Teaching students to act as citizens significantly enhances preparation for college and career. It is incumbent upon the National Council for the Social Studies to provide guidance to states and local districts to develop social studies standards to achieve this goal. The recommendations presented here focus on the principle that standards…

In school districts and charter school networks nationwide, instructional leaders are developing plans to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. To help kick-start the planning process, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute presents "The Acceleration Imperative," an…

The implementation of the C3 Framework has unfolded unlike any previous standards project. A grassroots movement rather than a top-down mandate, the C3 effort calls on teachers to be at the forefront of social studies reform. In New York State, the C3 Framework provided context and inspiration for the New York Social Studies Toolkit Project.…

NCSS Executive Director Susan Griffin was chair of the Task Force of Professional Organizations that worked with the Social Studies Assessment, Curriculum, and Instruction Collaborative (SSACI) of the Council of Chief State School Officers to initiate and guide the development of the "College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social…

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards calls upon social studies teachers to enhance the rigor of civics, economics, geography, history and the other social studies disciplines while building the critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills of students to help them become actively…

Help students meet today's literacy demands with this new book from Terry Roberts and Laura Billings. The authors show how a seminar approach can lead students deeper into a text and improve their speaking, listening, and writing skills, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Roberts and Billings provide easy-to-follow information on…

Civic learning for all students seems like a reasonable and important aim for all schools to achieve. If we believe that the future of our American democracy depends on a citizenry that is informed, engaged, and responsible, what better place to create future citizens than in schools? The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools…

This report includes findings regarding demographic characteristics and academic outcomes of DELTA students; highlights emerging topics from the student, teacher, and staff surveys; and provides recommendations for future program implementation. [For the 2018-2019 report, see ED626017.]

This annual report summarizes Austin ISD's English language learner students and the bilingual and ESL programs in which they participated during the 2015-2016 school year. The report includes summaries of data on student demographics, language acquisition, and academic performance.

On September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day), the C3 Framework was released under the title "The College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History." The C3 Project Director and lead writer was NCSS member Kathy Swan, who is…

An e-learning project is a balance of time, cost, and scope measured against learner engagement. With this measure, the learner is part of every stage in the project's development. Assessing decisions with regards to learner impact will contribute to a more engaging and therefore successful project. To illustrate this concept, this paper will…

Broadly defined, digital moviemaking integrates a variety of media (images, sound, text, video, narration) to communicate with an audience. There is near-ubiquitous access to the necessary software (MovieMaker and iMovie are bundled free with their respective operating systems) and hardware (computers with Internet access, digital cameras, etc.).…

Addresses curriculum and course design by organizing some important considerations of elementary school history and social-science study into a three-step plan for implementation that discusses the selection and organization of topics, their classroom presentation, and the resources available to help align the elementary curriculum with the…

Teaching secondary students the basics of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) results in a variety of benefits. Conventional secondary educational programs are enhanced, and high school students are provided an opportunity to experience a rapidly expanding field as they plan for college and their professional future. For such projects, stipends…

Describes a study that evaluated implementation of curriculum materials for secondary social studies in the Netherlands. The evaluation focused on individual teachers' actual use of these materials in their classrooms. A large discrepancy emerged between the curriculum developers' original intentions and the observed instructional processes.…