How and to what extent students learn history content is a complicated process, drawing from the instructional opportunities they experience; the policy prioritization of history/social studies instruction in schools; and their own cultural perspectives toward the past. In an attempt to better understand the complex inter-play among these…

Assessing students' historical understanding has been a long-standing challenge in history education. One of the widely used tools for accomplishing this task is the large-scale standardized test, the results of which are used as an indicator of student knowledge and skills in the social sciences/history. At the national level, the National…

Each of the three parts of this report provides a somewhat different perspective on U.S. students' knowledge and understanding of U.S. history. Part 1 summarizes the assessment performance of approximatley 16,0000 fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress U.S. history proficiency scale.…