American Historical Society: “In 2022, the American Historical Association (AHA) launched the most comprehensive study of the national US history teaching landscape undertaken in the 21st century. We wanted to know what is actually happening in public school classrooms across the country. Are teachers distorting history or indoctrinating children? Careful research transcends the heat and noise surrounding history instruction and enables us to provide a helpful and reliable source of information to parents, administrators, legislators, journalists, historians, and the many other stakeholders invested in the future of public education. American Lesson Plan distills insights gathered during a two-year exploration of secondary history education, combining a 50-state appraisal of standards and legislation with a close examination of local contexts in nine states. We commissioned a survey from NORC at the University of Chicago of over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators, conducted long-form interviews with over 200 teachers and administrators, and collected thousands of pages of instructional materials from small towns to sprawling suburbs to big cities. The US education system—diverse, devolved, and divided—could never be captured by the blunt slogans that have dominated sensationalist media and drawn attention from even more careful observers. What did we learn?

1. Secondary US history teachers are professionals who are concerned mostly with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Teachers want students to read and understand founding documents to prepare them for informed civic engagement. They also want students to grapple with the complex history and legacies of racism and slavery. These goals are entirely compatible. We did not find indoctrination, politicization, or deliberate classroom malpractice.

2. Teachers make important curricular decisions with direct influence over what students are expected to learn. Despite legislative interference, the localized influence of state-mandated assessment, and efforts to standardize instruction, history teachers retain substantial discretion over what they use in their daily work.

3. Free online resources outweigh traditional textbooks, which are unlikely to stand at the center of history instruction. While publishers pitch digital licenses and tech tools to districts, teachers instead make prolific use of a decentralized universe of no-cost or low-cost online resources. US history teachers rely on a short list of trusted sites led by federal institutions including the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Smithsonian museums…”