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.

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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.”

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We’re skeptical of any ranking in which South Carolina finishes first. Especially history.

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