Fordham Foundation ranks South Carolina history standards as nation’s eighth best
WASHINGTON – A prominent education reform group ranked South Carolina’s world history standards as the country’s eighth strongest in a national report released today. The Palmetto State was one of only eight states to receive a grade of A.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which publishes regular report cards on state academic standards, praised South Carolina’s as “a model of excellence.” The foundation said the state’s chronological organization of history standards “gives South Carolina a place of distinction in K-12 social studies education and reflects an earnest commitment to teaching real history.”
Today’s announcement in Washington was the latest in a growing list of national recognitions for South Carolina’s curriculum and academic proficiency standards. The Fordham Foundation ranked the state’s science standards as the nation’s fourth-best in December, and six different national research studies have confirmed that South Carolina’s expectations for student academic proficiency are among the nation’s most rigorous.
“Any successful school system starts with strong academic standards,” said State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum, whose agency has been charged under the Education Accountability Act with developing the state’s standards. “You must say very clearly what the expectations are for students and teachers alike, and in South Carolina our expectations are very high indeed. This continuing national recognition tells me that we’re on the right track.”
Fordham was critical of most states’ world history standards, assigning two-thirds of them either Ds or Fs.
“At a time when the United States faces threats and competitors around the globe, and when our children’s future is more entangled than ever with world developments, our schools ought not treat world history so casually,” said Fordham Institute president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “Nations that once were little more than curiosities to most Americans have transformed themselves into places of vital interest and concern. No one can be considered adequately prepared for life in the 21st century unless they understand the history and culture of the world’s major civilizations.”
The foundation’s analysis was done by renowned historian and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“A working knowledge of world history is socially, politically, economically, and culturally indispensable for young Americans,” Mead said. “The failure of public schools to teach world history amounts to denying equal opportunity to our most vulnerable populations.”
By contrast, Fordham praised South Carolina’s world history standards in numerous areas, particularly the studies of religion, European history and “the relevance of British history to understanding past and contemporary America.”
“Remarkably,” the report said, “South Carolina’s sixth-grade and seventh-grade standards are more comprehensive than most states’ complete K-12 standards.”
But Fordham criticized South Carolina for its handling of post-Cold War history, saying, “A thorough discussion of topics such as the proliferation of Islamic extremism throughout the world and the expansion of the European Union would nicely complement what are otherwise superb benchmarks.”
Tenenbaum agreed with the Fordham analysis, particularly the importance of a strong component on the impact of Islamic extremism. She said that although the state’s Social Studies standards cyclical review would not begin until 2010, her agency would expand curriculum resources, such as sample lessons and resource guides, to aid teachers in the interim.
South Carolina’s process for developing curriculum standards is driven by the Education Accountability Act. The Education Oversight Committee convenes statewide panels representing parents, business and community leaders, and representatives of children with disabilities and children with limited English proficiency, to review a particular subject’s existing standards. The EOC also consults with national experts on that curriculum subject.
At the same time, the State Department of Education convenes a panel of teaching experts representing the subject from K-12 and higher education.
“In the case of world history, which is part of our Social Studies standards, what those groups said was that our revisions needed a unifying thread to tie everything together,” Tenenbaum said. “That thread became history itself. With the 2005 standards, the four strands of geography, economics, political science and history are studied as they relate to chronological history. For example, if a class were studying the colonization of North America, then students might study the political forces and economics in Europe that fed that exploration, the geography and natural resources of the New World, the displacement of native Americans – all of those things within the context of that particular time in history, rather than separately.”
State Department of Education staff members coordinate the actual writing of revised standards, which are then published for review and comment by educators and the general public. All comments are reviewed by the members of the State Board of Education, which approves the standards. The EOC also must approve the revisions.