As noted when this year’s state legislative sessions were wrapping up, states have been answering the call for stronger civics in this 250th year, many through civic seals.
This was particularly true in Montana, where the Seal of Civics Literacy came as a result of the state’s 250th commission working together with the superintendent and board of public education. Just 15 weeks after the new Seal was announced, students were submitting applications.
With 20 states now having civic seals in place and at least 7 others with pilot programs and/or contemplating legislation next spring, the bipartisan momentum is real and building. CivxNow is committed to supporting every state in making this vision a reality, lifting up civic seals as a priority policy and convening a community of practice for state leaders as they move to the harder work of implementation.
What makes civic seals unique?
- A student chooses it. Standards, mandates, and required courses all work the same way: they are imposed. A civic seal stands apart because a student chooses it, it measures action, and it teaches by doing.
- It credentials what a student did, not what a state teaches. Too much civic education treats students as passive observers. A seal inverts that. Rather than simply absorbing curriculum, the student is putting civic learning into practice, demonstrating the very competencies deemed essential in states’ portrait-of-a-graduate frameworks.
Next Steps
As with many policies, adoption is only the first step—implementation is everything.
Montana built a civic seal in 15 weeks with no legislation, no appropriation, and no controversy. That speed was not an accident. It was the product of a design that sidesteps fights that have too often stalled civic education for a decade. What Montana has not done, and what no state has done, is ensure the seal holds value for students beyond the diploma enhancement, connecting it to institutes of higher education, scholarship funds, and/or employers.
A couple of efforts are underway to make this value proposition more explicit, including Illinois’ HB 4330 that would require every public college and university to accept the Seal for admissions and credit. Similarly, a resolution was introduced before the New York City Council asking the City University of New York (CUNY) to grant credit for the state’s Seal of Civic Readiness.
That is the missing piece. It is also the smallest piece. One university, one statute, one sentence and the seal stops being a notation and becomes currency. The students already did the hard part.
