Supporting History Education
Advocating for History
The AHA’s Freedom to Learn initiative educates historians and others on how to advocate publicly for honest history education, responds directly to bills that would restrict history education, and creates resources to help teachers directly affected by these bills think about how to maintain the integrity of their history courses.
The AHA has sent letters to legislators or boards of education in the following states.
Legislative Advocacy Letters: Behind the Scenes at the AHA
As part of its chartered mission to advance historical understanding and history education in the United States, the AHA’s Freedom to Learn initiative has been responding to legislation that would restrict history education with letters to state legislators. This Perspectives on History piece explains how the AHA develops each letter.
Your Voice Matters
Individuals Can Make a Difference
Federal, state, and local representatives rely on input from constituents to inform their decisionmaking. In many instances, they want to hear from you as they navigate the competing interests of different stakeholders. The AHA has developed guides to help AHA members, and the public more broadly, advocate for history, the work of historians, and history education.
Preparing Your Message
While any communication with policymakers can be helpful, a personalized statement is often more effective than a form letter.
Texas Social Studies TEKS Revision Field Guide
Over the next few months, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will make decisions with profound implications for the future of history and social studies instruction in Texas public schools.
Supporting Historians Under Threat
This guide is intended to provide resources for historians working in a range of different environments to support themselves and colleagues if faced with threats, punitive restrictions, and harassment.
AHA Initiatives
American Lesson Plan: Teaching US History in Secondary Schools
The AHA’s 2024 report shares findings from the most comprehensive study of secondary US history education undertaken in the 21st century. AHA researchers appraised standards and legislation in all 50 states, conducted a survey of over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators, interviewed over 200 teachers and administrators, and reviewed thousands of pages of instructional materials from small towns to sprawling suburbs to big cities.
AHA Advocacy
The American Historical Association is unique among history organizations with the breadth and depth of our advocacy efforts.
AHA State History Standards Support
As part of its mission to promote historical thinking in public life and professional integrity in history education, the American Historical Association monitors and offers guidance on state-level academic frameworks.
The AHA leads or participates in several initiatives to support history educators facing intensifying controversies about what we teach and how we teach it. Historians, including both scholars and educators, play a crucial role in public deliberations about how to engage students in truthful and rigorous inquiry in history classrooms.
AHA Testimony Before Legislatures & Boards of Education
AHA staff have delivered public testimony highlighting the challenges teachers and educators face from legislation restricting the teaching of “divisive concepts" and issues related to teaching history with integrity.
Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences
The AHA's criteria outline foundational elements for history-rich education that can be adapted to account for local priorities.
AHA News
Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism in American History
In June 2021, the American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and PEN America authored a joint statement stating their “firm opposition” to legislation, introduced in at least 20 states, that would restrict the discussion of “divisive concepts” in public education institutions.
AHA Condemns Report of Advisory 1776 Commission
In January 2021, the AHA issued a statement condemning the report from “The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission.” “Written hastily in one month after two desultory and tendentious ‘hearings,’” the AHA writes, “without any consultation with professional historians of the United States, the report fails to engage a rich and vibrant body of scholarship that has evolved over the last seven decades.”
For the Press
Access press releases issued by the AHA and other resources for the media.
Perspectives on History
Read articles on legislative and educational issues in the AHA's newsmagazine, Perspectives on History.