This project will increase teacher knowledge, boost the number of highly qualified American history teachers, and improve the quality of instruction. This, in turn, would lead to a greater number of students who would demonstrate proficiency in American history. Also desired is an increase in the number of Advanced Placement students in American history. The project will increase teachers' use of primary materials, local history resources, and technology in history instruction will be addressed through the creation and provision of resources for design teams to develop comprehensive model history curriculum units which include the use of primary sources, literature, aligned test banks, and technology. A tour of selected historic sites in Tennessee will also be conducted at locations where there are recognizable links between events and people of importance in local history and the broad patterns of national history.

The state consistently is ranked near the bottom of the nation's schools in performance at every pre-collegiate educational level. The rural schools participating in the project lack access to history scholars and historical research resources. Teachers overwhelmingly are first-generation college graduates with little experience in traveling beyond the state of Tennessee. Through the efforts of the master and mentor teachers and the educational specialist, training will be provided that is closely attuned to the actual classroom needs of teachers. This consortium will offer high quality professional development in traditional American history to teachers in predominantly rural counties. The Story of Freedom will use the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as the central documents to trace the story of freedom from the beginnings of this country to the present. The project is designed to create dialogues among teachers and professional historians and to model teaching strategies that work.

The agreement of the participating districts to commit their teachers to this project, as opposed to making participation voluntary as in an earlier Teaching American History grant, is evidence of the capacity building nature of the project. Many teachers in the consortium are not highly qualified to teach the subject, and most of the districts received a composite score of "C" in the 2005 state social studies assessment. The organizing principal for the traditional American history content presented by the project is how the significant issues, episodes, and turning points in history all thread back to an understanding and interpretation of the founding documents, particularly the Constitution and Bill of Rights. 12 master and 18 mentor teachers trained during the first grant will be given further training during this project so that they may assist their 80 apprentice colleagues.