In 2021 the Fordham Institute released, The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History. The report evaluated the quality, completeness, and rigor of K–12 civics and U.S. History standards.
Iowa received a “D” in civics standards and an “F” in U.S. History standards. According to the report, “Iowa’s current civics and U.S. History standards are inadequate. Vagueness and overbreadth lead to a dearth of specific content in both disciplines, and there is no discernible coverage of U.S. History at the K–8 level. A complete revision of the standards is recommended.”
New history and civics standards approved by House Republicans on Wednesday in House File 2544 will include a focus on American history, civics, geography, the American flag, the national anthem along with extended standards on Western Civilization from Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome to the present, to understand the nature of our ideals and institutions of liberty, how they came into existence, and what actions our forefathers took to preserve them.
The American history and civics standards will have an emphasis on the Constitution of the United States, with emphasis on the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of Iowa and their original intent. The basic principles of the United States’ republican form of government. The historical development of the United States’ republican form of government. A comparison of the United States’ republican form of government with different forms of government including dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, communism, and autocracy. The structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels. Civic virtues exemplified in the lives of famous Americans such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln.
The basic political, diplomatic, and military history of America, which shall include the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the World Wars, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and the September 11 attacks to the present. Specific information on the Holocaust and the crimes against humanity committed by communist regimes throughout history will be included.
Additionally, the basic history of business and technology in America and the basic history of the religious and secular aspects of America’s common culture will be included.
In the higher grades, substantial primary source instruction such as the Mayflower Compact, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers (including but not limited to Essays 10 and 51), the Emancipation Proclamation, and the writings of the Founding Fathers of the United States will be covered.
Any curriculum on economics will include an emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits. It shall include material on the failures of the communist economic system and the differences between capitalist and communist economic systems.
