02/08/2026
The woke takeover of Iowa's social studies classrooms may finally be ending.
For two decades, Iowa's kids have been guinea pigs in an educational experiment cooked up by national organizations with impressive-sounding names and terrible results. Instead of teaching American history, they built "inquiry arcs." Instead of reading the Constitution, they "constructed knowledge." Instead of learning what happened at Valley Forge, they explored their feelings about "compelling questions." The educrats had their shot.
The Fordham Institute graded Iowa's results: D in Civics. F in U.S. History. Many Iowa parents felt the same way.
Experiment over.
HF 2286 ends this. It kicks out the woke C3 Framework โ the jargon-laden, inquiry-obsessed, action-civics-pushing system imported from national organizations that have presided over the collapse of civic knowledge nationwide โ and replaces it with South Dakota's social studies standards: clear, chronological, content-rich, and rated among the best in the nation.
No more earning credit for attending the latest protest. No more "constructing your own knowledge" instead of learning established facts. No more frameworks so convoluted they need a three-page instruction manual just to read.
Here's a thought worth considering: Bill Ayers โ yes, that Bill Ayers, Weather Underground co-founder turned education professor โ spent his academic career championing exactly this kind of education: "free inquiry," teachers as "facilitators," students as activists, classrooms as instruments of social change.
When your social studies framework is philosophically indistinguishable from the educational vision of a former domestic terrorist, maybe it's time to ask some hard questions about the framework.
How did we get here? Simple. In 2024, the Iowa General Assembly passed HF 2545 directing the Department of Education to produce the best social studies standards in the nation. It was supposed to be focused on content knowledge, Western civilization, founding documents, and constitutional principles.
Instead, the Iowa DOE came back with an absurd draft that kept much of the same old junk. The draft still buried essential content in optional categories, still pushed "action civics," still clung to the same broken framework.
The Iowa DOE essentially said: "No thanks, we like it the way it is."
So some of us in the General Assembly said: "Fine. We'll do it ourselves."
That's HF 2286. Iowa kids deserve to learn the history and genius of their political system, the story of their country, and the spirit of America.
At long last, they're going to get that chance.
