Will Virginia Get Serious About Social Studies?
State accountability standards should not shy away from social studies while inquiry-based learning still commands the field.
Jaime Osborne, Ed.D. is a middle school social studies teacher in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and founder of Northern Virginia Classical Academy.
Charting the Course is a series from Education Progress featuring pro-excellence education commentary, news, and policy analysis. This article was originally posted on Bacon’s Rebellion.
I attended the recent National Council of the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference in Washington, D.C., an event that draws thousands of educators from across the country. Unsurprisingly, inquiry-based learning dominated the agenda. Even sessions not explicitly labeled as such framed inquiry as the preferred — if not superior — mode of instruction. The message was unmistakable: Inquiry-based learning is no longer one approach among many. It has become the orthodoxy in social studies education.
For those unfamiliar with it, inquiry-based learning is a way of learning that starts with questions instead of answers. Rather than a teacher just saying, “Here are the facts,” they ask questions like, “Why do you think this happens?” They encourage students to explore, ask questions, try things out, and find answers on their own, with the teacher acting more like a guide on the side.
My skepticism of this trend had been building for years. It crystallized at the NCSS conference in Nashville, Tenn., two years ago, when I stopped by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) booth and spoke with a representative about widespread learning losses, particularly among economically disadvantaged students. One exception stood out; namely Catholic schools. “Everyone is wondering what Catholic schools are doing differently,” the NAEP representative remarked.
As an adjunct professor in a school of education, I wasn’t surprised. Catholic schools tend to emphasize direct instruction and content-rich curricula. Their success aligns with decades of cognitive science research — most notably the work of E.D. Hirsch — showing that background knowledge is a prerequisite for reading comprehension and higher-order thinking. Critical thinking is not a generic skill that can be taught in the abstract; it is domain-specific and depends on what students already know. Yet many schools have become so enamored with vague “21st-century skills” that they have sidelined content knowledge, despite clear evidence that knowledge still matters.
Cognitive Science Drives Virginia’s Literacy Changes While Certain Social Studies Leaders Want to Ignore It
At around the same time, Virginia required teachers to complete the Virginia Literacy Act training, which reinforced these same research-based conclusions; namely, that explicit instruction and background knowledge are foundational to literacy. Yet in fall 2024, my district announced that my course, World History & Geography I, would move away from multiple-choice assessments in favor of local alternative assessments grounded in inquiry-based learning. The contradiction was striking. The science informing literacy policy was being ignored in social studies.
District leaders pointed to an article highlighting higher pass rates in Rockingham County after adopting local alternative assessments. Teachers reported that students were thinking critically and “doing the work of historians.” But this claim raises a basic question: How can students think like historians without first knowing history? Cognitive science is clear — skills do not exist independently of knowledge.
I attended several NCSS sessions with this question in mind. In one session featuring the DBQ Project and educators from Arlington and Alexandria City, I asked why Reading Standard of Learning (SOL) scores for economically disadvantaged students in those districts had declined sharply since the adoption of DBQs. The facilitator attributed the drop to a “lack of professional development,” sidestepping the possibility that the instructional approach itself might be contributing to the problem.
Another session, led by University of Kentucky professor Kathy Swan, framed inquiry-based instruction as a source of classroom “vibrancy.” Here, “vibrancy” signals engagement — energy, discussion, and participation — and draws on a common contrast in education debates, where content-rich instruction is often dismissed as rote or dull, elevating how lively a classroom feels over whether students fully understand the context.
During Swan’s session, participants analyzed Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car while discussing democracy and economics, and engagement was high with many teachers making references to Reagan-Bush era economic policies, Nelson Mandela, and deindustrialization. But when I asked when students would gain the background knowledge needed for meaningful deliberation, Swan dismissed the concern, saying students “bring ideas” with them. Ironically, she later shared a story that illustrated the problem perfectly: Her own son failed at baking a tart because he didn’t know to skin the hazelnuts. Swan acknowledged that the issue was a lack of background knowledge. The parallel to inquiry-based learning went unrecognized.
In another session, a high school teacher demonstrated a geography activity in which students guessed states using yes-or-no questions that were highly dependent on background knowledge. When I asked when geographic knowledge was explicitly taught, he replied that students already knew it. This assumption — that all students arrive with sufficient background knowledge — lies at the heart of the equity problem in regards to academic achievement. Many do not.
Social Studies Must Be Included in Accountability to Be Prioritized
While states like Louisiana and Mississippi have posted NAEP gains by emphasizing content-rich curricula aligned with professional development and assessment, Virginia has moved in the opposite direction. That divergence was evident at a recent Virginia Board of Education meeting, where social studies coordinators — including members of the Virginia Council of the Social Studies and the Virginia Council of Social Studies Leaders — urged the Board to pause adding history and social studies as accountability measures under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Doing so would effectively undercut HB 1957, which grants local school divisions flexibility in assessment methods.
If social studies is not included in accountability, history tells us exactly what will happen. Under No Child Left Behind, subjects that were not tested were systematically de-emphasized. Instructional time shrank, curricula thinned, and expectations fell. Accountability drives priorities, whether educators like it or not.
Yet many inquiry-based learning advocates appear willing to accept — or even prefer — that outcome. Rather than requiring all districts to administer standardized assessments in social studies across three grade levels, they argue for flexibility that would effectively remove the subject from meaningful accountability altogether. In practice, this means social studies becomes optional, uneven, and dependent on local philosophy rather than student need.
Presenting themselves as experts, speakers dismissed standardized assessments as rote and inequitable while praising performance-based alternatives for promoting critical thinking. The tone conveyed open disdain for content knowledge. Board Member Amber Northern’s remarks on equity were therefore especially important. While multiple-choice tests are imperfect, they are more equitable — particularly for disadvantaged students who benefit from structured, content-rich instruction. Research shows that how experts work in a discipline is not how novices learn it.
What is often omitted from this debate is that the social studies assessments under consideration are not static. They are already being updated and will likely include essays and other open-response items as part of legislation sponsored by social studies teacher and Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-Henrico County). The false dichotomy between multiple-choice tests and deeper thinking is just that — false.
Several speakers claimed students have “benefited greatly” from performance-based assessments. Yet longitudinal Reading SOL data in those same districts tell a different story: Scores for disadvantaged students have declined. Increased instructional time in social studies can improve literacy — but only when instruction is content-rich. Inquiry-based models that assume prior knowledge cannot deliver that benefit.
A high school student also spoke in favor of district flexibility, praising his inquiry-based experience. He casually mentioned visiting “two of the Seven Wonders of the World,” unintentionally highlighting the background knowledge advantages some students bring to school — advantages inquiry-based models often assume, but which many students lack.
Multiple-choice tests are far from perfect, but they are preferable to the alternative Virginia is considering: De-emphasizing social studies altogether. Inquiry-based learning can be a valuable supplement, but it cannot replace content-rich instruction and assessment — especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Virginia’s accountability standards must include 4th-grade Virginia Studies, Civics and Economics, and U.S. History. While many educators may be “drunk” on inquiry-based learning, the Commonwealth still has the opportunity — and the responsibility — to ensure that all students acquire the knowledge they need to succeed academically and participate fully in civic life.
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History education in my school district in Maryland is awful. Even at the AP level there is far too much emphasis on the sorts of inquiries you discuss and a total lack of coverage of specific events or people (I don’t know that Winston Churchill was ever mentioned in our class nor any battle in any war except as background for some photo or such). Part of the problem is that the teachers don’t know the background themselves since they don’t need to teach it. One tried to explain to my class that Brazil was colonized starting in Colombia and moving southeast because he misread a map.
History classes seem to increasingly becoming English classes with texts that happen to be history related.
Excellent piece. Thank you for bringing these dire matters to the attention of those unwittingly supplying innocent victims to the bonfire of educational vanities.