The 1980s and 1990s saw a bipartisan push for national education standards. Unfortunately, when the history standards were released in 1994, a political firestorm erupted and the Senate voted to condemn the standards for being too politically correct. (For more on this story, see my book, Failing Grades: The Federal Politics of Education Standards (2006) and Diane Ravitch’s National Standards in American Education: A Citizen’s Guide (1996).

Copies of the standards, which were created by Charlotte Crabtree and Gary B. Nash, can be downloaded at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3a%22national+standards+for+united+states+history%22&id=ED375076 and https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3a%22national+standards+for+world+history%22&id=ED375077.