Last summer, historian David McCullough garnered headlines across the country when he testified before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on education and early childhood development, decrying the woeful state of history education in American schools.

McCullough, whose latest book, 1776, then topped the best-seller lists, told the subcommittee, “We are raising children who don’t know who George Washington was.”

Charles E. Smith, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, told the subcommittee that assessment results show that “the majority of 12th graders did not know, for example: (1) that the Monroe Doctrine expressed opposition to European colonization in the Americas at the early part of the 19th century, (2) how government spending during the Great Depression affected the economy, and (3) that the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S. during World War II.