This article presents how the District of Columbia's (DC's) state board has designed and coordinated a collaborative process to revise social studies standards that will ideally facilitate learning the long, interconnected arcs of history, economics, politics, and geography that run through the American past, helping students make connections between history and the present, where they are active agents of civic change. While the new standards will not be implemented until the 2022-23 school year, the state board has planned these revisions with a rapidly changing world in mind and prioritized the critical examination of history as an essential skill for all DC students.