Continuing the Fight for TAH - A Message from the NCHE

What follows is a recent "Action Alert" email from Peter Seibert, Executive Director of the National Council for History Education. The NCHE has been by far the most active professional group in the fight to preserve the Teaching American History program (really you should join the organization). With Seibert's permission I am posting the email here. If you would like to receive these alerts, drop him an email at peter@nche.net.
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Good Morning Advocacy Team,

I will be on vacation from the 6th to the 17th so I wanted to quickly touch base with everyone about key advocacy efforts both on-going as well as thinking strategically into the future.

As we noted in the last email, our focus is upon the 2012 budget as this is really where the battle needs to be fought. If we lose the budget battle and TAH is defunded then our consolidation concerns become a moot point, as the program will no longer exist. In the month of July, a couple of critical things will be occurring:

• On July 26 will begin the House mark-up of the budget. Realistically speaking, we know that this is a tough one for us. Rep. Duncan Hunter’s bill eliminating TAH will probably pass (although I still think it is going nowhere in the Senate or with the White House). In support of that, budget cutters have eliminated all TAH funding from the proposed House budget. Thus, our energies (thinking strategically) need to be about targeting Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House to (a) encourage them to raise the flag of funding TAH as part of this mark-up (b) laying the groundwork for TAH to be put back into the budget when the House and Senate eventually meet in conference. Our target list is as follows:
• Reps Andrews, Holt and Payne in New Jersey
• Rep Rehberg in Montana
• Rep. Kingston in Georgia
• Rep. Simpson in Idaho

We have folks in all of these states working on these people right now.

•  The Senate will probably begin their budget considerations this fall, after their recess in August, so we are continuing to look at key members on both sides of the aisle as we lay the foundation for that discussion. Over the last two weeks, NCHE partisans and I have met with staffers in Senators Rockefeller, Wicker and Cochran’s offices to discuss this matter. Partisans have also met with other Senators on both the HELP and Appropriations committees. Particularly vital was the effort that secured a letter from Senator Mary Landrieu (LA) to Senator Harkin (Chair of the HELP Committee) asking for $46 million for TAH and new grants to be made in 2012.
  
• Senator Harkin’s staff continues to announce that they will be bringing forward the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by the end of July. We believe that ESEA will contain Secty. Duncan’s recommendation on consolidation of TAH with other PD programs although this is not assured (particularly since a majority of the consolidated programs had their funding eliminated in the 2011CR). We also believe that Sen. Harkin is doing this without any Republican support thereby opening the door for some negotiation on all of this. The introduction of this will cause a big splash no doubt but remember that this is only the beginning. We do not know for sure what the House will be doing, how it all will end in conference and if anyone will have the will to proceed with this considering the debt ceiling, the budget and the forthcoming elections.
  
• The House Education and the Workforce Committee is currently looking at a Teacher Accountability Act that will probably deal with PD issues. We understand that since they believe that TAH does not work that they will lump history in with other PD disciplines under Title 2. Further, there is some discussion about funding cuts to Title 2 that would cause additional issues. This may not come up before the fall.

We have a lot ahead of us and much to do! A few rays of sunshine in all of this:

• The belief is that the budget cutting frenzy of the 2011CR will not be necessarily repeated insofar as the education budget is concerned. Both houses seem to be focused on much bigger issues than the Ed funding stream.
• We have never run into anyone on the hill who dislikes history. Their issues with TAH are really about issues within the program that can, and probably should be, changed going forward.
• We are working on providing you with data from our partisans showing accurate and graphic proof of the impact of the program. Stay tuned, as this will be an important tool for us in the fight.
• We have heard that many House members are feeling the heat at home from their constituents because of the huge number of programs that were cut this year. In particular, the brutal clear-cutting of the forest on the earmark question has come home to roost. We continue to support our friends and colleagues at National History Day and We the People as they fight to get this decision reversed.

Finally, we have to keep fighting. If we lose any one of these fights…it is over. The folks who are receiving this email are working now in 26 states on this issue. Keep it going and lets save TAH. We did it once this year…we can do it again.

Peter S. Seibert
Executive Director
National Council for History Education
www.nche.net

TAH--Not Dead Yet!

Contrary to what you might have heard, the Teaching American History program is not yet dead, and with the right amount of support, may survive and even thrive.

This update from the National Coalition for History describes the current state of TAH funding. The short version is that funding was reduced by 2/3rds in the current year to $46 million (it had been at $120 million the last few years) and might be eliminated entirely next year.

Or it might not. Some are already writing the epitaph for TAH, and it is easy to understand their pessimism. House Republicans have voted to eliminate the program. The Obama administration, and in particular Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, does not support the program. So how can it survive?

It can survive because, for the program to go away, the House and Senate will have to agree to eliminate it, and as the NCH observes, "Traditionally, there has been strong bi-partisan support in the Senate for the TAH program." Also, TAH has support from House Democrats, and many thousands of advocates across the country. Our professional historical organizations, which have in the past been largely ineffective or indifferent advocates of TAH, are beginning to wake up. If we can save TAH from being zeroed out in the current budget session, by next year we could be anticipating a new Congress that would be far more sympathetic to TAH. If we can hold the line--any line!--for another year or two, it could well become a permanent program.

The National Council for History Education has been the most useful professional organization for defending TAH, and this Call for Action [PDF] by the NCHE is still a good guide to contacting your congresswomen and men. See also this post.

Don't give up hope, and do contact your senators and representative. We can still win this one.

TAH Program Endangered Again - Please Act!

It has been a roller coaster few weeks for the Teaching American History grant program. Last month, after a long fight, the House and Senate agreed to include the program in the compromise budget--though they reduced the program from $119 million in fiscal 2010 to $46 million in the current budget year.

It was an awful hit for the only federal program specifically devoted to history education., but TAH supporters drew comfort from the fact that we saved the program from simply being zeroed out. The hope was that if we can save a line item, no matter how small, we can work on increasing the amount when the economy recovers. We are not out of the woods yet, however. As they put together the 2012 budget, Congress is again on the verge of eliminating the program with House Bill 1891. An action alert from the National Council for Public History today tells the story:
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Urge Your Member of Congress to Save Teaching American History Grants Take Action

Legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would eliminate the Teaching American History (TAH) grants program at the U.S. Department of Education. NCPH and the National Coalition for History urge you to contact your Member of Congress immediately to oppose this bill.  H.R. 1891, the "Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act," would terminate forty-three K-12 federal education programs. 

The President's fiscal year 2012 budget request for the Department of Education would eliminate Teaching American History grants (TAH) as a separately funded program. However, the Administration proposed consolidating history education into a new program called Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education. This reflects the President's Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal, the Blueprint for Reform, which was released in March 2010.

Teaching American History grants is the only federal program that funds K-12 history education. Its elimination would exacerbate the problem of local school districts de-emphasizing history in their curriculum because it is not the focus of high-stakes testing. 

The House Education and the Workforce Committee is expected to consider H.R. 1891 at any time. It is important that you contact your Member of the House of Representatives TODAY, to urge them to oppose this bill.

The National Coalition for History is working with the National Humanities Alliance, which has set up a template message for you to customize. We strongly encourage you to personalize this message by telling Congress why TAH programs are important to you, your institution, your field, your state, and/or district. 

Contact Congress today: http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/NHA/action/TakeAction.Background/LetterGroupID/14

Urgent: Save the Teaching American History program

I see that the American Historical Association has issued a Call for Action regarding the endangered Teaching American History grant program. This post over at the National Coalition for History provides additional details.

The short version is this: The Department of Education is about to eliminate the Teaching American History program. The money will be reallocated to another funding pool. History programs may apply to that pool, but so will math and reading and everything else. We can safely predict that history will be all but forgotten.

To date the government has invested almost a billion dollars in history education. The money has revitalized the teaching of American history. The program has benefited far more people than public school teachers and their students. Participation in the TAH program has connected a whole generation of academic of academic and public historians to public school teachers and forged a nationwide community of history advocates. Those of us in the historical community need to rally and fight for this program.

Please take a moment to contact your local congressional representative and senator. You might send a copy of your email to President Obama and Secretary Duncan as well. Below is a sample of what your email might say--feel free to adapt, alter, or copy it outright:

Dear Congresswoman XX:

I am writing to encourage you to support continued funding for one of the most important educational initiatives of the last decade, the Teaching American History program at the Department of Education.

The Teaching American History program was championed by the late Senator Robert Byrd, and since its inception in 2001 has improved the teaching of American history for tens of thousands of students across the nation. It is the ONLY program at the Department of Education specifically targeted at history education.

Please support continuing the Teaching American History program as a stand-alone budget item in the Department of Education budget. Only by keeping history education as a separate item in the budget can the integrity of the program be maintained.

Your Constituent,

XX

Help EWU Offer a Free Online History MA for Teachers!

Friends:

Eastern Washington University is in the process of applying for a Teaching American History grant to help teachers earn Masters degrees in history. Our plan is to offer graduate degrees in history online to teachers around the state, particularly those in rural areas who would not otherwise have the opportunity to do so. If we are successful in this effort, the federal funds would pay all tuition, fees, and books as well as summer institutes at historic sites. And after the funded program is over, EWU hopes to continue to offer the online MA in history--not only to teachers in our state but to anyone, anywhere who wants some graduate courses or an entire MA in history but cannot come to a traditional campus program. There are only a handful of graduate history programs online in the nation so we think we would be serving a definite need.

The first step is for EWU to prove to both state officials and the federal Department of Education that there is a demand for a high-quality, online MA program in history. You can help by taking this quick survey. It will take no more than five minutes of your time. The survey is completely anonymous, though if you want to enter your email we will notify you about how to apply for the program if we are funded.

And please FORWARD THIS POST (you can use the "Share" button below) to anyone who might be interested in seeing online history courses available from EWU -- teachers, people working in museums and archives, genealogists, and anyone with an interest in history. The more people who answer the survey affirmatively, the better our chance of being able to provide this opportunity.

You don't have to be in Washington to take the survey! In fact a substantial response from out-of-state might strengthen our chances.

Click on this link to take the survey. And thank you.

Serve as a TAH Grant Reviewer!

If you read this blog, you are probably qualified to serve as a proposal reviewer for the Teaching American History program. And I wish you would!

The TAH program is the largest federal program to improve the teaching of American history. To date, the Department of education has awarded over $800 million dollars to schools districts across the nation to fund programs to improve history education. I have been involved in quite a few of these projects and I think this is one of the best things that the DOE does.

Every year there are many hundreds of grant proposals, and the Department of Education relies on external reviewers to read the proposals and help to decide which ones get funded. It is an important job and a big responsibility, and it needs people who are knowledgeable about history and about education and can be relied on to actually read every page of the proposals (they are 25 pages, plus appendices, you will read about 9 of them) and comment upon them critically and fairly. And they will pay you! The full announcement seeking reviewers is below and includes contact information, but feel free to get in touch with me if you want to know more as well:

Subject: Call for 2010 TAH Application Reviewers

The 2010 U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) grant competition is upon us and we NEED your help to review TAH grant applications.

The anticipated grant review dates are April-May, 2010.

You may serve as a TAH grant reviewer if you meet at least (1) one of the following qualifications:
.     A degree in history
.     K-12 history teacher
.     History professor
.     TAH grant director
.     TAH grant partner
.     History scholar
.     Other history-related professional
.     Professional development provider
.     Evaluator or evaluation specialist

Please email your abbreviated résumé (5 pages maximum) to Yianni Alepohoritis at Yianni.Alepohoritis@ed.gov or Adam Bookman at Adam.Bookman@ed.gov no later than February 12, 2010. Please specify in your email whether you are a history, professional development, or evaluation specialist.

If selected, you will serve on a panel with two other reviewers.  This process includes one week of reading applications on your own and two weeks of telephone meetings with your panel.  An honorarium is given to those who complete the grant review. Each reviewer will review about 10 applications. If you are involved in a current 2010 application, you may not serve as a reviewer.

For more information on the TAH program, please visit the program website at http://www.ed.gov/programs/teachinghistory/index.html.

Adam Bookman
Management and Program Analyst
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Innovation and Improvement
Teaching American History Grant Team
Phone (202)-205-5427
Fax (202)-401-8466

New Bill to Boost History Education, Reignite Culture Wars

Senators Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy and Lamar Alexander have introduced a bill titled "Restoring American History and Civics to Classroom Prominence." Alexander (pictured here) described the bill in his floor speech, saying it "will help to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place, in our classrooms, so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. The legislation which we have introduced would expand summer academies for outstanding teachers, authorize new teacher programs, require States to set standards for the teaching and learning of U.S. history, and create new opportunities to compare the tests that students take on U.S. history."

Alexander's office also issued a press release which boiled the legislation down to bullet points, stating that the legislation would:

• Authorize 100 summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of U.S. History and align those academies with locations in the national park system, such as the John Adams House or Independence Hall
• Double authorization for funding “Teaching American History” programs in local school districts, which today involve 20,000 students as a part of No Child Left Behind
• Require states to develop and implement standards for student assessments in U.S. History, although there would be no federal accountability requirement as there is for reading and mathematics
• Allow states to compare history and civics test scores of 8th- and 12th-grade students by establishing a 10-state pilot program that would expand the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)

The most exciting parts of the bill are the first two items. One hundred summer academies is a lot! Tying them to the National Park Service is an interesting idea, and a tribute the NPS lobbyists, who deserve a big raise. Summer academies or institutes have been among the most successful parts of many, many Teaching American History projects, and the model is also used by the NEH and Gilder-Lehrman Institute. If one goes to the NPS History pages, and begins exploring the many historic National Monuments, historic trails, and National Heritage Areas (and when were those created, anyway? I had not heard of them) you can see the many possibilities for these institutes. I am already thinking of the NPS historic sites in my region, and the possibilities of summer institutes.

The second item, doubling the funding for the TAH program, is wonderful news. The Teaching American History program is designed to improve the teaching of American history in the schools by bringing together teachers, historians, and enough resources (by which I mean funding) for them to do some interesting collaborations. I have been deeply involved in the TAH program from the beginning, writing grant proposals, teaching the teachers, and most recently as an evaluator and consultant.

I really dislike the third item. I can see the goal here, making states develop history standards will help to ensure that history is taught and valued in the public schools. But who writes the standards? I see these standards becoming a political football and reigniting the culture wars of the 80s and 90s on the state level. Remember the disastrous reception to the 1994 National History Standards? This was a top-down attempt by an idealistic but politically naive history profession to impose a new set of historically sound standards on the nation's schools. Denounced (unfairly, but predictably) by Rush Limbaugh and Lynne Cheney as being politically correct, they were condemned by the U.S. Senate, 99 to 1. Lets pick that scab, shall we?

The last item, using NAEP to roll out a pilot project for standardized testing in history, also runs the risk of politicization. The great dilemma here is that in the era of NCLB high-stakes testing, that which is not tested does not get taught. And that which does get tested is "taught to the test"--stifling the teacher creativity that is one of the great strengths of our system.

Overall this bill is great news. Thank you, Senators!

Historians: Let's get out in front of this. Go to the NPS site and see what historic site matches your specialty and pick up the phone. But then make contact with your university School of Education (I know, I know) and find out how to get involved in the drafting of those state standards. This kind of bureaucratic work is time consuming and unrewarding. But not nearly so time consuming and unrewarding as teaching your survey classes in ten years if you do nothing and your class is full of young people who were taught all sorts of incorrect historical mischief in the public schools!

Robert Owens in Town for Two Lectures this Week

Teaching American History Lecture Presentations

Thanks to a Teaching American History grant administered by Educational Service District 101 and Eastern Washington University, Dr. Robert Owens will be in town this week to give two important lectures about Indians and the Early Republic.

Dr. Owens, assistant professor of history at Wichita State University presents Pan-Indianism and Panic: How Great Indian Confederacies Shaped Anglo-America at 11 a.m., Wednesday, March 11, in Tawanka 215 A-B [map]. Admission is free.
Owens will present, William Henry Harrison and the Continuing American Revolution at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 12 at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture [map], 2316 W. First, Spokane. The lecture is free to MAC members, students and teachers. Regular museum admission to the general public.

Owens is the author of Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (review here) and scholarly articles on Native Americans and the Old Northwest. He received a PhD in history from the University of Illinois.

(The painting is of Harrison, not Owens.)

Bruce Levine to Speak at EWU and Spokane

Heads up! Civil War historian Bruce Levine will be speaking at EWU this Thursday noon and at the MAC in Spokane Thursday evening. Levine's newest book is Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the War. (A review of the book is here.) Levine will deliver two lectures:

"The Myth of the Black Confederate"
Thursday Oct. 2 at 12 noon
Monroe Hall 205, Cheney WA

"The Confederacy's Plan to Emancipate (and Arm) Slaves"
Thursday Oct. 2 at 6 p.m.
Eric A. Johnston Memorial Audition - Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture
2316 W. First Avenue, Spokane WA

These are important lectures. In recent years neo-confederate "heritage" groups have worked hard to refashion the public narrative of the Civil War, downplaying or dismissing entirely the central importance of slavery and racism. One of their efforts has been to argue that there were large numbers of blacks who fought on the side of the South because they just loved their Massa Lee or something. It is nonsense of course and academic historians have mostly ignored the black confederate mythology even as the neoconfederates have created websites, educational programs, and shoddy publications based on the myth. Levine is among the few historians willing to tackle the topic head-on. (For more on the topic, check out The Myth of Black Confederates tag at the Civil War Memory blog.)

This opportunity to hear a top historian is thanks to a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education to Spokane Educational Service District 101.

(If you can't make it here is an MP3 of Levine delivering the second lecture at UC Santa Cruz.)