The records include correspondence with members of the Committee on American History in the Schools and Colleges, members of the National Council for the Social Studies, financial correspondence, complaints and inquiries, published reviews, course offerings, test materials, and publisher responses. The collection is divided into three series: Historical Background, Correspondence, and Subject Files.
The HISTORICAL BACKGROUND file contains a copy of the New York Times report critical of American history knowledge and teaching methods in American schools and colleges by Hugh Russell Fraser, and the responses to it in published sources which prompted the creation of the Wesley committee.
CORRESPONDENCE includes Edgar B. Wesley's professional correspondence; letters to and from committee members, usually with Wesley; correspondence with members of the board of NCSS; financial correspondence with MVHA and the Rockefeller Foundation; letters exchanged with representatives of the New York Times; and miscellaneous complaints and inquiries on the committee's work. The Wesley correspondence includes material prior to his chairmanship of the committee and routine arrangements for hotel reservations and speaking engagements as well as committee-related correspondence.
Items in the SUBJECT FILES are minutes of the two Chicago conferences of 1943; a large test folio containing correspondence with the test's designers, Howard Anderson, Walter W. Cook, and E. F. Lindquist, and test materials; course-offerings; studies of school districts; publicity correspondence, press releases, and published report reviews; newspaper clippings; and publisher replies to subsequent inquiries by Wesley in 1950-1951.
