The nonprofit organization Common Core looked at curriculums, standards, and assessments in nine nations that consistently outrank the United States on the Programme for International Assessment (PISA) to see whether differences in countries' PISA scores are due to differences in the content they teach. Findings revealed that top-performing…

As a high school social studies teacher, the author provides his students with a curriculum that helps them think about immigration issues. He describes the instructional units that he has developed to address two key questions about U.S.-Mexican immigration: What is the origin of the U.S.-Mexico border? and Why are so many people today fleeing…

Describes a cooperative Educators for Social Responsibility Project to develop materials enabling American and Soviet teachers to teach about each others' countries and U.S.-Soviet relations in a realistic manner. Some major challenges are differing vocabularies and concepts, lack of Soviet educators' experience with critical or independent…

Mikhail Gorbachev's "glasnost" seeks to transform a large, multiethnic nation ruled for decades by an aging, entrenched, and stagnant bureaucracy. Educators will be challenged to provide students with accurate, objective information about the Soviet Union and to emphasize U.S.-U.S.S.R. similarities without minimizing differences.…

Secondary-level history textbooks' treatments of United States-Soviet relations can be biased and misleading. Ideological treatments present the relationship as a struggle between good and evil; "real politik" treatments recognize opposing viewpoints but are usually subordinate interpretations. Neither approach discusses U.S.-Soviet…