than memorizing facts. Instead of just learning dates, students learn to think like historians. The discipline of history demands that students grapple with multiple perspectives, analyzing evidence to form an interpretation that is subject to change as new sources emerge or new questions arise. Learning to recognize where evidence supports multiple, competing interpretations and understanding how to engage in civil disagreement are some of the core lessons that students learn in the history classroom.
The Textbook Adoption Circus
Wesson and the State Textbook Committee gathered Friday for an orientation meeting to initiate the 2025-26 adoption cycle, a process that determines which textbooks the state will approve for the next six years. The committee last met Feb. 7 to conclude the 2024-25 cycle. Every few years, states go through this elaborate process of choosing new textbooks, and it’s become increasingly political. The number of companies bidding in the small-market state has dwindled in recent years while political debates over classroom content grew. Publishers are literally walking away from certain states because the politics have become too toxic. State boards of education usually vote on the final textbook and instructional material adoption, but smaller committees may conduct the in-depth review and recommendation of the materials. In Texas, for example, the commissioner of education appoints state review panel members from nominations submitted by state board members, academic experts, educators, parents or educational organizations.
The Future of History Education
The AHA’s approach to state standards and related assessments starts from the premise that every student has the right to a history-rich education. The AHA has expanded its investment in academic standards and curriculum support, providing general guidelines and specific feedback to state education agencies, school districts, educators, and the public. The fight isn’t over. The AHA’s Freedom to Learn initiative educates historians and others on how to advocate publicly for honest history education, responds directly to the bills themselves, and creates resources to help teachers directly affected by these bills think about how to maintain the integrity of their history courses. “I do think every state should have the ability to write its own history, but there’s the nation history and then the state history,” he said. “Certainly it should be historians who are gathered at a national level to set national history standards that should be taught to all American children.” The question is whether we’ll choose to teach our children the complex, messy, beautiful truth about America, or keep pretending that fifty different versions of history somehow add up to one coherent story.
What do you think would happen if your state suddenly had to teach the same history as every other state?
