Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Coalition proposes 10 state mandates to boost civics education

Coalition proposes 10 state mandates to boost civics education
Hill Street Studios

What are the three branches of the federal government? It's a question nearly 75 percent of American adults cannot correctly answer. A lack of formal civic education could be part of the problem.

The CivXNow Coalition – a bipartisan group of 90 educational, philanthropic and good-government organizations – urged the legislatures in all 50 states on Wednesday to undertake a broad and ambitious program for bolstering young Americans' understanding of how representational democracies and governments work. While most states require some form of civics, the details vary widely, meaning that millions of students who may have learned adequate United States history may nonetheless lack the skills or understand the behavior necessary to participate as active citizens in adulthood.

An understanding of civics is widely understood to be a prerequisite for the sort of political participation that boosts faith in the system. The coalition proposed 10 items that each state should mandate in the cause of boosting civic education beyond the basics – understanding that the legislative, executive and judicial branches are the three parts of the federal system, for example. The most important ideas include:

  • A semester of civics education for middle schoolers and one full year for high schoolers.
  • The setting of precise targets for the number of students who are at least "proficient" on end-of-course civics exams.
  • Requirements to assure that students in poor and minority communities get the same access to civic education as others.
  • Professional development for civics instructors similar to that of math or reading teachers.
  • Giving students opportunities to help govern their school systems in order to give them real-world exposure to civic activism.

"Our American democracy is at risk. Schools play a critical role in preparing young people as responsible and engaged members of our community. Yet, graduating students who know and care about our democracy has not been a priority for decades," said Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics, which founded CivXNow. "We see the results."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Fewer than a quarter of students were "proficient" in civics on the the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the most recent congressionally mandated test to measure how eighth graders perform on a variety of subjects. Black and Latino students scored even worse than their white peers.

The policy menu was crafted by a task force of policy makers and experts on civic education including David Skaggs, a former Democratic congressman from Colorado and now chairman of the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The group says it will provide resources and support to state and local advocates who are trying to implement the suggested policies.

Read More

Members of Congress standing next to a poster about Project 2025

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Patty Murray look at their Project 2025 poster during a press conference on Sept. 12.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Project 2025 policies are on the Nov. 5 ballot

Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.

It’s becoming crystal clear, as we near the Nov. 5 presidential election, that voters need to seriously check out the radical government reformation policies contained within the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Here’s why.

The right-wing think tank has written not one, not two, but nine “Mandate for Leadership” documents for Republican presidential candidates, with its first playbook published in 1981. The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million —serious money — in 2023 to create Project 2025 for Donald Trump to implement.

Keep ReadingShow less
‘There is a diffused climate of threats and intimidation’: A conversation with Daniel Stid
Daniel Stid

‘There is a diffused climate of threats and intimidation’: A conversation with Daniel Stid

Berman is a distinguished fellow of practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, co-editor of Vital City, and co-author of "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age." This is the ninth in a series of interviews titled "The Polarization Project."

The problem of polarization has been on Daniel Stid’s mind for a while.

Trained as a political scientist, Stid has spent time working in government (as a staffer for former Rep. Dick Armey), business (at Boston Consulting Group) and the nonprofit sector (at the Bridgespan Group). But Stid is perhaps best known for founding and leading the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. democracy program. From 2013 to 2022, Stid helped give away $180 million in grants to combat polarization and shore up American democracy. Since leaving Hewlett, he has created a new organization, Lyceum Labs, and launched a blog, The Art of Association, where he writes frequently about civil society and American politics.

Keep ReadingShow less
screenshot of Steve Kornacki

You don't need to be Steve Kornacki to know which states (and counties) to watch on election night.

YouTube screenshot

How to win a bar bet on election night

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

The odds are you don’t go to sleep at night and dream of precinct maps and tabulation deadlines like NBC’s breathless election guru Steve Kornacki. Watch him on election night and you will be dazzled and exhausted by his machine-gun-like sharing of statistics and crosstabs.

Keep ReadingShow less
The word "meritocracy" on a chalkboard
bowie15

The propaganda of 'meritocracy'

Degefe is a research associate in Duke University's Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Ince is an assistant sociology professor at the University of Washington.

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) recently launched the Merit Caucus to prevent diversity, equity, and inclusion from dominating education. Owens, chairman of the Education and Workplace subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, argued that the left is waging a "war on meritocracy" and is threatening America’s excellence, all in the name of equity.

Such sentiment is clearly becoming more prevalent, as evidenced by the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively end race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities and by Texas, Florida, Alabama and Utah banning the use of state dollars for DEI programs in public universities, effectively closing these offices.

Keep ReadingShow less