This article describes an attempt to bring disciplinary historical inquiry into the social studies classroom. This work emerges from a five-school 6-month intervention in San Francisco, "Reading like a Historian", which found main effects for student learning across four quantitative measures: historical thinking, factual knowledge,…

Presents a case-study of the role of educational professionals in the passage of California's mandatory graduation competency legislation. Findings showed that the bill was noncontroversial despite its implications. Professional educators and scholars played a limited role in its formation. (AM)