As students across the state return to schools this fall, they will be learning Social Studies from a new set of standards approved by the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).
“There are many changes with the new Social Studies standards, including content and state accountability testing,” said Instructional Supervisor Cassady Hickingbottom. “Our school system has been anticipating and preparing for these changes over the past year and will continue to work with teachers and students as the state phases in the curriculum and testing changes.”
The Social Studies curriculum focuses on the core disciplines of history, civics, economics, and geography. The new standards are sequenced to strengthen knowledge and skills at the elementary level, assimilate content in a coherent and chronological manner, and integrate multiple historical perspectives.
The new standards were developed with teams of professional educators and included public input from over 2,000 citizens that shaped the content of the standards.
These standards have students in grade 3 focused on US history and students in grades 4 and 5 studying world history as well as shifting the teaching of Louisiana history from grade 8 to incorporate it throughout the middle school years.
The Social Studies LEAP assessments for grades 3-8 will be field tested for the new curriculum standards for the current school year beginning with the Spring 2024 tests and become fully operational beginning with the Spring 2025 testing schedule.
In addition, the LEAP assessment for high school United States History will be phased out and a new LEAP assessment for Civics will be phased in over the next four years. The Civics assessment will be field tested for the Spring of 2024 and become fully operational for the during the 2024-2025 school year. Students taking Civics or AP US Government will take the Civics assessment.
The new Social Students curriculum will focus on the following topics per grade level:
Kindergarten: Life in My Home, School, and Local Community
Grade 1: Life in the Great State of Louisiana
Grade 2: Life in Our Country, the United States of America
Grade 3: The American Story: People, Places, and Papers
Grade 4: The Ancient World
Grade 5: The Medieval Period to Early Modern World
Grade 6: The United States and Louisiana: Beginnings through Ratification
Grade 7: The United States and Louisiana: The Early Republic through Reconstruction
Grade 8: The United States and Louisiana: Industrial Age through the Modern Era
High School: Civics, United States History, World History, Word Geography
The Louisiana Department of Education partnered with Core Knowledge to create Bayou Bridges: A K-8 Louisiana Social Studies Curriculum, which will be piloted in fourth and fifth grade classrooms across the state, including in Beauregard Parish.
The new Social Studies standards and curriculum will replace the previous standards that were
implemented in 2011.
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