Geography Achievement and Opportunity to Learn: A Focus on Curriculum Organization and Content

Using the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) datasets for geography, we explore relationships between geography achievement in the eighth grade and contextual variables related to the content and organization of the geography/social studies curriculum. Differences in student achievement are associated with grade-level variations in exposure to geography as well as the organization of social studies as discrete versus integrated subjects. The achievement gaps observed in this study underscore the need for research into the characteristics of geography curricula and the extent that variance in student outcomes is explained by differential access to geography in schools.