Mary Vought: Virginia’s Proposed New Standards of Learning Embrace History

After a lengthy process that incorporated feedback from countless reviewers, the Virginia Department of Education released proposed revisions to the commonwealth’s standards of learning for history and social sciences in grades K‑12. If adopted by the board of education, the standards would enhance the teaching of facts and principles critical to raising the next generation of engaged citizens.The updated standards come as many students remain dangerously uninformed about important components of our civic life. The most recent federal analysis of testing data demonstrated that more than one-third of eighth-graders nationwide lacked even a basic understanding of U.S. history, and this was before the learning losses suff …