Iowa Gets an F in History

Barely a day goes by without a new report smacking our weaknesses or praising our strengths. I've become numb to the barrage.

But the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's state-by-state study of U.S. history standards in public schools struck one of my raw nerves. Iowa got an F, scoring zero.

We weren't alone. Twenty-eight states got Ds or Fs. South Carolina got the only A.

“These bleak findings tell us what we already suspected – U.S. history standards across the land are alarmingly weak,” said Chester E. Finn, Jr, the institute's president. “No wonder so many Americans know so little about our nation's past. Yet this subject is essential to an educated citizenry.”

The report panned standards set out in Iowa's social studies core curriculum, which claims to provide a “foundation in historical knowledge.”

“If ... Diogenes searched with his lamp through the Iowa standards for an honest attempt to create this substantive ‘foundation' he would discover a startling fact: There is no history whatsoever in the Iowa core curriculum. Instead, the state offers little more than a series of vapid social studies concepts and skills,” the report said.

Jason Glass, Iowa's new state education chief, agrees. “I think the report shines a light on a pretty glaring weakness in the Iowa core. The content standards in the Iowa core for history are pretty vacuous.”

Glass says our standards are so vague that there really are no standards. The good news is that Iowa's curriculum is evolving. It can be fixed.

But lawmakers may pull the plug on statewide standards and turn back to the halcyon days of local control. That's our education history, and yet, that made for uneven history education. Lucky kids go to schools with great history teachers. For others, tough darts. At the very least, good statewide history standards could set a baseline for what every kid, lucky or not, would be expected to learn.

I understand why math and reading get most of the attention from school reformers. But history is so powerful, with an astounding capacity to both link and divide us.

It's always been used and abused, but it seems we're now in an upswing of abuse. And when history is being wielded like a club, knowledge is your best shield.

I hate to think that some Iowa kids, my kids, might show up to this riot of revisionism without at least a solid, basic understanding of what happened, who was there and the various perspectives that shaped events.

This can get political. See Texas' textbook fights. And for all that fighting, Texas earned a D from the report.

But South Carolina, despite its sometimes raucous red state politics, provides its schools with solid standards and detailed course materials that Fordham's report said “explain the actual history in depth, maintaining a nuanced, sophisticated, and balanced approach throughout.”

Glass thinks Iowa can also create a quality, balanced curriculum. That would be historic.

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