This qualitative study explored the perceptions and experiences of teachers about the use of active learning techniques in high school United States history courses at a lower Rio Grande Valley school district. The study employed a phenomenology design for rich textural descriptions and a systematic exploration of the phenomenon of active learning…

Mexican American Studies (MAS) courses have been criticized for many years. Legislation in Arizona and Texas have attempted to ban the content. This article pushes back on this attempt of oppression and offers MAS teachers a framework to apply when teaching the content. Using a timeline to depict the years of attempts for Mexican American Studies…

Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact, but U.S. public discourse around the issue remains mired in controversy, including in education. Our study leverages natural language processing methods to give a precise look into the extent to which climate change-related topics are covered in 30 of the most widely used high school history…

This quantitative study explored the relationship between community sociodemographic factors and student outcomes on the 2019 Texas high school mandated end-of-course (EOC) exams for Algebra I, Biology, English I, English II, and U.S. History in Texas midsized high schools. Correlational analysis was run on community sociodemographic factors on…

Formal schooling in the U.S. has a long and violent history towards Indigenous peoples, today morphing into exclusion and erasure. Using a novel longitudinal dataset of U.S. textbooks (n = 193) from California and Texas, published from 1850 to 2019, we seek to shine light on the issue through a comprehensive analysis of depictions of Indigenous…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Student Voice." Contents include: (1) Maybe One Day, the Pain Won't Feel the…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

For more than a decade, the world history course taught in the public high schools of Texas has provided the only comprehensive overview of the story of humanity to millions of students, most of whom are of Mexican descent. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum standard for world history has been foundational for textbook selection,…

Secondary school teachers face remarkable challenges when they are asked to incorporate language objectives because the traditional approach to the education of English Language Learners (ELL) separates English language development from content instruction. The underlying assumption is that English language proficiency is a prerequisite for…

The Texas board of education which consists of 15-member elected body drew national attention as a bloc of staunch conservatives largely succeeded in putting its stamp on a revised set of social studies standards. The debate was marked by tussles over such matters as the separation of church and state, the representation of minority figures and…

This article frames history education as a social construction designed to create a national identity through the inclusion, exclusion, and treatment of various societal groups. Using this lens, the author analyzes curriculum standards from nine states that annually assess student knowledge of American history to better understand the depiction of…

For more than a century, high school students in the United States have been required to take at least one course in United States History. Almost every U.S. history textbook used for these courses covers the Texas Revolution in one way or another. Since the Texas Revolution is a significant part of American history, the authors chose to focus…

When students take action, they create change that extends far beyond the classroom. In this article, the author, who was a former teacher from Crystal City, Texas, remembers the student walkout that helped launch the Latino civil rights movement 40 years ago. The Crystal City student walkout remains a high point in the history of student activism…

Newcomers are a special subgroup of the student population designated as English Language Learners (ELLs). The research project described in this article investigates how a teacher integrated language and content in a single subject area, social studies, in a high school newcomer classroom. Three extended lessons were presented to newcomer…

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…