BESE APPROVES LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION’S NEW SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, March 9, 2022

BATON ROUGE, La. – The Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) today unanimously approved the Louisiana Department of Education’s (LDOE) new K-12 Student Standards for Social Studies.

“These standards reflect the totality of the events that have made America a truly exceptional nation and serve as a freedom framework for our children to learn about how Americans have always strived for liberty,” said Dr. Cade Brumley, State Superintendent of Education. “We must, and we shall, teach our students to appreciate the majesty of our country and their obligations as citizens to safeguard America’s founding principles.”

Over the past two months, the LDOE has worked across multiple teams to uphold the original revision goals while addressing concerns made evident in over 2,000 public comments.

“These standards were informed by a year of public feedback, demonstrating why an engaged, informed citizenry is essential to protecting, sustaining, and improving upon our constitutional republic,” said Brumley. “I look forward to seeing these standards come to life in classrooms across our state and, ultimately, recognizing the influence these standards will have on the State of Louisiana and the United States of America.”

The goals of the LDOE’s revision process were to shift the standards toward an approach that balances the acquisition of disciplinary skills along with content knowledge in of each of social studies’ core disciplines: history, civics, economics, and geography. Furthermore, the revised standards create a more coherent sequence of content, to strengthen knowledge and skills at the elementary level, to ensure students are prepared for secondary and postsecondary work, and to better integrate the historical perspectives of people from different backgrounds.

Grades/Courses

Kindergarten: Life in My Home, School, and Local Community

Grade 1: Life in the Great State of Louisiana

Grade 2: Life in Our Great Country, The United States of America

Grade 3: The American Story: People, Places, and Papers

Grade 4: The Ancient World

Grade 5: The Medieval Period to the Early Modern World

Grade 6: The United States and Louisiana: Beginnings Through Ratification

Grade 7: The United States and Louisiana: The Early Republic Through Reconstruction

Grade 8: The United States and Louisiana: Industrial Age Through The Modern Era

High School: Civics

High School: United States History

High School: World History

High School: World Geography

The LDOE will announce an official implementation timeline in the coming weeks.