The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), first administered in 1969, is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, geography, mathematics, reading, science, U.S. history, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The…

This paper provides the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) community with information that may help maintain the validity and utility of the NAEP assessments for civics and U.S. history as revisions are planned to the NAEP…

This article critiques a classroom encounter between a Black student, Richard, and a white student, Nick, that complicated the white English teacher, Mr. Turner's, attempt to facilitate a discussion about racial progress in America. Students positioned their bodies on a continuum between 1, no racial progress since the 1930s, and 10, full racial…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, science, technology and engineering literacy, U.S. history, and…

Civic participation in the United States is highly unequal, resulting in a "civic engagement gap" between socioeconomic, racial, and gender groups. Variation in civic participation and the civic engagement gap remain contested, primarily as a result of inconsistent definitions and measurement issues in previous work. Using consistent…

All students need to know and understand the origins and evolution of their nation. They also need to understand the development of the nation's democratic institutions and ideals so that they are prepared to take part knowledgeably, as citizens and voters, in shaping America's future. The framework in U.S. history for the 1994-2018 National…

Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

How and to what extent students learn history content is a complicated process, drawing from the instructional opportunities they experience; the policy prioritization of history/social studies instruction in schools; and their own cultural perspectives toward the past. In an attempt to better understand the complex inter-play among these…

No Child Left Behind has profoundly limited the teaching of history over the past 10 years. Now, the Common Core State Standards offers an opportunity to reverse this decline by giving history a more prominent place in the school curriculum alongside literacy goals. Learning history and argumentative writing is key to developing analytical ways of…

The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which Opportunity to Learn (OTL), is associated with students' achievement in US History. Opportunity to Learn stems from the basic premise that there is an important relationship between the quality and frequency of classroom instruction and students' levels of academic success. The authors…

The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) U.S. history assessment measures how well fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders are learning American history, and whether they can evaluate historical evidence and understand change and continuity over time. Comparing the results from the 2010 assessment to results from previous years…

The Nation's Report Card[TM] informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a continuing and nationally representative measure of achievement in various subjects over time. The National…

Last month the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federally financed "Nation's Report Card," released the results of its 2006 tests of historical knowledge among schoolchildren. Although there were hints of small improvements since the last NAEP test in 2001 (47 percent rather than 43 percent of 12th graders had at…

In this article, the authors show how oceanography can enlighten and energize the teaching of middle- and high-school social studies on a grade-by-grade basis, and they describe "hooks" from oceanography that will heighten students' interest in various social studies topics. They base the article on their own experiences--as a…

This framework identifies the main ideas, major events, key individuals, and unifying themes of American history as a basis for preparing the 2010 assessment. The framework recognizes that U.S. history includes powerful ideas, common and diverse traditions, economic developments, technological and scientific innovations, philosophical debates,…