BUT Kentucky’s Academic Standards for Social Studies never mention them – at any grade level!

AND the pending change to the social studies standards doesn’t mention them, either!

It’s really disappointing!

A Tweet from the folks who run the National Assessment of Educational Progress just showed up with this sample NAEP question, which was apparently used in 2010.

Clearly, the people who created this question think that by the time students are midway through the fourth grade (NAEP is given in late Winter), they should have learned something about the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Sadly, Kentucky’s Academic Standards for Social Studies doesn’t comply with this. You can search the current, online version of the document, listed as of today as released in April 2019, but you won’t find a mention of Lewis and Clark at any grade level.

You can even search a still to be adopted draft update to Kentucky’s social studies standards that incorporates some material required by the legislature in 2022, but Lewis and Clark, and for that matter Sacagawea, are all still unmentioned.

I would like to know how Kentucky’s educators can be so concerned about a lot of other stuff while core academics – things like historical events that even people who write the NAEP think are important – go wanting in Kentucky.

Every Kentucky child deserves to learn about Lewis’ and Clark’s important contributions to American history. Ignoring this and a lot of other important history is grossly unacceptable.

In fact, it’s downright disrespectful.