National Center for History in the Schools

The National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS), founded in 1988 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a nationally known organization that has engaged the talents of scores of classroom teachers and provided history educators across the nation with new historical resources and teaching strategies. NCHS’s double mission is (a) to aid the professional development of K-12 history teachers; and (b) to work with teachers to develop curricular materials that will engage students in exciting explorations of United States and World history.

NCHS has worked with funding from the U. S. Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of California President’s Office, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Longview Foundation, the Sidney Stern Foundation, and other private foundations to further the professional development of history teachers across the country. NCHS is or has been co-partner on five of the 1-2 million dollar grants awarded from 2001-2006 by the Department of Education in the Teaching American History program. One has been with the Los Angeles Unified School District, two others with a consortium of Southern California county offices of education led by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, one with the El Monte Unified School District, and another with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Two of these grants have been completed and the others are in progress. As Director of NCHS, Gary Nash wrote the programmatic elements of these winning applications. Drawing on a wide range of engaging historians in the Southern California region--NCHS provides for the academic presentations around which the professional development is organized.

With a grant of about $200,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, NCHS has worked over the last three years to develop an on-line World History curriculum for middle schools. The project was centered at San Diego State University with Ross Dunn serving as Project Director and Edmund Burke of UC Santa Cruz and David Christian of San Diego State University playing key roles. The Ahmanson Foundation in Los Angeles granted $50,000 to this project. CCSSO and the Longview Foundation have just granted an additional $5,000 and $22,000 respectively. The materials are scheduled for release by the end of 2005 for eras of World History to 1500.

The intial project of NCHS was the production of the National Standards for History, Basic Edition (1996), which outlines US and world history content and thinking standards for grades 5-12. The companion volumes, Bring History Alive! A Sourcebook for Teaching World History and Bring History Alive! A Sourcebook for Teaching US History contain hundreds of grade-level activities keyed to the National History Standards (both the content and thinking standards).K-4 history standards along with activities are available in the volume: National Standards for History, K-4. [More about the standards]

History Standards
The National History Standards address one of the major goals for national education reform developed within the past decade. First envisioned by President George H. Bush and the nation’s governors in 1989, this reform agenda took shape in the National Education Goals jointly adopted by the National Governors’ Association and President George H. Bush a year later. These National Education Goals have represented a genuine bipartisan approach to education reform. . . . The responsiveness, enormous good will, and dogged determination of so many from all political viewpoints to meet the challenge of developing and revising the history standards has reinforced our confidence in the inherent strength and capabilities of this nation to undertake the steps necessary for bringing to all students the benefits of an endeavor to raise the standards for learning history in our schools. [More about the History Standards]

The National Standards for History are voluntary history standards. They were revised to the present version in 1996 and have served as a template and guide to the more than 30 states who have developed state history standards. Many organizations have relied on the standards to guide the content of their lesson plans, including the National Park Service, Library of Congress, Theolonious Monk Jazz Insitute, and others. [See: Standards-based History Lessons.]

Since the production of the history standards, NCHS has published over 70 reproducible spiral-bound U.S. and world history teaching units. Created by classroom teachers working with academic scholars, each unit provides the teacher with the historical background needed to present the topic to their students. The lessons are organized around primary documents and include several lessons with teacher instructions and student handouts. All of the units have been put to the test in actual classrooms and, because they are reproducible for classroom use, they remain an affordable option for classroom and home use. View the pdf catalog.