Academic standards, accountability requirements and assessment programs—what the RAND Corporation calls the basic infrastructure of K–5 social studies instruction—are inadequate in many states, the nonprofit research organization asserts in a new report. “Concerning trends in both the United States and around the world, such as truth decay, declining trust in institutions, increased political polarization, and abuses of political power, have only underscored the need to reinvest in the civic mission of schools,” says the report’s authors, whose key findings include:

Districts and schools provided teachers with less support for social studies compared to English language arts, math and other core subjects. In the 2021–2022 school year, elementary principals reported offering less PD focused on social studies than on English, math, and science.
Only half of elementary school principals said their buildings or districts had adopted published curriculum materials to support K–5 social studies instruction. Teachers, therefore, tended to “cobble together” or create their own social studies lessons.
Principals whose schools offered more extensive teacher evaluations, professional learning activities, and curriculum guidance were more likely to report that teachers collaborated on social studies instructional practices.

"Over the past few decades, school systems have invested less in students’ civic development and more in academic and career preparation as educational priorities," said Melissa Kay Diliberti, lead author of the report and assistant policy researcher at RAND. "Our findings suggest that inadequate state and local infrastructure focused on social studies instruction may have affected what elementary teachers did in their classrooms in 2021–2022."

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Why social studies instruction may not be coming to the rescue

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