Joy Hakim, AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF US AND THE STORY OF SCIENCE. The now 11-volume series was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1993 and is now in a third revised printing. Found in bookstores as well as schools, more than five million have been sold. A History of US was awarded Parents’ Choice Gold and Silver Medals and the first James A. Michener Award in Writing from the National Council of Social Studies (1997). Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough commented, “…the idea that history might ever be thought of as a chore has clearly never crossed her mind.” People magazine called Ms. Hakim “the J.K. Rowling of the history world.”

Hakim is now writing narrative science in a series titled The Story of Science, jointly published by Smithsonian Books and the National Science Teachers Association. The series focuses on the quest to understand the universe and takes readers from ancient science to today’s expanding universe. A team of educators at Johns Hopkins University is developing coordinated teaching materials while using the books in classrooms. The third book in the series, Einstein Adds A New Dimension, was named best science book of the year in 2007 by USA Book News.

Hakim has also been an associate editor, editorial writer, and business writer for The Virginian-Pilot, and a general reporter and photographer for the Ledger-Star. As assistant editor of World News, a foreign news service at McGraw-Hill, she generated assignments and rewrote stories for publications such as Business Week and Aviation Week. She has also written articles for American Educator, The Education Digest, The Wall Street Journal, and Destination Discovery.

Hakim taught elementary school in Omaha, Nebraska; high school English in Virginia Beach, Virginia; middle school special education in Syracuse, New York; and English composition and American literature at a community college in Virginia Beach. She earned a bachelor’s from Smith College and a master’s in education from Goucher College, where she also earned an honorary doctorate in 2003. Ms. Hakim received the Smith Medal from Smith College in 2000 and the Edith Workman Award from the Matrix Foundation in 2003.

Earlier this year, Common Core's report shows a nation STILL AT RISK. Nearly a quarter of students polled could not identify Adolf Hitler and half had no idea what the Renaissance was. To learn more read the report, press release or stories at ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, and USA TODAY. Or take the test yourself.

FROM THE BENCH: "One unintended effect of the No Child Left Behind Act, …, is that it has effectively squeezed out civics education because there is no testing for that anymore and no funding for that. And at least half of the states no longer make the teaching of civics and government a requirement for high school graduation. This leaves a huge gap, and we can't forget that the primary purpose of public schools in America has always been to help produce citizens who have the knowledge and the skills and the values to sustain our republic as a nation, our democratic form of government," former justice Sandra Day O'Connor said. (cont'd)

CAMPAIGN FILE: Sen. John McCain recalls his English teacher: “There was one friendship that enriched my life at Episcopal High School beyond measure... Mr. Ravenel was head of the English Department... He loved English literature, and taught us to love it as well... He made us appreciate how profound were the emotions that animated the characters in Shakespeare's tragedies. MacBeth and Hamlet in his care were as compelling to boys as they were to the most learned scholar.” (cont'd)

CAMPAIGN FILE: Sen. Barack Obama said “One of the problems with No Child Left Behind is that it has become so reliant on a standardized test model that—first of all—subjects like history and social studies have gotten pushed aside. Arts and music time is no longer there. So the child is not having the well-rounded educational experience I benefited from and most in my generation benefited from.” (cont'd)