American History State Standards: The Curation of Native American and Latino History

The public education system in the United States is one of the nation's most powerful and influential institutions. Although this system was and continues to be viewed as a societal equalizer, the institution of public education was never constructed to support equity. This paper examines educational inequity by analyzing American history state standards in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Montana, and Oklahoma. American history state standards are carefully curated to construct a dominant "American story." For this project three frameworks were utilized to analyze the five state standards: Timeframe of Inclusion, Life Domains, and Population Characterization. These three frameworks helped unpack the state standards, which overall do not holistically include Latino or Native American historical elements. This paper supports the need to reconstruct the American history state standards in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Montana, and Oklahoma to more accurately represent Native American and Latino contributions and historical elements.