National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is pleased to announce the final approval of the NCSS National Standards for the Preparation of Social Studies Teachers and the addendum resubmitted for review and adoption in Fall 2017 by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation’s (CAEP) Special Professional Association (SPA) Standards Committee. Social studies education programs seeking national recognition beginning with the Spring 2019 review cycle may use the 2017 standards. Use of the 2017 revised standards will be required for programs submitting initial reports beginning the Spring 2020 review cycle. 

Recommendations from the SPA Committee included NCSS maintaining a plan for ongoing evaluation of reviewers along with a recruitment plan specific to the inclusion of diversity of reviewers from the discipline. In addition, the SPA Committee requested that NCSS provide a report by July 1, 2018 that provides data on the current number of reviewers, the diversity present in that pool of reviewers and a specific plan for evaluation of reviewers and future recruitment efforts that will address how NCSS will promote diversity among its reviewers and how NCSS proposes to keep track of the results of such efforts.

The final, approved standards are available at https://www.socialstudies.org/standards/teacherstandards.