Q: At a gathering over the holidays, I was amazed at how little history my Generation Z family members knew. One cousin, a college freshman, was clueless about the Cold War; another, a high school senior, was fuzzy about the Civil Rights movement. At age 43, I'm no old fogey complaining about "the younger generation," but I do wonder what my own kids are learning in school. Doesn't the Common Core teach history?

A: Don't blame the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). They were only adopted in most states within the last couple of years, so the curriculum you're referring to would not have had been based on the CCSS.

In 2009, when the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and a group of national business leaders decided to create a set of skills and knowledge that students graduating high school should have in order to be college- and career-ready, they put their focus solely on standards for mathematics and English language arts (ELA).

Selected readings in the ELA standards support history. For example, most high school students read Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death!" speech to the Second Virginia Convention; George Washington's Farewell Address; Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" State of the Union Address; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail.

While there are no national standards for history, most states have their own. Many high schools use Advanced Placement curricula as a starting point for what should be covered in U.S. history, U.S. government and world history.

Common Core standards for science, the arts and world languages are being crafted by organizations independent of CCSSO and NGA. (To read the standards in math and ELA, go to commoncore.org.)

But you do raise a good question: What should all Americans know? Or, as Lisa Hansel of the Core Knowledge Blog puts it, "What should all of our children have the opportunity to learn?"

In 1987, University of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch launched a national debate with his best-seller, "Cultural Literacy" (Vintage), with its 5,000 facts and cultural references. Parents and educators embraced his subsequent series, spelling out what children should learn at each grade level.

Hirsch's critics argued that one professor shouldn't decide what all kids should learn to have a common vocabulary and shared frame of reference in an increasingly diverse country.

To that end, Eric Liu has launched "What Every American Should Know," a project of the educational nonprofit Aspen Institute's Citizenship and American Identity Program.

"Hirsch's list was attacked, celebrated and much discussed," Liu writes on the project's website. "Today, amidst giant demographic and social shifts, the United States needs such common knowledge more than ever. But a 21st-century sense of cultural literacy has to be radically more diverse and inclusive. And it needs to come not from one person, but from all of us."

Inspired by Hirsch's work, Liu turned to crowdsourcing for the project, giving all Americans an opportunity to help cultivate, according to Hansel, "a shared body of knowledge that honors our diversity while forming a common bond."

What do you think Americans should know to be civically and culturally literate? Enter your top 10 at whateveryamericanshouldknow.org.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Last year, all our parent group did was gripe about tests, but nobody brings it up now. Our PTA president says that new laws have stopped mandatory testing. Aren't some tests necessary? How else will we know how our kids are doing?

A: While several trends have shifted the testing picture, your PTA president gets an "incomplete" on the topic. Annual tests are still required.

Here's what's changed. One: States and districts, responding to concerns from teachers and parents about over-testing, cut back on redundant exams. (One Florida district had given students 183 tests between kindergarten and seventh grade; only 17 were federally required.) Cutting back decreased the ongoing test prep that eats into instructional time.

Two: Some "opt-out" movements were fueled in part by efforts to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. Now that most states have uncoupled test scores and teacher accountability, there's less resistance to testing.

Three: Parents realize that the maxim "what gets tested, gets taught" shortchanges kids. Subjects such as social studies and the arts -- and hard-to-test social-emotional skills such as resilience, responsibility and self-regulation -- get less instructional time. Parents and teachers want to change that.

Four: There are big changes at the federal level. On Dec. 10, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), replacing No Child Left Behind. ESSA passed with strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. It continues to mandate annual math and reading testing requirements for grades 3 though 8, and requires that schools annually report test scores and keep track of demographics including race, economic status and disabilities.

But states can now set their own goals and timelines on accountabliliy, subject to approval by the federal Deparment of Education. For example, states can decide how to weigh tests, how to evaluate teachers and how to sanction schools where students don't graduate on time or whose students score in the lowest 5 percent.

"This bipartisan agreement came about because policymakers were wise enough not to throw the testing 'baby' out with the bathwater," says Bill Jackson, CEO and founder of GreatSchools.org. "Parents don't want their kids to undergo unnecessary tests or endless hours of prep, but they do want to know how their children are doing and how well their schools are performing."

Nationally normed annual tests can provide that information, says Jackson; however, "but the results aren't easy for parents to interpret."

GreatSchools hopes to change that. Working with major test providers, the organization just launched the GreatKids State Test Guide for Parents: a free online tool that's organized by grade and subject.

"This tool will help parents understand the scores and use them to support their kids' learning," says Jackson. "The guide fills a critical need: specific, actionable information for parents, customized to the grade level of their children and described relative to the sections of the tests."

To learn more, and to use the guide, visit StateTestGuide.org.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Our elementary school does "blended learning." What defines blended learning, and is there a good resource on it? What devices are best? If we understand it correctly, we think we'd like to use it at home to move our boys beyond video games.

A: Blended learning is an instructional strategy that combines face-to-face teaching with online engagement, allowing students more control over the time, pace and place of their learning. Surveys suggest that more than 75 percent of the nation's school districts are implementing some type of blended learning.

"It's a way of re-centering learning around individual student needs," says Heather Staker, the founder of online resource Ready to Blend, and co-author of "Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools" (Jossey-Bass, 2014).

The Internet offers parents opportunities to supplement the classroom curriculum and "provide their children with learning resources that before were out of reach," notes Staker. "Say a family wants to learn a foreign language, understand computer coding or go inside the Smithsonian. ... These experiences are now affordable and accessible with a basic device and Wi-Fi."

But to navigate this world requires effort. "No wise parent would send a child on a field trip without knowing if it were safe and worthwhile," explains Staker. "Similarly, every site on the Internet is also a destination -- albeit a virtual one, and this time, children usually travel alone. Parents are well-advised to be as concerned for the safety and worthiness of destinations in the virtual realm as for those in the physical."

To find appropriate sites, Staker refers parents to CommonSenseMedia.org, "a great resource to help families identify worthwhile content. It reviews education apps, as well as movies, videogames and other media."

To help parents find safe sites and give kids fun academic challenges, Staker and her husband created an online blended-learning program called Brain Chase (brainchase.com).

"The program offers multiweek academic challenges that motivate second- through eighth-graders to learn by disguising the hard work as an adventure quest. Participants search for an actual buried treasure," says Staker.

Each day, participants are challenged to read and write and solve puzzles and problems provided by such online resources as Google Books, myON, Rosetta Stone and Khan Academy. Credentialed elementary teachers grade the writing assignments. During the program, kids receive "adventure tools" such as decoders in cool packaging in the mail. (The spring 2016 Brain Chase adventure starts Monday, Feb. 8. Go to brainchase.com for details.)

Which devices work best for blended-learning activities? Staker likes Chromebooks because "they are affordable (less than $300), and our family doesn't mind that the software resides in the cloud, not on our local hard drives. Other families see benefits in tablets because of their mobility.

"Be aware, however, that although tablets are great for consuming content, they are ill equipped for producing it. Students have trouble composing essays on tablets, for example, and external keyboards tend to break easily in backpacks."

For more information, go to readytoblend.com.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)