KATH President, Allison Hunt, has been part of the standards revision/development team convened by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) to address the framework for social studies being built by the Social Studies Assessment, Curriculum, and Instruction Collaborative. The Kentucky team consists of elementary, middle and high school teachers as well as higher education specialists in the respective social studies fields (civics, economics, geography, and history). They have been meeting this spring and will conclude with two writing retreats in June. Their goal is to develop new social studies standards for Kentucky that will include connections to the C3 Framework, the Common Core Literacy Standards for History/Social Studies, and 21st century skills in social studies.
Allison reports that in April a vision statement was developed by KDE to guide the team’s development of the state standards:
The vision of the Kentucky College, Career, & Civic Readiness (C3) Social Studies Standards is to develop students who will engage in critical thinking skills and civic dispositions that include a skill-based 21st century learning approach encompassing communication, collaboration, global perspectives, multimedia and technological literacy skills. These skills will be developed by teachers who facilitate college, career, and civic learning, along with the capacity for informed decision-making within the contexts of history, government, geography, and economics.KDE plans a public review of the draft standards document in August 2013 to allow feedback, and revisions/edits will be made based on the feedback received. The expected release of the final social studies standards document will be late fall 2013.
Kentucky Association of Teachers of History 