I'm sure all of you have heard of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (if you haven't, please read the great article here and peruse the website here.) These college-and career-readiness standards were first released for public comment in September of 2009, and a draft of the K-12 standards were released for comment in March of 2010. The newest version of these standards, including those in Social Studies, have just been released. You can find the PDF of the new Social Studies standards here. [Edit: While we are excited about this newest draft, we did not intend to imply that the work on these standards is finished. So far, these Social Studies standards deal only with literacy. Someday we hope that Social Studies specific standards will be developed, but in the meantime, please do read about these literacy standards. Thank you to our commenter for pointing out that we were not clear on this point.]
The CCSSI has the greatest general support of education reforms currently being developed, and offers one of the most promising opportunities to improve education through better standards and assessments. Ending the differing expectations between the states can only improve the quality of education throughout the nation. These Social Studies standards have been developed through cooperation by organizations in civics, economics, geography and history (You can find a list of participating organizations at the end of the first linked article.) This single set of standards will drive assessment systems, as well as curriculum and instructional practices. We have been following this initiative with interest, and we encourage you to check out the new standards.
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As a big fan of the Common Core effort, I'd like to fill in some information. You've linked to the most current draft of the literacy standards, which include literacy in social studies. However, a final edition is not due until late May, and even then, the only social studies will be about literacy in that subject. There's a future plan to develop standards specific to social studies, but that work has not even begun. As a passionate history and civics person, I wish the work was already done, but we've still got some waiting to do.
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