Southeast Polk Community Schools: New Social Studies Standards

Iowa's new Social Studies standards were adopted by the State Board of Education on January 15, 2026. Over the past year, the state of Iowa completed a full rewrite of the Social Studies standards. Unlike ELA, Math, and Science—which focused on refining existing expectations—Social Studies required more significant change to strengthen clarity, coherence, and rigor across grades.

Schools will have a 3 year timeline for full implementation. Our first step with the new standards will be to build familiarity. We can do this by reviewing the K-12 Social Studies Storylines, the Content Comparison Chart, and becoming familiar with the language of the new standards.

The full standards document is linked below and has been uploaded to the Social Studies page of the Teaching and Learning site. In addition, the page also has links for each individual grade level as well as 9-12 courses.

Please feel free to reach out to the Teaching and Learning team to help support the first step of building familiarity with the new standards. We appreciate the work you do every day to help students understand the world around them.