A Comparison of High School American History Standards

For most Americans, their introduction to American History is during public school. For many, it will be their only systematic study of the subject, and could be the only time they ever learn about the history of the country they reside in. This makes public school history education, specifically high school American History education for this papers’ purposes, an important steppingstone for most Americans to learn the basics about their country and home. One aspect of this history education process is through education standards. State content standards are the way the government communicates to teachers what should be taught. The goal of this paper is to look at the American History high school education standards of all fifty states in order to get an understanding of their priorities. With that, the paper will also look at various teacher opinions to see what actual teachers think of these priorities. This will all paint a clearer picture of where standards for history education are today and what teachers think about that, specificity of standards and the content and critical thinking standards divide being important themes.