The History Project at UC Davis and the Solano County Office of Education have received $1 million from the U.S. Department of Education to improve history instruction in Solano County public schools, where only one in three students performed at or above the "proficient" level in U.S. history on the 2007 California Standards Test.

The three-year grant will enroll about 50 U.S. history teachers countywide in an "American History Academy" developed and administered by the UC Davis History Project and taught by historians at UC Davis and Solano Community College. Participating teachers will spend two years exploring America's past and strengthening their teaching skills with guidance from such faculty as UC Davis history professor Alan Taylor, winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in History.

"The surest predictor of student achievement in history is a teacher's knowledge," said Ari Kelman, an associate professor of history at UC Davis and the project's principal investigator. "The ultimate goal of the History Project is to grow a corps of teacher-leaders capable of training their colleagues and disseminating their materials and experience to the broader teaching community in their districts, counties and beyond."

The American History Academy will serve 8th- and 11th-grade teachers who are responsible for teaching U.S. history to some 15,000 students in 15 middle schools and 16 high schools in six Solano County school districts: the Benicia Unified School District, Dixon Unified School District, Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District, Travis Unified School District, Vacaville Unified School District and Vallejo City Unified School District.

Enrollment priority will be given to teachers from the county's lowest-performing schools. Three Solano County school districts -- the Vacaville, Fairfield-Suisun and Vallejo City unified districts -- have been identified as "program improvement" districts under provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Such schools are overseen by an outside organization and must meet targeted goals for improvement.

The academy begins this August for 8th-grade teachers and next summer for 11th-grade teachers. Participants will attend seminars on the Solano Community College campus during the school year, take part in two-week institutes on the UC Davis campus in the summers and participate in historical book groups and online scholarly activities year-round.

Teaching history to English learners will be a special focus of the academy. Only 7 percent of English learners in Solano County overall -- and only 3 percent in Vallejo -- tested proficient in history in 2007.

The academy's success will be assessed at project's end by the UC Davis School of Education's Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools.

Established in 1991, the UC Davis History Project has been the lead partner on five similar grants with school districts in the Sacramento region: the Grant Joint Union School District, Sacramento City Unified School District, San Juan Unified School District, the Folsom-Cordova and Center Unified School Districts Consortium, and the Yolo County Office of Education.

The UC Davis History Project is a part of the California History-Social Science Project, which is one of eight California Subject Matter Projects supported by the state of California and the UC Office of the President. Launched in 1990, the goal of the statewide organization is to provide professional development for history and social science teachers at all grade levels statewide.