Many students in America—including Newton—only learn history up through the World War II period. And Newton Public Schools district leadership wants to change that.

So, math isn’t the only subject in Newton’s public schools heading for a reboot.

On Monday, the School Committee discussed new curriculum options for English, social studies and math. And the social studies ecosystem needs an update and an upgrade, NPS History & Humanities Director Eva Hughes said, as teachers are stretched thin and modern history is largely left out as a result.

“The curriculum as it’s currently written, does try to push into the contemporary era,” Hughes said.

But discrepancies in pacing, in depth and in focus creates a situation where some teachers are just not able to get all of the material into their teaching. So, Hughes and a curriculum evaluation committee came up with some recommendations.

And unlike other curriculum changeovers, the one proposed for social studies pilots new programs for younger kids and puts implementation for higher grade levels off for a while.

That’s because, Hughes said, earlier restructuring can help create a more evenly paced flow at the higher levels, and pacing is a major problem with social studies education. There’s a lot of history to cover, and there’s a lot going on in the world that could use more civics education.

School Committee member Victor Lee said he’s had parents from the city’s Asian and Jewish communities express concern over Investigating History and asked how Newton’s diversity will be factored in with the new curriculum.

“You always have challenges with social curriculum no matter where you adopt it,” Lee said, asking what the plan for collecting feedback from families may be.

Superintendent Anna Nolin reminded him that curriculum is not decided by parents.

“I’m sure you know, Victor, that if we were going to put all the curriculum out for a vote, we would never choose a curriculum. We look to our CURATE resources, our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) resources and our professional educators.

“That said, we meet with groups all the time,” Nolin continued. “Eva and I have met with folks who have shared concerns with us. They push our thinking, we take on resources.”

And the district has feedback from the Commission on Antisemitism to incorporate into its curriculum as well, Nolin reminded the room. Nothing has come from DESE regarding how to implement the recommendations from that committee, which all public school districts are required to do.

Nolin also noted that a big part of her job is engaging with the community, and she and her leadership team have been meeting with various groups to get feedback on how the district is doing as far as representing families and cultures in teaching materials. Recently, the district launched an entire committee to start a conversation addressing one family’s concerns.

“They’re not a part of the curriculum choice, but we take their feedback, and every parent was surveyed in every one of these curriculum areas to get that feedback,” Nolin said.

Committee member Ben Schlesinger brought up breadth versus depth, and fellow member Tamika Olszewski has been able to see the difference in real time.

“Having twins in high school I can tell you there’s a difference in who is getting what at what point of the year in what depth,” Olszewski said. “And so, having some consistency there, and alignment, would certainly be wonderful and much appreciated by many, myself included.”

Starting on track

Hughes noted the nationwide disparity in time spent on literacy instruction versus time spent on social studies learning, citing a Fordham Institute study from 2020 that shows that for students in early grades, literacy is given an average of two hours a day and social studies is given just 23 minutes.

Hughes discussed results of her committee’s examination of the district’s social studies programming at various grade levels and found the main issues vary depending on age. In grades kindergarten through second grade, for example, there are “strong teachers but very fragmented systems” in a subject that gets so much less time allotted to it than other subjects.

The state launched its History and Social Sciences Framework in 2018, putting more focus on civics, economics and geography. But on Monday, Hughes used a chart with a stoplight analogy to show which areas are good (green light), which areas need improvement (yellow light) and which areas aren’t hitting standards at all (red light). Kindergarten in NPS has a red light designation.

In early grades, teachers are finding a way, when and where they can, to fit more social studies in.

“And so what we’re finding is that in K through two, we have dedicated teachers that are connecting social studies to their lives,” Hughes said. “In fact, there’s a direct connection to early childhood literacy and strong social studies content beyond phonics instruction. Research shows that this content, rich social studies, improves reading comprehension, especially for multilingual learners and students from lower income backgrounds, which I think is gratifying to hear.”

But that’s patchwork, and NPS needs programs.

Hughes, NPS History & Humanities Director, recommends the district adopt the statewide Children Discovering Justice curriculum for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade that emphasizes civics, justice and community.

Children Discovering Justice is the standard-bearer in Massachusetts, Hughes added, and the DESE has vetted it and found it to be of high quality.

“And that’s essentially why we landed right there,” Hughes said.

Coherence in a time crunch

Hughes said the district should consider using Investigating History, developed by DESE in collaboration with educators that’s already used by some NPS classes, as a foundational curriculum, with core content across all four of the city’s middle schools.

NPS would then be able to rework the programming to create “pockets of autonomy and also room in order to be able to expand the curriculum into the various projects right as well as adapt to current events as needed,” she said.

Hughes also recommends NPS develop a consistent scope and sequence—the pace and breadth of curriculum over a certain length of time—across grades six through 12.

“I want to be clear here that this is not completely lacking, that this has been ongoing work,” she said. “It’s happening both at the middle schools as well as at the high schools, and the goal now is to bridge between middle school and high school in order to be able to know that we’re reinforcing those analytical skills.”

Teachers have created materials based on vetted, quality programs like iCivics, Generation Citizen and Democratic Knowledge Project, and Hughes said her department wants to see that all streamlined “in order to create a more cohesive experience generally for our eighth graders.”

With the high schools, Hughes continued, there are civic action projects and Newton North has a volunteer-supported Civic Action Center that helps integrate civics and community involvement into students’ lives. There just isn’t a lot of time for social studies.

“What we’re finding here is rigor and autonomy, which is largely constrained by time in our learning walks across both North as well as Newton South,” Hughes said. “You’ve got strong instructional quality, and they’re doing all the good things, argumentation, primary source analysis, discussion-based learning connections to contemporary issues, students are engaging in evidence based reasoning, analysis of multiple perspectives is very consistent across the high schools. What they are noting is that they only meet three times a week, and these three class meetings per week really limit opportunities for sustained inquiry, as well as for discussion.”

That results in early units getting more depth and later units—especially those that cover history after World War II—are compressed or omitted entirely.

It’s not just a Newton issue. It’s nationwide. And that is a big factor in why so many high schools don’t teach history that’s more recent than World War II. Outdated materials don’t help, either.

“And instructional materials generally need to be modernized, and so high school teachers in the departments themselves are using high quality instructional materials, and they are just as the middle school teachers were, you know, taking and adapting curriculum materials that have been vetted in a variety of ways, and those need modernization,” Hughes said. “And not only do the materials need modernization, the teachers need continued professional development to remain current, to be able to answer students’ questions appropriately, as well as accurately around current events today.”

The path ahead with an army of one half

NPS officials and Superintendent Nolin have cautioned against “initiative overload,” so any new social studies system will have a gradual rollout, especially since the district recently adopted new science curriculum and is embarking on an overhaul of math programming.

So, Hughes’s recommendation for the 2026-2027 academic year is a toes-in-the-water approach.

“We chose priority standards, primarily in civics, being very, very cognizant of not overloading teachers,” Hughes said. “And to that end, we chose to pilot only Children Discovering Justice and only in two units in K and one in grade two.”

Her committee will continue to work on new social studies curriculum implementation in the following years.

“We would like to see grades three and four phase in investigating history, certainly not next year with other ongoing curriculum implementation, but hopefully within the next three to four years,” she said.

What’s most needed, Hughes said, is more layered support. Teachers are overburdened as it is, and Hughes herself is worn thin. So, her committee wants a system of programming for the younger kids and middle school kids that would provide much-needed layers of support for the department’s faculty and leadership.

“I am an army of one–I’m actually an army of one half, because I’m also the director of Fine Arts, as many of you have seen me here before in that capacity,” Hughes said. “And so, what I’m essentially asking for is more tiered support within the middle schools in order to be able to support the alignment and the creation of a cohesive curriculum and an equitable student experience.”