Author: icivics

Civics Springing Forth in State Capitols

State lawmakers are exploring an array of civic education bills that align with the CivxNow State Policy Menu, signaling a collective effort to elevate and enhance civic learning nationwide. Our policy team and state coalitions are responding to an evolving landscape but focusing on a few priority states this session, including Alaska, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

Policy emphases from the early weeks of the Spring 2024 session include:

Information Literacy

Given the increasing role of technology in shaping civic discourse, several states are incorporating information literacy into state education laws.

State Representative Jim Murphy, Missouri (R), introduced HB1513, Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Act, which proposes a pilot media literacy project in 5–7 school districts and allows each district to report back findings and recommendations to inform state standards. In Pennsylvania, Senators John I. Kane (D) and Amanda M. Cappelletti (D) filed SB343, establishing a K–12 curriculum for internet safety.

Civic Seals

The Maryland Civic Education Coalition, a state CivxNow affiliate, is working with a bipartisan and bicameral group of legislators on a bill related to establishing the civic seals program.

Indiana Senators Jeff Raatz (R) and John Crane (R) introduced SB211, which establishes a civic seals program through the state department of education. In Alaska, Senator Stevens (R) sponsored and passed SB 29, a bipartisan bill last session, to require a new semester-long civics course in high school and a civics assessment/test. The bill awaits action in the House.

High School Civics

In Alaska, Senator Stevens (R) sponsored and passed SB 29, a bipartisan bill last session, to require a new semester-long civics course in high school and a civics assessment/test. The bill awaits action in the House.

The Wisconsin Civic Learning Coalition is weighing in on SB 83, sponsored by Senators Wanggaard (R) and Cabral-Guevara (R), that requires a high school civics course for graduation.

Teacher Professional Development

The Michigan Civics Coalition (MiCivics) is leading advocacy efforts to enhance professional development for K–12 civic educators and is exploring opportunities to begin a civic excellence recognition program for students.

To track these bills and others impacting civics across states, search CivxNow’s regularly updated pending bills by state database. The interactive CivxNow state policy scan provides a framework for high-quality civic education policy across states. For more information or to request support, please contact our Director of State Policy, Lisa Boudreau.

How Justice O’Connor Brought Civics to Chicago

On December 1, we learned of the heartbreaking news of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s passing. The news broke just as the National Council for the Social Studies opened its conference in Nashville, the largest annual gathering of civics educators. The convening permitted collective grieving for and remembrance of a history-making woman who built a national movement for innovative civic learning as her legacy project.

Justice O’Connor contended that civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions are not passed through the national gene pool, but must instead be cultivated with each successive generation. As iCivics’ CEO Louise Dubé detailed in her moving tribute, Justice O’Connor built iCivics into the leading civic education provider in the U.S., reaching half of middle and high school students and nearly 150,000 teachers each year. Yet in her final letter to the American people dated October 23, 2018, she set the bar far higher.

Justice O’Connor wrote:

“It is my great hope that our nation will commit to educating our youth about civics, and to helping young people understand their crucial role as informed, active citizens in our nation. To achieve this, I hope that private citizens, counties, states, and the federal government will work together to create and fund a nationwide civics education initiative. Many wonderful people already are working towards this goal, but they need real help and public commitment.”

CivxNow was thus born in 2018 with 47 charter members committed to strengthening local, state, and federal civic education policies including funding. As 2023 concludes, we boast 320 organizational members, plus a presence in 41 states and counting. We secured increased federal funding for K–12 civics from $3.5M in Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 to $23M in FY 2023. And we supported state partners and policymakers in passing and adopting 29 laws with bipartisan support since 2021 that align with the CivxNow State Policy Menu.

Like Louise, I have a personal story of Justice O’Connor’s role in propelling this remarkable progress. She visited Chicago a decade ago in an effort to boost the Illinois Civic Mission Coalition’s statewide efforts, but also to support a robust new strategy in the state’s largest district, Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Justice O’Connor visited a high school civics class at Alcott College Prep on the city’s North Side and engaged students in a stimulating conversation about her historic service as the nation’s first female Justice, and on the importance of their civic development as a condition of sustaining a self-governing nation.

From there, Justice O’Connor dined with members of the CPS Board of Education, endorsing a district-wide civic education strategy that included a full-year high school civics course, project-based service learning, and student voice committees in middle and high schools. She keynoted a breakfast the following morning before a packed Union League Club audience composed of students, teachers, and school leaders, and held court on civic learning at the Chicago Tribune editorial board that afternoon before departing.

The impact of Justice O’Connor’s visit continues to bear fruit a decade later. The Illinois Civic Mission Coalition successfully advocated for a state civic education task force that spring, and it produced policy recommendations to the General Assembly the following year. The recommendations were implemented in quick succession, including passage of a high school civics course in 2015, its middle school counterpart in 2019, new state social studies standards centering civics in 2016, and a statewide system of teacher professional development that has served 25,000-plus teacher participants since the fall of 2015.

CPS is an important part of this story, too, scaling the initiative launched the school year of Justice O’Connor’s visit into the model civic education strategy for a large urban district with dedicated staffing and funding. Oh, and the Tribune provided front-page coverage of the task force and the editorial board endorsed the push for a required civics course.

Her legacy endures, as each meeting with policymakers and their staff begins with our origin story starring Justice O’Connor. She continues to command universal respect across the political spectrum, and we carry her commitment to civic learning close to our hearts. We honor Justice O’Connor’s memory each day in this collective impact effort called the CivxNow Coalition. It is a great privilege to work for the organization she founded, and to pursue (and one day achieve) her lofty vision with eternal vigilance in partnership with each of you.

Teacher Project Promises to Do Civics for Civics

CivxNow works year-round to strengthen K–12 civic education policies at the local, state, and federal levels. We do this in partnership with our 315+ member organizations and the many stakeholders they represent and embody, frontline civic educators most prominently. Educators are our most effective advocates because they are experts at the craft and teach in every state and legislative district in the country.

In meetings with congressional and state legislative offices, educators present firsthand accounts of their experiences teaching civics in a polarized political environment where the subject is too often marginalized. Moreover, they point to the potential benefits of strengthened policies, including improved classroom resources, access to ongoing professional development opportunities, and engaging student programs.

In this vein, CivxNow is proud to announce its Teachers Advancing Civic Learning (TACL). With the leadership of more than 25 participating member organizations, we are recruiting interested educators and developing training modules and materials to assist with eventual advocacy. Through TACL, participants will form peer relationships, access specialized toolkits, join leading organizations in the civic learning field, feel empowered to press for positive change, and model civic behaviors for students and the surrounding community. Know an educator who would like to be involved?

Successive Surveys the Impact of Civic Learning and Engagement

In the American Bar Association’s 2023 Survey of Civic Literacy, 70% of respondents consider public understanding of how government works to be “not very informed” (53%) or “not at all informed” (17%). Periodic measures of public civic knowledge confirm this sentiment. For example, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual Constitution Day Civics Survey released last month shows that while 66% of respondents could name the three branches of government, 17% could not name any.

A deeper dive into the Annenberg survey reveals a scant 5% of respondents able to name all five freedoms of the First Amendment, with only speech identified by a majority (77%). Religion (40%), assembly (33%), press (28%), and petition (9%) followed. Twenty-two percent inaccurately associated the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms to the First, and 20% of those surveyed were unable to name any of the five freedoms.

Respondents also struggled to apply the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Fifty-three percent inaccurately claimed that Facebook, a private company, “…must permit all Americans to freely express themselves on (its) pages.” The upside is that the 59% of respondents who reported taking a high school civics class focused on the Constitution were more likely to answer survey questions correctly.

The consequences of low levels of civic knowledge among the citizenry were clarified in the Institute for Citizens & Scholars’ (ICS) September 2023 survey  The Civic Outlook of Young Adults in America. The national survey of more than 4,000 18–24-year-olds found a strong relationship between civic knowledge and civic engagement. Respondents answered a series of questions about the constitutional design of American institutions, the Bill of Rights, and current events. Each correct answer was associated with a statistically significant increase in political engagement, including voting, volunteering, and digital content creation and sharing.

Moreover, civically engaged respondents expressed greater satisfaction with U.S. democracy, with each community engagement activity increasing satisfaction. In turn, those with high satisfaction were more likely to find conversations with those they disagree “interesting” and/or “informative.” High civic engagement also translates into increased levels of trust in government institutions.

In sum, civic knowledge yields increased civic engagement, and civic engagement activities correlate with higher levels of satisfaction with our constitutional democracy, not to mention interesting and informative conversations across political differences. However, ICS points to a curious relationship between civic knowledge and satisfaction with democracy: those with higher retrospective levels of civic education were more satisfied, but those with higher civic knowledge less satisfied.

Our take is that higher levels of civic knowledge alone will not help strengthen and sustain this grand experiment in democratic governance. Civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions undergird youth civic development. A comprehensive civic education, as articulated in CivxNow’s State Policy Menu and our federal priorities, includes direct instruction in civics paired with practices of constitutional democracy like viewpoint-diverse classroom discussions, project-based learning, and simulations of democratic processes. These successive surveys from our partners at the ABA, Annenberg, and ICS further illuminate the importance of prioritizing high-quality civic learning opportunities throughout students’ PK–20 trajectory.

A Deeper Dive on New Hampshire’s Policy Win

The New Hampshire Civic Learning Coalition, led by NH Civics, championed advocacy efforts in Spring 2023 for a bipartisan bill entitled “More Time on Civics,” requiring a semester of civics in middle school and instructional time for civics in grades K–5. The legislation passed with strong bipartisan support, and was signed by Governor Chris Sununu (R) in August 2023.

Governor Sununu also requested and secured $1M in appropriations for a new civics textbook in the Fiscal Year 2024 state budget. The four-term governor will not seek reelection next year, but will leave these new policy accomplishments as part of his legacy in the Granite State.

Under Senate Bill (SB) 216, which was sponsored by State Senator Sharon Carson (R), high school graduation requirements remain unchanged: a half-year of instruction in civics and a full year of instruction in history and government. However, under the new law, students also need to obtain a passing grade on a competency exam developed by their school and a grade of 70 percent or better on the 128-question U.S. citizenship exam.

Schools will be expected to meet the new curriculum requirements at the start of the 2024–2025 school year without new funding from the state. The new law also includes resources to create materials and professional development for educators. Moreover, NH Civics committed to providing free professional development programs and curriculum materials over the next year to support implementation.

During the 2023 legislative session, the CivxNow policy team tracked 131 bills in 38 states pertaining to civic education. Seventy-six of these bills aligned with the CivxNow state policy menu. Indeed, this win in New Hampshire and recent successes in other states, signals legislative appetite for additional reforms in red, blue, and purple states. Since 2021, twenty states adopted twenty-two policies aligning with CivxNow’s policy priorities. CivxNow’s top policy recommendation for states is to provide universal, equitable access to K–12 civic learning opportunities.

The NH Civic Learning Coalition was awarded CivxNow state policy grants in 2022 and 2023 and is a member of the CivxNow State Policy Task Force.

Civics in the News

With summer more than halfway over, let’s take a page out of the books from the schools we’re working to help. Take some time to catch up on that summer reading list, including these stories and videos about civic education:

Summer Viewing

iCivics Executive Director Louise Dubé, Paul Carrese, University of Chicago president Paul Alivisatos, and Arizona State University English professor Ayanna Thompson discussed civic education with the New York Times’ David Leonhardt at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The discussion focused on the complexity of narrative in telling history and civics in this moment. Louise made the point that K–12 schools provide the perfect microcosm of our country right now, as they truly represent the makeup of our communities. Some are liberal, some are conservative, and therein lies the potential to move forward, if we can figure out reasonable solutions to our divisions on the ground.

End of Session Recap: States Make Progress in Civic Education Policy

This spring, CivxNow State Policy Task Force members made their priorities a reality, signaling continued momentum for civic education. Since January, the CivxNow policy team tracked 131 bills in 38 states pertaining to civic education. 76 of these bills aligned with the CivxNow state policy menu. What follows is a summary of the significant policy successes this session:

  • The New Hampshire Civics coalition led advocacy efforts for a bipartisan bill entitled “More Time on Civics,” requiring a semester of civics in middle school and instructional time for civics in grades K-5. The bipartisan bill awaits Governor Chris Sununu’s signature.
  • Seven years after legislators in Minnesota introduced legislation requiring a civics course for credit to high school juniors and seniors, the provision was included in this year’s final omnibus education package. Governor Tim Walz signed the bill on May 24th. Rollout starts in the 2024-25 school year. The Minnesota Civic Education Coalition was also successful in securing $300K in funding for civic programming. 
  • In Indiana, $500k, was appropriated in the state education budget for civics programming. This is an increase of $200K over last year. This initiative was led by Indiana Bar Foundation, a CiviXNow affiliate. 
  • Maine state Rep. Morgan Rielly (D) led a bipartisan charge in the House to require the Secretary of State to study the efficacy, feasibility, and benefits of appointing a deputy secretary of state to coordinate civics engagement and education matters. The bill passed two days before the legislature’s adjournment. The CivxNow state policy team is consulting with Rep. Rielly and Deputy Secretary Joann Bautista and Secretary Shenna Bellows on this project.
  • In the coming school year, teachers from across the Commonwealth of Kentucky will pilot the new Kentucky Civic Seal. Sponsored by Kentucky’s Secretary of State, Michael Adams, the Seal will recognize students who demonstrate good citizenship by completing a student-designed civic engagement project, possessing knowledge of governance and democratic principles, practicing information literacy, and engaging in self-reflection.
  • Montana’s State Board of Education adopted a high school requirement this spring. 
  • In Connecticut, Rep. Smith sponsored a civics and media literacy task force bill, and Rep. Michel offered a similar bill. On June 8th, the legislature concurred unanimously on Rep. Michel’s version of the bill. 

Progress to Build On: 

  • In Alaska, the upper chamber adopted language for a required social studies course and civics assessment exam to graduate high school beginning in the fall of 2024. The Senate unanimously passed the requirements in Senate Bill 29. It is anticipated that the bill will be taken up in the House for consideration in January 2024.
  • And Maryland’s Senate passed legislation to adopt civic seals, but the legislature adjourned prior to consideration in the House. The Maryland Civic Education Coalition anticipates continued momentum behind this legislation next session. 
  • The newly minted Missouri Civic Learning Coalition worked with Rep. Jim Murphy on a bill to start a media literacy pilot program at the Department of Education. Rep. Murphy worked to pass similar legislation for the past four years. The proposal seemed promising as it was wrapped into a larger education package during conference committee negotiations. Unfortunately, the larger education bill did not pass during the session’s final week.

A Deeper Dive Into What NAEP Civics Tells Us: Urgent Need for Policies Supporting Effective Practices

Earlier this month, we shared our initial reaction to the release of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Civics results. The first statistically significant decrease in student performance since the current test’s inception in 1998 attracted widespread concern and pontification. While we share the former, it’s imperative to dig deeper into the data to determine what drives student performance in civics in order to scale best practices in schools and classrooms. Our four principal conclusions are as follows:

  1. How and what we teach matters: Teachers’ daily or almost daily use of primary source materials when teaching social studies correlated with a 21-point boost in student performance compared to teachers who never use primary sources. Moreover, students who studied the U.S. Constitution “a lot” outperformed students at all other dosages, a 15 point difference from students who did not study it at all.
  2. Teacher dispositions matter: Teachers’ confidence in their ability to explain the importance of participation in the political process and government correlates with a 35-point difference in performance between students whose teachers “definitely can” explain this and those whose teachers “definitely can’t.”
  3. Civic learning opportunities matter: Demographics too often continue to be predictive of whether or not students receive civic learning opportunities that correlate with stronger student performance: 52% of White students, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and students of two or more races experienced a class in 8th grade where civics was the primary focus compared to 46% of American Indian/ Alaska Native and Hispanic students and 44% of Black students.
  4. Families matter: Students who talk about their studies at home 2–3 times per week outperform those who never or hardly ever talk about them by 20 points. Additionally, students who are attentive to news about current political events outside of school daily or 2–3 times per week outperform those who never follow the news by 19 points.

At the local level, schools and districts as a matter of policy and practice should partner with parents to foster students’ civic development. 

At the state level, policymakers ensure students have access to courses with civics content. Currently, only 7 states require a stand-alone middle school civics course; 26 others, including the District of Columbia, require some civics instruction; and 18 require no civics instruction in middle school.

At the federal level, the tripling of funding for national civics programming in Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) is a good start, but Congress must continue to grow these appropriations in FY24 and beyond. Congress should also reintroduce the bipartisan, bicameral Civics Secures Democracy Act, which represents a generational investment in K–12 civic education, with specific focus on the teacher pipeline and schools and districts serving under-resourced student populations.

Let’s make the most of these valuable insights from our “Nation’s Report Card” and urgently translate it into effective policies and practices. If successful, the next NAEP Civics data release in 2030 will demonstrate we are well on our way to sustaining and strengthening our constitutional democracy through improved civic knowledge and skills among students.

Honor Civics Teachers by Supporting Investments in Their Professional Development

As Teacher Appreciation Week (May 7–13) approaches, we salute civic educators from coast to coast for their daily diligence in developing students’ civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. A prominent way to demonstrate our appreciation through state and federal policy is to highlight the importance of investing in educators’ professional development.

The CivxNow Coalition’s theory of change is premised on stronger state and federal K–12 civic education requirements and funding, which necessitate and enable civics teachers access to high-quality, ongoing professional development (PD) opportunities, ultimately translating into improved classroom instruction and students’ civic development.

Specifically, the CivxNow State Policy Menu recommends ongoing, comprehensive, and evidence-based teacher PD opportunities that strengthen civic content knowledge and pedagogical skills, provide exposure to a wide range of vetted curriculum and resources for classroom implementation, and create opportunities for infusing civic learning opportunities across academic content areas.

Unfortunately, teachers rarely rate their existing PD opportunities as “useful” and have little autonomy in selecting them. Given the dearth of state and federal funding for civics-centered teacher PD, current opportunities are often under-resourced and prohibitive for teachers to access in terms of time and money.

Thankfully, there are efforts across states to strengthen investments in civic-centered teacher PD (check out our state bill tracker, where we are monitoring nearly 120 bills in 39 states impacting K–12 civic education), and Congress is currently considering the Administration’s recommendation to more than triple the federal investment in civic education for Fiscal Year 2024. This proposed $73M would underwrite American History and Civics Academies and Civics National Activities.

American History and Civics Academies, in part, support workshops to strengthen teachers’ civic knowledge, and Civics Activities provide competitive grants to institutions of higher learning and education nonprofits that use evidence-based practices “to improv[e] teaching and learning about the history and principles of the Constitution of the United States” with particular emphasis on low-income and underserved students.

There’s no better way to honor civics teachers than to use the CivxNow “Take Action” tools to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to support this increased funding for K–12 civics. The congressional appropriations process is heating up, so your outreach will be most impactful in the next two weeks. Go to the “Take Action” page on our site, select an issue, and click on the “Take Action” button. Then, simply type in your home address, enter your full name and contact information, and send an automated email to your Senators and Representative.

Let’s show our appreciation for civics teachers by doing civics for civics by May 13. Ensure that all educators have access to high-quality, ongoing, civics-centered PD opportunities!

Propelling Information Literacy Through Public Policy

Contemporaneous debates over ChatGPT are only the latest volleys in our collective struggle to teach information literacy to a generation weaned on iPads. Information literacy is an essential civic skill, and it is imperative that federal and state policies prioritize its inclusion across the K–12 curriculum.

Information literacy involves building skills to effectively find, evaluate, and use information in its broadest sense, incorporating elements of more traditional academic literacies, digital literacy, and media literacy.

Too often, we conflate digital natives’ comfort with devices with their ability to sort good information from bad. Moreover, educators need pedagogical tools and trusted curricula to fill gaps in helping students a generation or two younger to develop 21st-century information literacy skills.

Sam Wineberg et al. of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) published “Educating for Misunderstanding”  in 2020, studying the information literacy skills of a sample of college sophomores, juniors, and seniors at a large East Coast state university. The authors concluded, “Students don’t merely lack the skills they need to thrive in a digital environment. It’s worse. They’ve been taught ineffective ones.”

Ineffective methods include equating .org in web addresses with trusted nonprofits, using a website’s “about page” or look and feel to assess an organization’s credibility, and using links on a website as a measure of validity.

Among the pedagogical principles underlying the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy released in 2021 is “inquiry as the primary mode of learning.” This includes building student engagement with information literacy. For example, SHEG suggests teaching students “lateral reading,” assessing the credibility of a source by learning what other arbiters say.

SHEG worked with teachers in the Indian Prairie School District in Naperville (IL) to integrate information literacy horizontally across the 9th grade curriculum, from geography to biology. They also collaborated with Lincoln (NE) public schools on vertical integration in K–12 social studies.

Over the past decade, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) scaled civic learning throughout the K–12 curriculum with increased emphasis on integrating information literacy. Benjamin Bowyer and Joseph Kahne (2020) studied the impact of civic and digital learning opportunities on CPS high school students’ civic engagement, both offline (e.g., voting and volunteering) and online (e.g., sharing a political article on social media). Specific to information literacy, they found a positive relationship between digital learning opportunities and online civic engagement. However, they saw online engagement fall for students who were taught to be discerning digital consumers. This may represent a healthy skepticism of online content or deepened distrust of media that can be counterproductive.

We must therefore emphasize consumption and production of information online and offline, and scale information literacy instruction horizontally and vertically across schools, districts, and states through favorable state and federal policy reforms. To these ends, the CivxNow State Policy Menu embraces the information literacy recommendations of DemocracyReady NY in its 2021 “Developing Digital Citizens” report:

  • Embedding information literacy curricula across subject areas;
  • Maintaining up-to-date school facilities, most critically school libraries as they now serve as media resource centers;
  • Ensuring librarians have ongoing access to professional development opportunities focused on information literacy; and
  • Transparent monitoring and reporting of students’ access to information literacy opportunities.

CivxNow’s recent state policy scan found that 17 states include information literacy in their learning standards. Additionally, California, Utah, and Washington provide funding for information literacy teacher professional development and complementary classroom resources, and New Mexico offers an information literacy course as an elective. The CivxNow policy team is currently monitoring 21 bills in 11 states concerning information literacy, with hopes that several will get across the finish line this spring.

Finally, the $23 million appropriation secured in the Fiscal Year 2023 federal budget for National Civics Programs includes information literacy among the evidence-based practices it seeks to foster among students. We are hopeful that the Administration’s recommendation to triple federal funding for K–12 civics in FY24 will continue to seed innovation and equitable implementation of information literacy by institutions of higher education and eligible nonprofits, ultimately to the benefit of districts, schools, teachers and, most importantly, students.