A needs assessment survey was given to every American history teacher in School District 5 of Lexington and Richland Counties and the School District of Newberry County. Of those who responded, 100% agreed that they need a program that will improve content knowledge of traditional American history and will show how to develop and implement literacy strategies when teaching American history. The Reading, Writing, and Reasoning in American History project will enable teachers to advance their expertise in traditional American history content, improve essential elements of teaching to higher standards, and develop and implement literacy strategies when teaching American history. The project will teach significant issues, episodes, and turning points in the history of the United States, how the principles of freedom and democracy have shaped and continue to shape America's social, political, and legal institutions and relations, how to form hypotheses and make conclusions based on historical evidence, how to provide opportunities to compare and contrast differing interpretations of history and historical events, as well as address special topics in American history.

Anderson 1 named its project "EXCEL" to reflect the project consortium's focus on empowering teachers to become enthusiastic about helping students "excel" in American history. EXCEL will enable an estimated 3,630 fourth and fifth grade students to have the opportunity to build foundational skills and improve academic achievement in traditional American history, thereby increasing proficiency levels on district and state standardized history assessments. The project will work with at least 140 targeted teachers to prepare them to teach traditional American history as a separate academic subject through improved content knowledge and implementation of innovative instructional strategies. Teachers in the lowest performing schools will be heavily recruited for program participation. The project staff will conduct five professional development workshops and monthly book study groups each school year and two one-week institutes during each summer. Content areas will include development of the U.S. Constitution and its significance; causes and events leading to the Civil War and the effects of the war; Reconstruction and its effects; landmark Supreme Court cases in U.S. history; World Wars I and II; the Cold War; and the Civil Rights Movement. The project will also deliver a variety of instructional support activities including one-on-one technical assistance for teachers from the American History Mentor Team, peer support opportunities, design and observation of the American History Model Classroom, use of the EXCEL website to promote the collaboration between teachers and history experts, and development of lesson plans and units of study.

The goals of the Historical Inquiry Project are (1) to develop and implement strategies for sustained and on-going collaboration among teachers and outside experts to improve content knowledge and instruction in traditional American history; and (2) to develop and implement high-quality professional development that provides educators with content knowledge and related teaching skills to prepare all students to achieve higher standards in American history. Project activities will include attending summer institutes, participating in field studies throughout South Carolina, creating curriculum, training in Critical Friends protocols, participating in seminar training by the National Paideia Center, presenting at district and state workshops, and participating in National History Day activities or oral history projects. In addition, teachers will engage in "source work" guided by South Carolina scholars and engage in the authentic analytical work of historians. Content areas are built around the National Assessment of Educational Progress time periods and themes including the following: Change and Continuity in American Democracy; Ideas, Institutions, Practices, and Controversies; the Gathering and Interactions of People, Cultures, and Ideas; and Economic and Technological Changes and their Relation to Society. Field studies to sites within South Carolina will help teachers understand the role the Palmetto State played in the development of the nation as a whole.

Orangeburg Consolidated School District 05 proposes a Teaching American History project, Perspectives on American History (Perspectives), that will help Orangeburg teachers and students realize the potential they have to become influential and proactive American citizens. Perspectives will invite teachers to investigate historical events in American history from the multiple perspectives of the individual lives that shaped those events and issues. Perspectives will implement and strengthen programs to teach American history as a separate academic subject by connecting teachers with 1) local and national historians; 2) historical resources; 3) best-practice teaching strategies and technological tools; 4) colleagues and their ideas and resources; and 5) a sustainable blueprint for excellent teaching. Perspectives meets the absolute priority through its partnerships with South Carolina State University, the South Carolina Archives, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the South Carolina Council for African American Studies. These partnerships will provide historical content instruction, professional development, and teaching resources for participating teachers. The Perspectives management team and the external evaluator will work together to collect and analyze project data to measure improvements in teacher and student knowledge and to ensure progress toward project objectives. Course content will explore the following topics: exploration, colonization, and settlement; the Revolutionary War, a new nation, and reform movements; the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Industrial Revolution; World Wars I and II; the Great Depression; domestic and foreign policy; and the contemporary U.S.

Sixty teachers a year will take part in this third TAH program for teachers in South Carolina to increase educators' knowledge of and student achievement in traditional American history and to improve collaboration among teachers, historians, and cultural institutions. Partnerships and mentoring networks created by the grant will foster continued support of teacher development throughout the Pee Dee, Midlands, and Upstate regions. Previous TAH participants can only take part in this effort if they are serving in a leadership-master teacher-role. Three ten-day summer institutes, providing 60 hours of professional development, will take place each year, one in each region. Each includes 30 hours of content instruction, 15 hours of methods training, and 15 hours of cultural institution collaboration. Research, pedagogical help, networking and other support are components of post-institute assistance to teachers. The content covers, among, other topics: Reconstruction, changes from the plantation system to sharecropping, impacts of the 1876 election, Populism, westward migration/conflict with Native Americans, the "robber barons," late 19th and early 20th century race relations, the Spanish-American War and Panama Canal, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, 20th century presidents, the Cold War, the importance of the Middle East, the Red Scare, and women's rights.

The immersion approach of this Teaching American History project is embedded in its design. Participating teachers will be placed in triads mixing elementary, middle, and secondary teachers, and immersed in subject matter through travel-study and classroom activities. The program enables participants to become productive learning teams in which they plan, design, research, evaluate, and prepare teaching materials together. In addition to 112 technologically driven instructional units for participating teachers-slated to become "teacher historians-professional development opportunities will be available for non-participants. Course content following traditional NAEP periods is presented during the first two years, including: beginnings to 1607; colonization and settlement to 1763; the Revolution and the new nation, to 1815; expansion and reform, to 1861; the Civil War and Reconstruction, to 1877; the development of modern America, to 1820; the two world wars, to 1945; and contemporary America, to the present.

The central activity of this professional development project will be to develop a curriculum map in American history for Consortium teachers. The Consortium will recruit a corps of master teachers from each district elementary, middle and high school to develop the curriculum map in Year 1, and conduct implementation training sessions. In Year 2, teacher teams will engage in field study sessions at partner sites. Year 3 calls for teachers to test partner sites with students in grades 4, 5, 8, and 11. Topics will be explored in terms of: civilization, cultural diffusion and innovation, interaction with the environment, values, beliefs, political ideas and institutions, conflict and cooperation, comparative history of major developments, and patterns of social and political interaction. Content covers land and people before colonization, expansion of Europe and the Spanish Empire, life in English America, British regulations, the war for independence, Federalists and Jefferson, the War of 1812, nationalism and sectionalism, the Jackson era, westward movement, the old South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the new South and new West, industrialization and labor, urban culture, farmers' revolt, empire and progressive reform, the Great War, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, Civil Rights and the 60s, and Conservative reaction.

Of the 35 schools in the county, only 10 met Adequate Yearly Progress in the 2004-05 academic year. Project participants will be trained as "instructional specialists" who will be responsible for meeting regularly with colleagues to identify training needs, clarify project goals and expectations, review elements of selected instructional pedagogy, and pilot test the pacing guides and curriculum documents that will be developed as part of the Patriot Project. A significant portion of project funds will be used to develop a curriculum management system and software to aid in the development of curriculum guides, pacing charts, and benchmark tests. This software also will be used to track student performance.

About half of the students are African-American; 71% of students are eligible for free/reduced lunches. Only 12% score better than "basic" in state social studies tests, and only 12% of teachers were history majors in college. This project will help overcome the physical and intellectual "provincialism" that affects this rural, poor, and relatively isolated school district. Nationally prominent content experts will prepare 15 sets of PowerPoint lectures that teachers will incorporate into lesson plans. On the 12-day "staff ride" teachers will encounter firsthand the great sites, documents, and museums from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Accompanied by senior history professors, teachers will experience the places that made American history and will be able to incorporate these experiences into their lesson plans. In addition, a content workshop component will focus on the content of traditional American history, and the best practices and historiography of teaching it. The teachers will meet 10 days a year with a senior history professor, supported by email and readings.

State student assessments revealed significant gaps in social studies academic achievement within the consortium. Of the 4th grade students, 23.6% scored "below basic" and 47.8% scored "basic" on the assessment. Of 5th grade students, the figures were 36.2% and 39.3%, respectively. Of the high school students enrolled in Advanced Placement American history, only 36% passed the final exam. Consortium teachers, too, declared themselves lacking in American history knowledge. A survey showed that only 5% rated themselves "very knowledgeable" in American history. Planned project activities will advance the teaching of American history, as a separate academic subject in grades 4, 5, and 11 by increasing the content knowledge and improving the teaching strategies of the consortium's 472 American history teachers. The consortium's American History Conference, an event packed with quality breakout sessions covering various topics in American history, will serve as the project's capstone. This conference will foster collaboration, networking, best practices, and sharing among the 472 American history teachers.