The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance are delighted with Iowa House File 2286 (HF 2286), sponsored by Representative Charley Thomson, to improve Iowa’s social studies standards. Previously we have stated our disappointment with the Iowa Department of Education’s failed attempt to reform Iowa’s social studies standards according to legislative intent. HF 2286 elegantly provides a solution—that the legislature simply direct Iowa to adopt South Dakota’s social studies standards. This is an excellent solution. We endorse it, and we encourage Iowa’s policymakers to adopt it.
HF 2286 itself states lucidly the necessity for Iowa policymakers to involve themselves directly in producing Iowa’s social studies standards:
- Because academic content standards substantively define curriculum and directly determine what Iowa students must learn, the general assembly finds that precise statutory direction is necessary to satisfy Iowa’s constitutional nondelegation doctrine and to prevent the exercise of unbounded administrative discretion over fundamental questions of educational content. …
- The draft social studies standards that the department of education adopted in 2025 failed to comply with the provisionsof 2024 Iowa Acts, chapter 1159, in all of the following ways:
- Retaining an unreadable and opaque organizational structure that obscures rather than clarifies content requirements.
- Subordinating factual content knowledge to inquiry-based frameworks that prioritize process over substance.
- Reclassifying essential historical and civic content as optional or supplementary.
- Introducing action civics, political advocacy requirements, and ideological categorical frameworks.
- Omitting required content on western civilization, the founding documents, and constitutional principles.
- Frustrating legislative intent for clarity, objectivity, and content mastery.
- Based on the documented record of noncompliance, the general assembly finds that the department of education is not presently capable of producing standards meeting legislative requirements and must therefore be divested of discretionary authority over the content of social studies standards.
HF 2286 explicitly prohibits administrative and judicial powers of “interpretation” that would allow judiciaries or administrators to gut the implementation of this bill. It provides accurate and usefully detailed definitions of action civics, inquiry-based learning, and political indoctrination—and prohibits their practice in Iowa’s public K-12 schools. Vitally, HF 2286 specifies that South Dakota’s social studies standards are the excellent ones adopted in 2023. HF 2286 rejects the draft 2025 social studies standards and specifies that neither it, nor any of the material it was derived from, may “be used, directly or indirectly, for any instructional, curricular, assessment, accreditation, licensing, certification, professional development, grantmaking, or evaluative purpose.”
Most importantly, HF 2286 adopts South Dakota’s social studies standards “as statutory text and incorporated by reference with the same force and effect as if fully set forth in this section.” The South Dakota standards are to be “the sole and exclusive social studies content standards for all kindergarten through grade twelve instruction in school districts and area education agencies in this state.” The Department of Education likewise is prohibited from creating resources, conditioning funding, designing state assessment or professional development, or practicing any other administrative device that would nullify the social studies standards.
Among many comprehensive provisions designed to ensure that no judge or bureaucrat can “interpret” away the social studies standards, HF 2286 includes an effective means of enforcement:
Any resident of this state, including any parent or guardian of a student enrolled in a school district, shall have standing to bring a civil action in district court to enjoin violations of this section. In any action to enforce the provisions of this section, a prevailing plaintiff shall be entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees and reasonable court costs from the entity found to be in violation of this section.
HF 2286 is necessary. The Iowa Department of Education, unfortunately, has not proven itself capable of following legislative intent. Its dereliction of duty requires Iowa policymakers to state their preferred social studies standards explicitly. The misbehavior of too many judges and administrators in our country likewise requires Iowa policymakers to ensure by comprehensive means that no judicial or bureaucratic spanners can be thrown into the works.
HF 2286 provides a good solution. South Dakota’s social studies standards are an excellent model. Of course we are fond of our own American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards—but South Dakota’s actually have been adopted by a state, and that state is a neighbor of Iowa’s. The South Dakota social studies standards are an excellent fit for Iowa.
Of course some of the South Dakota standards were devised for South Dakota-specific history, and include specific references to South Dakota, South Dakotans, and various aspects of South Dakota’s history, civic symbols, geography, and American Indian heritage. These portions of the South Dakota standards should be adjusted to their Iowa equivalents. Iowa policymakers might consider directly appointing a committee of their own preference to make strictly delimited changes to adapt the South Dakota standards to Iowa.
The NAS and the Civics Alliance enthusiastically endorse House File 2286—but we do not do so to close off other ways of reforming Iowa’s social studies standards. Other reform-minded policymakers may have other means in mind to arrive at the same end of social studies reform that truly meets legislative intent. Bills usually get modified as they become laws. We defer to the collective judgment of Iowa’s policymakers as to the best means to achieve comprehensive social studies reform.
But the means they choose should achieve comprehensive social studies reform—and ensure that Iowa’s Department of Education does not compound its ongoing dereliction of duty. House File 2286 will achieve that wonderfully civic end. Whatever means Iowa’s policymakers choose, we urge that it achieve an end at least as beneficial to Iowa, its citizens, and its students, as praiseworthy House File 2286.
Photo by RebeccaDunnLevert on Adobe Stock
