The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, has evaluated the states’ standards for teaching U.S. history in school and found that a majority of the standards, including Arkansas’s, are “mediocre to awful.”
Arkansas was one of 10 states, including Texas, to receive a grade of D. Eighteen states earned an F, among them Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Wyoming. South Carolina (of all places) got the only A. Six other states received an A-minus.
Of Arkansas, the Institute said:
“Little coherent development or causal understanding of history is possible in the confused, thematically organized morass of Arkansas’s social studies standards.”
We’re skeptical of any ranking in which South Carolina finishes first. Especially history.