Education Week - December 9, 2020 - 17

The Case for a Civics
Graduation Requirement

Americans risk losing the ability to govern themselves

e are living in perilous times for
our democracy. For centuries,
fights over who can participate
in our democracy have defined
American politics. You would
think that by now our country
would have arrived at some
generally accepted principles when it comes to life, liberty, and the
happiness of our fellow citizens. However, the rule of law, equal
protection under that law, and voting rights are all threatened
today-sometimes by the very people who take an oath to protect
them.
But all is not lost. Not yet. There is a solution, and it's a matter
of restoring something we chose to abandon not very long ago:
comprehensive, robust civics education.
Since the founding of this democracy, one of the primary
purposes of public education-to preserve and perpetuate a
functioning democratic society by educating citizens in the
ways of that democracy-was very much on the minds of many
Founding Fathers (who themselves often failed to live up to their
own democratic ideals). Thomas Jefferson, in not only advocating
public education but also defending
the need for citizens to be taxed
By Charles Salter
for it, wrote that when it comes to
SALTER is the president
educating the common people,
and chief operating ofﬁcer
" the tax which will be paid for
of the News Literacy
this purpose is not more than the
Project, a nonpartisan
thousandth part of what will be paid
national education
to kings, priests and nobles who
nonproﬁt. Previously, he
will rise up among us if we leave the
served as a teacher, school
people in ignorance. "
leader, teachers' union
So how did we get so far from
president, superintendent,
these
founding sentiments? Several
and senior executive with
decades ago, when I was a student in
several national education
elementary school, the country was
organizations.
rattled by the report, " A Nation at
Risk, " which cited our poor showing compared with other countries
as a national security risk. This unleashed an era of accountabilitythrough-testing schemes that I then lived through as a teacher.
When I first entered the classroom in the 1990s, I spent hours
every week not honing my skills as a young educator but rather
comparing student practice-test scores with my fellow teachers.
Reinforcing test-taking skills that prevented our school from being
labeled " underperforming " was the new priority.
The following decade saw the well-intentioned but further
misguided No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top policies. As
a superintendent under these policies, my staff once calculated we
spent numerous hours a week-amounting to almost 30 school
days a year-testing and simply teaching test-taking skills. While
nobly elevating literacy and math, these policies forced us to

prioritize test preparation over the teaching of critical thinking, the
arts, and, perhaps most importantly, civics. Active analysis and
synthesis were replaced by rote memorization and test-taking.
I have no doubt that this path is producing an electorate that
has not been taught to think deeply about how a democracy is
supposed to function, the public's role in making it function, or
how to assess the information it receives before making decisions.
We have finally begun to recognize the error of past policies, as
demonstrated by the initiative of a group of students who sued
the state of Rhode Island in 2018. In a federal class action, the
students alleged that they were being denied their constitutional
right to civics education.
Although the judge dismissed the case this October, finding that
there was no constitutional right to civics education, he was far
from unsympathetic to the students' demands. " Plaintiffs should
be commended for bringing this case, " he wrote in his decision.
" It highlights a deep flaw in our national education priorities and
policies. The Court cannot provide the remedy Plaintiffs seek,
but in denying that relief, the Court adds its voice to Plaintiffs' in
calling attention to their plea. "
The ability to discern fact from fiction and to recognize reliable
news is more fundamental than ever to becoming a wellinformed, engaged, equal participant in our democracy. Teaching
these essential skills will help young people become news-literate.
And news literacy is the foundation of civics education.
Being manipulated or confused into voting against our selfinterests, misunderstanding our history and how our government
should function, or falling victim to wild conspiracy theories are
all a result of a failure to live up to the type of robust, civically
minded public education the founders called for.
For decades, we have created a system where what gets
tested gets priority. That is why we must require comprehensive
civics education and test for comprehension as a graduation
requirement. According to Education Week, only eight states
require a year of civics education, and only 19 states test it as a
graduation requirement.
We already have so much on our plates, but educators must
be on the front lines of protecting our democracy. They must
demand that their state legislatures place as much importance
on civics as they do on math and reading. We need to once again
teach critical thinking-how to think. When we don't, our future
voters are at a civic disadvantage. And the fewer people who can
engage in rational, fact-informed debate, the greater the chance
that we will lose the ability to govern ourselves.
This is something we've known since our democracy's
founding. We cannot expect to have a nation of informed citizens
if we do not prioritize what exactly that looks like. To quote
Thomas Jefferson again: " If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free, in a state of civilization, it expects to what never was and
never will be. "

iStock/Getty

aimed at improving attendance and preventing
dropouts, and most large U.S. school districts have
some version of them.
In typical times, early-warning metrics include
a battery of student indicators such as test scores,
absenteeism, course grades, and credit accumulation,
but some of those may not be available or equally
meaningful during the pandemic. Districts may be
able to gin up new metrics, though, such as measuring
student-assignment completion in the virtual
setting. In the Garden Grove Unified school district
in California, for example, teachers record each
student's assignment completions and logins to the
learning-management system daily.
Harvesting data automatically generated from
learning-management systems (for instance,
Google Classroom, Schoology, Assistments) can fill
in gaps in attendance data. Integrating data from
these systems with student-information systems,
which officially track attendance, can take some
burden off teachers.
Third, educating parents about student absences
may help. Research suggests that most parents
underestimate the number of days their child
has been absent; low-cost mailings correcting
those estimates can improve student attendance.
Moreover, using simple language in these
notifications, emphasizing parental efficacy, and
highlighting the negative effects of missing school
can be particularly effective.
Hedy Chang at Attendance Works and others
advise against taking punitive measures against
students or parents since they tend not to work. A
new review of the attendance literature comes to
the same conclusion.
Fourth, many successful programs aimed at
increasing attendance focus on improving the bond
between students and their school or teacher. In fact,
the literature shows that monitoring student-absence
data is by itself not enough to improve attendance;
students need to want to attend. This approach takes
many forms. The Check & Connect program assigns
each student at risk of dropping out to a caring,
committed mentor who supports and monitors that
student over an extended period of time. Many other
successful programs use teams of school counselors
and teaching staff to spot and lower barriers to student
attendance.
Because remote learning may leave some students
vulnerable to mental-health concerns, districts
might consider programs like Positive Action, which
addresses student social-emotional skills and has
adapted its offerings for COVID-19. In experimental
trials, Positive Action has seen consistently
encouraging results on student mental-health and
achievement metrics.
Finally, in the pandemic, student-participation data
can help suggest needed changes, especially when
it is combined with hearing from teachers, parents,
and students about barriers to remote learning. In
San Francisco and other cities, for instance, districts
have listened to parents and opened community hubs
for students who do not have access to technology
or adult supervision at home. Chang and other
experts on absenteeism also advise working on the
fundamentals-creating engaging and challenging
remote instruction and fostering students' sense of
belonging.
The stakes are high. A McKinsey & Co. report
issued over the summer predicted an increase in the
dropout rate this school year of between 2 percent
and 9 percent. This figure likely underestimates the
increase because the report assumed that in-person
instruction would resume in January 2021. Attendance
and engagement with learning is a leading indicator
for dropping out.
Districts have been understandably consumed by
the basics: returning to school buildings, providing
either hybrid or remote instruction, and managing
COVID-19 cases among staff and students. But
especially with hopes for in-person school dimming,
now is the time to attend to attendance.

EDUCATION WEEK | December 9, 2020 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion | 17

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Education Week - December 9, 2020

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