Idaho’s K-12 civics and U.S. history standards ranked ‘inadequate’ in new report
Idaho’s K-12 U.S. history and civics standards are “inadequate” and should undergo a complete revision, according to a new report.
The report, called “The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021,” from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, gave every state across the country and Washington, D.C., a grade to evaluate the quality of their K-12 civics and U.S. history standards.
Idaho got a D for its civics standards and an F for its U.S. history standards. Both subjects got low scores for clarity and organization, as well as content and rigor.
David Griffith, a senior research and policy associate at the institute, said a general lack of specificity and rigor in the state’s standards, along with the way they were presented, earned Idaho such low marks.
The state’s social studies standards document is more than 50 pages and goes through a number of goals and objectives students in grades K-12 should learn.
“It’s a long document. It’s almost unnavigable,” Griffith told the Idaho Statesman over the phone. “Altogether, it’s sort of a mess and it’s hard to imagine anyone getting any useful guidance out of the document.”
Overall, the report found the standards in Idaho needed to have more content and more clearly spell out exactly what students should be learning.
“Some decent civics content in the early grades is overshadowed by awful presentation and organization, a comparatively weak high school course, and two passes at U.S. history that somehow manage to impart almost no historical knowledge,” according to the report.
The history standards include “enormously broad injunctions and thin, disjointed, thematically scattered content.”
The report recommended that the state’s U.S. history and civics standards be rethought.
“Sometimes it’s just easier to start from scratch,” Griffith said. “I think there’s a lot of things that can be done to make this more useful.”
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which published the report, is an ideologically conservative education policy thank tank that provides analysis and research and advances “high quality charter schools and other proven models of educational choice.”
‘Broad guidelines’
The State Department of Education defended Idaho’s standards, saying the state gives “great discretion to local boards for determining additional standards as well as patterns of instructional organization.”
“Idaho’s content standards provide broad guidelines and set the minimum threshold for public school districts and charter schools in the state,” Kristin Rodine, a public information officer for the department, said in an email in response to the report. “Local districts are free to add to them and make them more rigorous.”
The department also pointed to strengths in the state’s standards that were identified by the report.
“The report praised Idaho’s elementary content standards as reasonably thorough and age appropriate. And the report noted that Idaho’s content standards related to American Indians show thought and deep knowledge,” Rodine said.
The report did point out that Idaho’s early-grade civics guidelines were “clear and to the point,” but in middle and high school, the civics standards are “vague and absent altogether,” with poor organization, the report said.
The State Department of Education also cited another study on civics education from 2018 called “A Look at Civics Education in the United States.” That report pointed to Idaho for teaching civics in schools at an early age. It also said Idaho “integrates civics standards” into the social studies classes for all grade levels, which better prepares students for the civics class offered in high school.
How Idaho compares to other states
The report looked at all 50 states’ standards as of May 1 and ranked them based on “content, rigor, clarity and organization.” It focused on the core content, which includes topics such as the three branches of government and the Civil War, but also looked at skills and dispositions “that we expect kids to acquire if they’re going to be successful citizens and thoughtful citizens,” Griffith said.
The report ranked four states and Washington, D.C., as “exemplary” in both subjects, and another 10 states as “good” in both areas. Three states received a “good” ranking in one of the subjects and a “mediocre” grade in another.
Idaho wasn’t alone in its poor grades. The report found that 20 states had “inadequate” civics and U.S. history standards.
For the states ranked as exemplary, the report identified a number of areas they had in common, including that the standards articulated what students should know about the country’s “democratic institutions, traditions and history” and that they created well-organized, user-friendly documents.
States rated as exemplary also emphasized “skills that are essential to informed citizenship such as critical thinking, problem analysis, and evaluating, interpreting, and arguing from evidence,” the report said.
Among those states that ranked as inadequate, the standards were often vague and didn’t include all topics important to creating an informed citizenship, according to the report.
“There’s been a narrative for a while now that Americans don’t know a lot of civics, they don’t know a lot of their own history,” Griffith said. “And then on top of that, there’s a lot of concern just about the state of our politics and about what passes for public discourse. So there’s a growing interest in boosting K-12 civics and history education.”
States encouraged to ‘spell out’ what students should know
The goal of the report, Griffith said, was to strengthen state standards and improve civics and history education across the country.
“These are not nice-to-have subjects. Knowing how the U.S. government works, that’s not a nice-to-have if you want to be a thoughtful citizen. Knowing our own history is not a nice-to-have,” he said. “And so it’s not inappropriate for states to require these subjects in high school. It’s not inappropriate for them to spell out a really rigorous sequence.”
He added: “We’ve been failing this area for far too long.”
If students don’t get the education they need, the country won’t have an informed electorate and citizenry, Griffith said.
“We’re encouraging states to spell out as clearly as they can what kids should know,” he said.
The report comes as public officials in Idaho and in several states across the country have been discussing critical race theory in the context of education.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed House Bill 377, which prohibits funding to schools that direct students to “affirm, adopt or adhere” to the idea that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is “inherently superior or inferior” or that people of a certain race or identity are “inherently responsible for actions committed in the past.” The bill was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little.
Griffith said the debate over critical race theory seems purely political.
“I’m not convinced that anyone knows what critical race theory is,” he said. “Fundamentally, having such a polarized buzzword-y debate, it’s damaging to the cause of educating kids in a thoughtful and nuanced way about U.S. history.”
Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin also earlier this year created a task force to look into claims of “indoctrination” in Idaho schools.
When McGeachin first announced the task force, she said the issue was “one of the most significant threats facing our society today.” The task force, according to an April press release, was meant to “protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism and Marxism.”
The task force held its second meeting last week, where members heard from a number of parents and presenters, all of whom appeared to support the task force and did not dispute the idea of indoctrination in Idaho’s schools.
The task force has yet to take public comment, but McGeachin said it would hear from the public once it had proposals.
Students in Idaho told the Statesman recently they were concerned about how the task force and its claims could affect their education. Several students said they don’t believe they have ever learned critical race theory in schools, adding that they want to be learning more history, not less.
