The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. In most elementary classrooms, students are immersed in reading and math instruction for hours every day, while the stories of their nation, the wider world, and the people who shaped them go largely untold. The stories of human history—of revolution and invention, migration and democracy—are precisely the content that help children read deeply, think critically, and care about the world around them. But they are largely missing from the early grades.
Teachers feel this absence keenly. Many elementary educators want to teach history more deeply than the typical holiday-of-the-week approach, but they lack materials and professional support. School and district leaders, meanwhile, are missing clear guidance about what strong elementary history instruction and curricula should look like.
Our new History Matters Review Tool aims to fill this gap. It establishes an ambitious, yet practical vision of what high-quality, content-rich elementary history curriculum entails, based on four core ideas:
- History is the foundation of social studies, providing the context that makes civics, geography, and economics meaningful.
- History should be taught as a story—rich with characters, conflicts, and consequences—so young students understand how events connect across time.
- Literacy and historical understanding should grow together, with reading, writing, and discussion grounded in meaningful content.
- Civics is best learned through history, as students encounter the people and debates that shaped our democratic ideals.
From these principles flow practical guidance. The tool outlines 29 criteria for curriculum that builds knowledge across grades, uses rich texts and primary sources, teaches students to reason with evidence, fosters discussion and writing grounded in content, and provides teachers with materials they can realistically enact in classrooms.
The History Matters Review Tool answers questions districts and publishers routinely ask: What should strong elementary history instruction look like? How do we know if materials measure up? And how can history instruction reinforce literacy goals rather than compete with them?
If we are to realize our goal of educating future engaged citizens, these are questions that must be answered.
An Urgent Need
We’ve been here before, which can help point the way forward. Over the past decade, districts nationwide have made big changes and experienced the benefits of implementing high-quality, knowledge-building English language arts curricula—the not-so-secret sauce behind achievement gains in Louisiana, for example.
By contrast, today’s history curriculum marketplace remains dominated by superficial textbooks and thin, fragmented materials that offer supplementary lessons on isolated figures or events. Individual educators are stepping into the breach, working hard to curate meaningful materials from the Internet and carve out adequate instructional time. But this ad-hoc approach is ill-suited to building a coherent, chronological understanding of history, much less a strong connection to students’ literacy development.
As a result, students arrive in middle and high school without even the most fundamental knowledge about their own country. On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 13 percent of 8th graders were able to answer basic questions about the structure of the U.S. government or correctly identify the role of Congress. Meanwhile, recent NAEP reading scores also show that students lack the literacy skills that fuel strong reading comprehension and analytical thinking.
Reading achievement tends to capture more public attention, but research has shown that improving students’ literacy and history performance is not an either-or. In fact, a study of 6,800 elementary students found that adding more time to an already bloated English language arts block did not improve reading outcomes nearly as much as increasing time spent on history instruction. This was particularly the case with low-income students and English learners. History instruction is not a distraction from literacy goals; rather, it is one of the most effective ways to achieve them.
A Timely Effort
As schools nationwide adopt curricula aligned with the science of reading, the release of this tool is timely. Increasingly, educators also recognize the importance of the science of learning, which explains the critical role of building students’ knowledge about the world. Students understand what they read when they possess knowledge about the topic and the vocabulary to make sense of the text. Background knowledge also tends to spark curiosity and nurture the spirited discussions that help students become confident learners. In particular, historical content knowledge plays a vital role in the foundational purpose of American schools: preparing young students for citizenship in adulthood. History is also chock-full of stories, with engaging characters and narratives that cognitive science tells us are uniquely well-suited for learning.
Across the country, individual districts and schools are beginning to strengthen their elementary social studies instruction—small but mighty beacons whose experiences have guided the development of the History Matters Review Tool. And, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, we look forward to highlighting additional successes and helping to create demand for stronger materials and a sustained instructional focus on history and civics.
None of this will be easy. Curriculum shifts never are. Teachers need time, support, and grace as they learn new approaches and district leaders will have to make changes in long-held practices to commit to building knowledge over time. But the payoff is clear: students who have built a foundation of knowledge about the world become more skillful readers who can better comprehend what they read. They are prepared to understand the stories and principles that shape their society.
Elementary school is where this work must begin. And with the release of the History Matters Review Tool, we believe districts and publishers now have what they need to start that journey.