Education Week - July 17, 2019 - 10

CITIZEN Z

How 3 States
Are Digging
In on Civics
BY STEPHEN SAWCHUK

hat can states do to develop better
citizens? CivXNow, a coalition of some 90
organizations spearheaded by the online
curriculum group iCivics, has some ideas.
The group recently unveiled a policy menu: Revise social
science standards to prioritize civics. Align tests to them.
Improve teacher training. Give youth a voice at schools
and in local government.
K-12 education has been down this road before,
without a lot of progress to show for it. An early-2000s
push organized by many of the same players did not
dramatically change the landscape.
What's different from before, the coalition says, is the
context. There are now success stories from states that have
pioneered new civics education laws. There's a research
base on civics education that, while young, is increasingly
robust. Finally, there is public recognition that something
has gone deeply wrong in the state of American civil
discourse, and that schools play some role in mitigating it.
Indeed, there are some signs of a legislative appetite
for additional reforms. More than 80 pieces of civics
education legislation were introduced across 30-odd
states in the 2018-19 legislative session, according to
Ted McConnell, the executive director of the Campaign
for the Civic Mission of Schools, one of the CivXNow
coalition members. And last year, the National
Conference of State Legislatures counted nearly 115
civics education-related bills.
Getting the best ideas to the finish line is another story.
Some of the state legislation focuses on having all
students take the same citizenship test used as part of the
naturalization process-an approach most of the CivXNow
coalition members believe is too narrow. (The Scottsdale,
Ariz.-based Joe Foss Institute, which has pushed for the use
of the test, is notably absent from the coalition.)
But inertia is probably the biggest challenge.
"It's rare you're going to have anyone against civics,
but fundamentally it's just not a priority," said Shawn
Healy, the director of democracy initiatives at the Robert
R. McCormick Foundation, a key player in Illinois' civics
education efforts.
CivXNow says states can pick and choose from among
the policies, though they're most powerful in concert. It
will also consider putting out model legislation in the
future to guide states.
So how will the coalition know its push is succeeding?
"I wouldn't measure success in one legislative session;
it will take two to three years. We want to call back
the time that's been taken away from civics and social
studies over the last 20-something years," McConnell
said, referring to the standards and accountability
movement many civics advocates blame for focusing
schools too narrowly on reading and math at the expense
of history and civics. " ... When a critical mass of states
have done that, we'll know we've had success."
In the meantime, the civics and social studies lobby
will need to beef up its own advocacy. Potentially, they
could take a page from arts education advocates, who
have been much more successful at making a researchbased case for the importance of those subjects-such
as by inserting the arts into the ubiquitous discussion
of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics), now often called "STEAM."
"My hope is that we can get our act together on that
front," Healy said. "It's a been a bitter irony for me that
the civics and social studies community has done a
pretty bad job of advocating for ourselves."
At right, Education Week briefly profiles three
states at various stages of revising civics education
requirements in their states-and what they've learned
along the way.

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 17, 2019 | www.edweek.org

FLORIDA:

The Trendsetter
Florida is often lauded for its cohesive push for civics education, thanks to a 2010 law bearing the name
of the legendary Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor. The law required a new middle school course
and an aligned test to measure civics knowledge that
makes up nearly a third of each student's grade in that
subject. It covers four main prongs, including the origins
and purposes of law and governments; citizens' rights
and responsibilities, the political process, and the organization and function of government.
The state remains one of the few to emphasize civics at the
middle school level. In most states, formal civics education
begins at high school. Whatever students get before that is
taught within a generic social studies or history class-often
in a nuts-and-bolts or overly sentimentalized, patriotic way.
In a sense, Florida's traditional standards-and-assessment approach to civics owes something to the same reform movement that culminated in the federal No Child
Left Behind Act-the test-heavy law that many civics experts now blame for reducing time spent on the subject.
But there is some truth to the adage that what's tested

ILLINOIS:

The Apt Pupil
Until 2015, Illinois had some of the weakest civics requirements around, leading to great differences in how the topic
was being taught.
So when Illinois added a brand-new requirement for a semester of high school civics that year, those in the state knew
it would take some kind of entity, like Florida's Lou Frey
Institute, to keep implementation on the rails in the state.
Ultimately, that's taken the form of a sort of gentleman's
agreement between legislators and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation, which pledged $1 million a year for three years
to support the new learning. Some of that money was raised
from other philanthropies and donors.
Most of the funds have gone to support a crop of several
dozen educators who work in concert with the state's regional offices of education to supply training, resources, tips,
and ideas to teachers about how to put the law into action.
For Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz, an associate professor of
history and social science teaching coordinator at Eastern
Illinois University, what's groundbreaking about the law is
not just the coursework requirement but also the specificity
of the course content. The law says the class must include the
topics of government institutions, service learning, simulations of the democratic process, and notably, discussion of
"current and controversial events"-something even wellmeaning teachers tend to ignore out of fear and discomfort.
"I think good social studies teachers were already doing
many of those things, but it encouraged everyone to get on
board," said Laughlin-Schultz, who is one of the mentors in
southeast Illinois. "Downstate, where I live, it gave teachers the ability to say: 'No, I need to talk about controversial
topics, it doesn't matter what the political landscape is or
whether administrators think it's a good idea. It's written
into the law.'"
She said teachers have struggled most in understanding
what service learning means in a civic education context.
"It's not just a traditional 'volunteer somewhere and keep
a log of your hours' thing-it is a much more intricate and

gets taught. Scores on the middle school test have risen on
the exam across the state since its introduction in 201314. Just over 70 percent of students earn passing scores.
A lesser known factor in Florida's work is the central
role played by the Lou Frey Institute at the University of
Central Florida. Although not formally part of the state's
K-12 education bureaucracy, the center has become the de
facto clearinghouse for materials and teacher training for
the course.
Even before the law had been signed, the institute was
laying the groundwork. In 2009, it began developing model
civics lessons for teachers. In 2010, the state legislature
began appropriating funds to support those efforts, and in
2011, the state education department gave the institute a
grant to run teacher professional development.
"I will tell you that building the kind of support system
we have been for Florida is crucial to success," said L. Doug
Dobson, the Lou Frey Institute's executive director. "Otherwise you just pass a law and clap your hands and say
you're done, and whatever happens, happens."
Districts initially struggled to unlearn some of their former practices to cover the much more extensive content
requirements: "The pacing was really a hurdle for us,"
said Robert Brazofsky, the executive director for social
sciences for Miami-Dade county. But now, the district has

authentic kind of experience. But that is intimidating to
teachers," she said.
To help them grasp the content, she hosts daylong civic engagement sessions at her university, where teachers and high
school students from area schools meet to brainstorm steps
they can take to address school issues, like presenting to the
school board or writing a letter to a state representative. In
effect, the workshops model the kinds of activities teachers
can take back to their classrooms and enrich in a longer, more
extended teaching unit.
Illinois' entering high school freshman class of 2016, the first
for whom the civics requirement took effect, begins its senior
year this fall. In the meantime, Illinois is ready to expand its
efforts. In May, the legislature passed a new law requiring a
semester-long middle-grades civics course to complement the
high school requirement. The bill, HB 2265, is currently awaiting Gov. J.B. Pritzker's signature, and the McCormick Foundation is once again promising its financial support.

MASSACHUSETTS:

The New Kid
With Gov. Charlie Baker's approval last November, the
Bay State became the first state to require each middle
and high school to include at least one student-led civics
project.
Massachusetts' law is among the most specific in decades, specifying not just content but a particular teaching approach. The idea of civics projects reflects "action
civics"-having students research and use local civics
channels to fix problems in their community.
It's the culmination of two separate efforts in the state
to improve civics that have fortuitously converged.
First, beginning in 2016, the state education department started revising its history and social science standards for the first time since 2003. The completed standards, unveiled in 2018, put a much heavier emphasis
on civics learning throughout the grades and feature a
particular emphasis on civics in 8th grade. That grade's

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