National Council for History Education

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The National Council for History Education (NCHE) is a United States-based non-profit advocacy group that promotes the importance of history.

[edit] Overview

The National Council for History Education was incorporated in 1990 as a successor to the Bradley Commission on History in Schools. The primary focus of this organization is to promote the importance of history in schools and in society. One of the ways that NCHE sets out to accomplish this is to provide a communications network for all advocates of history education. These advocates include but are not limited to; schools, colleges, museums, historical councils, and community groups. NCHE is funded by a diverse membership composed of history enthusiasts and educators alike who are dedicated to bridging the divide between classroom teachers and those in the collegiate academic world as well as advocacy of the importance of strong history education in all walks of life. Further funding is provided by partnerships and grants through both the federal government's Teaching American History grant program as well as private grants such as those received by the Mellon Foundation.

Such broad interests and constituency allow the organization to have influence in a wide range of issues that deal with the education of history. These range from curricular design, Kindergarten to Doctoral studies, through state, local, and university standards and requirements, teacher education, certification, and professional development, to the implications of the assessment movement, of new technologies, and of school re-structuring. NCHE believes that these issues are extremely important to the way students are taught history, and that each could dictate the course that history education could take in the future. NCHE is a comprehensive national organization arguing for history as the continuing core of the social studies throughout the grades, integrated with geography and civic instruction, in order to show that history is the thread with which the rest of the disciplines are tied together.