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Civic learning is an increasingly salient topic in research, policy, and practice. However, the recent empirical evidence on access to civic learning opportunities is limited. We build on prior research using survey items from the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress civics assessment and provide descriptive evidence on disparities in access to three categories of civics content and three evidence-based instructional approaches. We highlight inequalities in opportunities by student characteristics, school characteristics, and state characteristics among a national sample of more than 10,000 8th-grade students enrolled in a course with at least some civics focus (controlling for variation in the extent of civics focus). Our findings conflict with most of the prior evidence regarding disparities in access by race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background, favoring Black students, Hispanic students, and students of relatively lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This suggests a shift in recent years, potentially due to an increased focus on equity. English learners and students with disabilities also reported greater access than their counterparts. Other findings include inequalities across school types, school location (city students reporting greater opportunity than both rural and suburban students), census region, and state testing policy. Additional findings are presented, and implications and opportunities for future research are discussed.

This brief discusses cases of neo-nationalist violations of academic freedom in Hungary and Poland. The most prominent case of neo-nationalist violation of academic freedom in Hungary is the fate of the Central European University (CEU). The circumstances of CEU's forced move out of Hungary came before the European Court of Justice regarding it a possible violation of EU law. The Court cited the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under one of the three pillars of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) 1994 agreement, free trade, and the determination that CEU was a form of international educational services that should not be denied to the people of Hungary. Poland has a similar hostile environment to academics and academic freedom, although with a glimmer of hope following recent elections. The brief also discusses how such open breaches of academic freedom as in Hungary or Poland, in which politicians directly try to exert influence on research institutions and professors, are fortunately rather rare in Germany. However, a confluence of factors perhaps obscures the differences between "academic freedom" and the "freedom of opinion." In Germany, academic freedom includes the search for topics, rigorous methodical investigation, and professional norms to express findings and competent opinions, whereas the free speech is outside of these professional norms. The brief concludes with a discussion of the role of universities and the future of democracy in the context of ensuring a space for free and open debate.

This report, intended primarily for civics reformers considering how best to defend and improve traditional American civics education, surveys a selection of different civics offerings, both the traditional and the radical. Surveyed providers include organizations such as the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, We the People, and Hillsdale College's 1776 Curriculum. The report assesses both how they approach civics education and their ideological content. The report will also judge each organization's effectiveness--although no one knows exactly what is being taught in each classroom in America, much less precisely what students take from their education. Finally, it will provide recommendations about how civics reformers should build upon this existing array of civics curriculum resources to work most effectively to reclaim America's civics education.

The role of public education has never been more important--it is the bedrock of democracy. The failure to provide an equitable public education that enables equal access to opportunity unravels the American dream. Competency-based education holds promise as a uniquely powerful model for fostering equity, but only if equity is an intentional design feature embedded in the culture, structure and pedagogy. Across the country, educators and policymakers are coming to the same conclusion: the structure of the traditional system is a barrier to equity. The premise of competency education is that the culture, structure and pedagogy of the traditional education system, having been designed to sort students, must be and can be replaced with culture, structure and pedagogy that are designed to ensure every student can succeed. Still, the question remains: How should equity be thought of in a personalized, competency-based system to ensure that every student is indeed successful? This paper seeks to explore the potential pitfalls and strategies to ensure a more equitable education system. The driving questions include: (1) How should equity be defined to be meaningful in a personalized, competency-based system?; (2) Why does the traditional education system need to change and how will competency-based systems offer more equitable learning environments?; (3) What principles or elements need to be in place to ensure that competency-based education fulfills its promise to offer a more equitable education system?; and (4) How can educators work together as a field to ensure that competency-based systems take full advantage of what is known about equity strategies to benefit all students, especially those who have been historically underserved? This paper begins with a vision and definition of educational equity. It then explains how the traditional system was designed to promote inequitable outcomes and how competency-based education differs from the traditional system. In section III, the authors introduce an equity framework for personalized, competency-based education. The authors include a discussion of each principle, examples of policies and practices that will help to create an equitable environment and examples of red flags of shallow or weak implementation. The last section provides recommendations for future action. A glossary is provided in the appendix to clarify the terms used in the paper.

University of Michigan (U-M) students visit community-based organizations in Detroit on a weekly basis to work on projects aimed at improving the well being of children and their families, such as tutoring youth in after school programs. Their site visits are supplemented by relevant readings, class discussions and written reflections on topics such as developmental psychology, poverty, and education, which connect what they are learning in class to what they experience in the field. U-M students with social identities that have historically experienced conflict and differential status come together to engage in critical self-reflection and purposeful dialogue to better understand each other's point of view and solve problems regarding race relations. Using case studies, U-M students learn about the multiple and often competing viewpoints of stakeholders in land management. They attend a local planning commission meeting and reflect on the economic, scientific, and moral implications of various land use proposals.

President Barack Obama recently announced a proposal to eliminate tuition charges at community colleges so that everyone can easily complete the first two years of a university education. At the same time, the administration is creating new regulations to curb the worst abuses of for-profit universities. This suggests that the country has reached a turning point regarding access to higher education. There is a practical limit to privatization, and the countries that have privatized their higher education systems most aggressively, such is the case of the United States, are now reaching it. One country where the increase in university tuition has reached the limit of what the public will tolerate is Chile, where the most deliberate and comprehensive university privatization experiment in the world was carried out and where the most intense student protests calling for greater access have occurred, bringing this issue to the forefront of the nation's political discourse. Indeed, President Michelle Bachelet has recently promised to make higher education free of charge. This essay examines the recent history of Chilean universities and current debates regarding tuition and inequality that reflect a similar discussion in the US regarding whether higher education is a public or private good, and who should pay for it. A bibliography is included.

As scholarship has become increasingly narrow and disconnected from public life, Kettering research has documented an intense sense of malaise in higher education, what Harry Boyte has called a loss of civic agency. Surprisingly, however, faculty at a few campuses have begun to self-organize to integrate civic work into their teaching and research. This study, by Blase Scarnati and Romand Coles, documents such efforts at Northern Arizona University. Rather than making civic engagement a specific project of one or two faculty, what makes this campus special is that civic engagement has taken hold across the university. Building on research by KerryAnn O'Meara, this working paper shows that civic engagement is not only fulfilling to faculty at an individual level but is starting to impact the civic culture of their institutions.

This study unearths and examines rich models of learning in which multiple institutions collaboratively play a role in promoting civic education. Using historical and ethnographic case study analysis, this paper addresses the research question: What is the role of community in civic education? Specifically, the author examines Hull House and the pioneering social settlement work of Jane Addams at the turn of the 20th century; democratic education for social change put into practice during the civil rights movement by Myles Horton, Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, and others at the Highlander Folk School; and the Neighborhood Learning Community in St. Paul, Minnesota, a network of community institutions, schools, and higher education institutions which applies the lessons from Hull House and Highlander in its efforts to create a neighborhood culture of learning. Short overviews of these cases are given, as well as detailed lessons for the role of community in civic education. The cases in this study present important historical and contemporary models where educators commit to making change over longer periods of time; place a deliberate emphasis on comprehensive, relational, and public education; make learning relevant to people's everyday lives; recognize the creative powers of diversity through public work; utilize the talents and instincts of non-professionals; foster reciprocal relationships; and embrace flexibility and trust in the messiness of democracy. [This paper was produced by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), University of Maryland.]

This paper explores the conceptual underpinnings of the routine disrespect shown to young children in everyday life in cultures around the world. General Comment 7 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child urges that the youngest children should be respected as persons in their own right, within an environment of reliable and affectionate relationships based on respect and understanding. This paper examines two case studies, from Germany and Israel, to show what such environments look like on the ground. A bibliography is included. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

As information and communication technologies bring people, places, and events from around the world to desktops, telephones, and televisions, the economic, social, and cultural issues of the globe are becoming increasingly, unavoidably, our own (McLuhan, 1964). Diversity is thus a broader and more complex concept than ever before (Ladson-Billings, 2001a), and preparing young people for citizenship in such an interconnected world necessarily means helping them develop the ability to understand complex cultural issues from multiple perspectives. Multiculturalism is an essential tool for democratic citizenship in an interconnected world. This is not a new idea, of course. Over a century ago, the Pragmatists--including perhaps the best-known Pragmatist in the field of education, John Dewey--saw the essence of democracy in the idea that there is no one truth. Personal beliefs--however deeply felt--were but one possible perspective among many, and as Menand (2001) explains, the central political tenet of Pragmatism was that "the moral justification for our actions comes from the tolerance we have shown to other ways of being in the world" (p. 440). Dewey's Progressive pedagogy, based on his Pragmatic view of truth, emphasized learning as a process linking personal interest with activities meaningful in the world outside of school, and thus might be a likely candidate for the development of a multicultural education for the digital age. In this paper the author argues that this is both true, and untrue. (Contains 3 figures and 6 footnotes.)

At a time when the ongoing effort to reform public education in the United States is strongly influenced by requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), policymakers and education leaders at all levels are focused on improving student achievement in math and reading. Emphasis on these two areas, however, is generating concern among many educators, policymakers and public education advocates that public education's historical function of training young people for democratic citizenship is being pushed aside. No one disputes that public education must provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to establish careers and participate in today's economy, but many people feel also that schools still must teach the skills and values needed to participate in community life and in local, state and national politics. During 2003, the Education Commission of the States' National Center for Learning and Citizenship (NCLC) invited 22 school districts across the country to complete surveys on their efforts to teach citizenship as part of a larger project examining the "line of sight" between state policy and school practice. School districts represent a key leverage point in education policy because of their ability to mediate and interpret state and federal policy according to local conditions. Districts were selected for this study based on recommendations from the National Center for Learning and Citizenship's (NCLC) national and state partners and on the center's previous work with some of the districts and their staffs. Fourteen of 22 districts returned surveys. Respondents included small, rural districts, affluent suburban districts and two of the country's largest urban districts. The majority of survey respondents said citizenship education is important, and nearly all of them offer opportunities for students to acquire some of the knowledge and skills that effective citizens need through civics courses. When asked about the specific knowledge, skills and dispositions of citizenship, however, nearly all respondents described opportunities for students to obtain at least some civic competencies outside these courses. Citizenship education is supported through state standards and local school board missions, with a number of districts also either requiring or expressing official support for the use of service-learning. These official policies are supported in a number of districts by local leaders' belief that civic engagement and involvement in the community are important qualifications for teachers and other education staff, by systems for shared decision-making among school and district staff, and by programs and unofficial opportunities for students to participate in district and school decision-making. While the small number of districts included cannot represent the array of approaches to citizenship education in the roughly 15,000 U.S. school districts, the findings do provide useful information for district and state leaders seeking to support schools in preparing young people to participate in their communities and in the American democratic system of governance. [Support for this paper was provided by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).]

Over the past decade, public attention on the importance of the civic development and education of youth has grown. To address these concerns, the East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) Charter School opened in 1996 with the explicit mission to prepare and engage students grades K through 12 as caring citizens who are capable and motivated to fully participate in our democracy. While content standards and assessments readily exist to articulate the academic and artistic development of students, youth civic development, especially at the elementary level, has been under-conceptualized. What is needed is a more robust, comprehensive developmental framework for citizenship education that begins with younger ages and addresses civic skills and dispositions to the same degree as civic knowledge. The product from this project is a set of tested, reliable measures of civic knowledge, civic thinking skills, civic participation skills and civic dispositions that are referenced to recent efforts to provide frameworks of competencies in civic education. Two sets of instruments were developed using a comprehensive conceptual framework for civic indicators at the elementary level. The measures include a student survey of student civic knowledge, skills and attitudes that relate to dispositions, which is the focus of this report; a set of corresponding grade level observation checklists of student skills and behaviors was also developed. Starting at a young age to foster developmental foundations for civic engagement includes a democratic orientation to others and identification with them as fellow members of a community and body politic. This focus is not only developmentally appropriate but also consistent with the goals of many elementary schools to foster prosocial skills and behaviors. In addition, there is a need for greater attention to age-appropriate, instrument identification and development for elementary aged students to document student civic development by focusing on what they can do, an important and often overlooked facet of K-12 civic education research and practice. Addressing this need will also assist other public elementary schools interested in recapturing their civic mission and in creating a K-12 developmental framework for civic development. Appended are: (1) Student Survey Used in National Pilot; (2) Student Observation Checklists for Grades K/1, 2/3 and 4/5; (3) Pearson Correlations between Scales; (4) Tests of Significance for Findings by Gender; (5) Tests of Significance for Findings by White and Non-White Subpopulations; and (6) Descriptive Statistics of Full National Sample. (Contains 3 figures.) [This Working Paper was produced by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). For CIRCLE Working Paper 46, see ED494037.]

In this working paper, the authors review the literature on college students' political attitudes and behaviors. It is hoped that this review will help to refine research questions and ultimately lead to a larger follow-up research study on college student political engagement. The literature review was based on the following three questions: (1) How do college students understand, define, and view politics, their political engagement, and the work of democracy? (2) Are college students politically engaged? How do college students practice politics? (3) How can institutions of higher education help foster greater political participation among college students? Several emerging and often overlapping trends came out of the review. The narrative of the authors' review might be described in the following way: There have been several general studies on college students as a demographic group with data on some aspects of their political knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, and practices. Much of the research indicates that college students today are cynical about politics and apathetic when it comes to political participation. However, after years of decline, there has been a recent increase in voting, trust in government, and other forms of political participation among college students in the past few years. There has also been a "scissor effect": years of decline in political participation have coincided with a surge in volunteering and involvement in community. There are various interpretations for the rise in community service and its implications for democracy, with many contending that there is no connection between community service and political participation; community service, it seems, may simply be an "alternative to politics." At the same time, there is a strand of literature arguing that there is a need for an alternative politics led by young people, and there seems to be an emergence of this "politics that is not called politics" on college campuses. Finally, there is widespread agreement in the literature about the great political potential of this generation of college students; and that colleges and universities need to do more to educate the next generation for democracy and provide more opportunities for political participation. This review of the literature also makes clear that while much research has been done on college student political engagement in the past decade, there are many interesting and important areas for future inquiry. Ultimately, an updated understanding of the current generation of college students' views on politics requires more than a literature review; thus, the authors believe that updated research with college students could be timely, contributing an important element to the efforts for democratic revitalization: the voices of the youngest generation. [This Working Paper was produced by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). For CIRCLE Working Paper 45, see ED491132.]

India demonstrates many features characteristic of private higher education in much of the world. Among these features are proportional size, with roughly 30 percent of total enrollment, and fast growth. Also rather typical is finance, which comes almost exclusively from non-government sources, principally tuition, while public higher education is mostly though decreasingly funded by government. Related to rapid growth and finance is the private sector's preponderance of commercial over academically strong institutions, bringing criticisms about quality and even fraud, including as many legally nonprofit institutions appear to be for-profit in reality. There are also religious and semi-elite private institutions but the clear majority of private enrollments lie in the non-elite and demand-absorbing sub-sector. Unsurprisingly, then, the extent and form of regulation is vigorously debated. All this is common internationally. On the other hand, though less powerfully, Indian private higher education also stands out for a number of relatively unusual configurations. Some are functions of the country's huge size. Its private sector nearly rivals that of the United States as the world's largest in absolute enrollment. Yet India's overall higher education system remains notably small in cohort enrollment--which suggests large latitude for further growth in the system overall and for the private share in particular. Another set of relatively unusual configurations relates to the political system. The world's greatest private growth is occurring in developing countries, most of which are non-democratic or problematically democratic. India is remarkably democratic. Indeed it is remarkably decentralized in its democracy, with a large role for individual states, Congress, and even the courts, and with vigorous debate among political parties. Debate over private higher education is particularly intense as deeply held socialist and state-oriented beliefs clash with the overall political-economic trend of privatization. (Contains 27 notes.) [This working paper is revised from "Commonality and Distinctiveness: Indian Private Higher Education in International Perspective," in eds. Asha Gupta, Daniel C. Levy, K.B. Powar, Private Higher Education: Global Trends and Indian Perspectives.]

This report proposes a detailed plan that positions digital and media literacy as an essential life skill and outlines steps that policymakers, educators, and community advocates can take to help Americans thrive in the digital age. It offers a plan of action for how to bring digital and media literacy education into formal and informal settings through a community education movement. The plan of action includes 10 recommendations for local, regional, state and national initiatives aligned with the themes of community action, teacher education, research and assessment, parent outreach, national visibility and stakeholder engagement. These action steps do more than bring digital and media literacy into the public eye. Each step provides specific concrete programs and services to meet the diverse needs of our nation's citizens, young and old, and build the capacity for digital and media literacy to thrive as a community education movement. Appended are: (1) Portraits of Success; (2) About the Author; and (3) About the Communications and Society Program. (Contains 4 figures, references and a bibliography.)

In September 2003, Hudson High School in Hudson, Massachusetts launched two new civic development efforts--clustering and schoolwide governance--and moved into a new building designed to facilitate them. Clustering is designed to achieve a sense of community within a large school by creating small communities of 100 to 150 students. To create common bonds that tie each group together, clusters at the grade 10-12 level are organized around four areas of student interest: communications, media, and the arts; science, health, recreation, and the environment; business, engineering, and technology; and public policy, education, and service. Clusters also form the basic unit of Hudson High's schoolwide governance model, which was derived from the idea of "just communities" within high schools. The belief underpinning schoolwide governance is that students will become more civic minded and engaged if they experience democratic deliberation as part of their school experience. In 2003 the authors began a five-year data collection to assess the progress of the clustering and schoolwide governance intervention. This report describes the implementation of the intervention and presents preliminary findings on the civic development of twelfth graders since the programs were launched. The findings are based on information from four annual twelfth-grade surveys in 2003-2006 and twelfth-grade focus groups conducted in 2006. The questionnaire is appended. (Contains 9 tables and 6 figures.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).]

Care and education for young children is often understood primarily as a commodity to be provided in the marketplace, or as a kind of factory to produce human capital. But institutions for children and young people can also serve a very different role. They can be understood as forums for democratic political practice. This is a choice that we, as citizens, can make. This paper applies the idea of democracy to a wide range of institutions providing education and care for young children. Observing that democracy is in a sickly state in neo-liberal societies , the author discusses the importance of democratic participation as a right of citizenship, a bulwark against oppression and injustice, and a means for fostering diversity in society. He then looks at what it means to have democracy in early childhood settings, distinguishing between a democratic ethos that values the sharing of opinions and perspectives, and democracy in the form of management structures that involve elected representatives of parents and educators. He looks at what we can learn from practices around Europe, especially in the Nordic countries, and at what conditions are necessary to foster the establishment of democratic participation in early childhood settings. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

Efforts to improve civic education face a conundrum. On the one hand, students report that they are more likely to learn about democracy and citizenship through reading textbooks than through any other activity and according to the National Education Association, reading is the gateway to learning in all content areas. However, reviews of textbook materials repeatedly find them to be turgid, poorly organized, and uninteresting, features unlikely to enhance learning or motivation. Compounding the problem, 69 percent of eighth graders scored below Proficient on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress in Reading, failing to demonstrate a level of literacy necessary to comprehend and learn from reading challenging subject matter. Poorly designed textbook materials would be particularly ineffective for the students lacking strong literacy skills. This paper reports a study in which tenth graders who had parental permission were randomly assigned to read one of three types of passages about direct and representative democracy. After reading, all students responded to the same tasks to measure their understanding and their motivation to engage in civic-related activities. Students were selected from regular classes in high schools, from a West Coast state and from a state in the Mid-Atlantic region. Data was collected on two sides of the country because the authors believe that research conducted in one location is frequently too widely generalized. To communicate with one another and the larger public, political scientists design their texts to inform (presenting lots of facts), to argue (taking a stance on the optimal relationship), and to explain (presenting many examples and analyzing them according to democratic principles). The authors note that most textbook material is designed to inform. The study aimed to compare the effect on student understanding of texts designed to argue and explain as well and found that there were few differences in outcomes among the three texts. The authors concluded that students were able to take advantage of the features in all three designs and found them to be comprehensible, to enhance their understanding, and to spark their interest in engaging in civic activities. (Contains 9 endnotes and 3 figures.) [This document was produced by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).]

In July 1995, the University of California's Board of Regents voted to ban consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions and employment--a ban that was extended to all state agencies when the voters of California approved Proposition 209 in November 1996. This paper discusses the national controversy over affirmative action and analyzes the experience of the University of California as a case study in how an elite public university responded to the end of nearly three decades of affirmative action. It concludes that profound social and demographic change in American society since the 1960s, especially the growth of income inequality, requires a rethinking of affirmative action, and of how the goal of diversity can be achieved in elite public universities. (Contains 23 notes.)

This progress report provides evidence for persistent influence of Kids Voting USA (KVUSA), an interactive civic curriculum taught during election campaigns. The entire research project consists of multiple waves of student and parent interviews, covering a three-year period. Respondents were recruited from families in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida. The students were juniors and seniors when first interviewed in the aftermath of the 2002 election. The survey results from that year, described in an earlier report, are used as a baseline indication of the immediate influence of KVUSA. Those results provided substantial evidence for the initial effects of Kids Voting on students, on parents, and on family norms for political competence. The question now is whether this optimistic impression is warranted once one looks at the long-term effects. In other words, did the curriculum exert a lasting influence or was its impact fleeting and ultimately inconsequential in the lives of students and parents? Based on a second wave of interviews, this report describes the extent of Kids Voting effects one year after student participation. The results show a consistent and robust influence of Kids Voting after the passage of 12 months despite controlling for demographics such as family socioeconomic status and parent history of voting. In 25 tests of curriculum influence, Kids Voting USA netted 21 effects in the areas of news media use, discussion, cognition, opinion formation, and civic participation. An appendix presents: Item Wording & Coding for Measures. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, and 2 endnotes.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).]

At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, ethnic Latvians were only 52 percent of the total population of Latvia, and official use of the Latvian language had greatly diminished while Russian had become the dominant language. It took 15 years to develop the legal instruments necessary for stabilizing the official status of the Latvian language while complying with internationally accepted human rights norms. The law in its current form is clear and functional, although there are certain difficulties in implementation. Not all of those who are required to know Latvian at the necessary level are in compliance. This report presents information on: (1) "Education Law"; (2) "Law on Citizenship"; and (3) "Incorporating the Concept of Integration into the State Administration System." The paper notes that although the law helps establish the official position on language, in a democratic society, all people can converse in private as they wish. There is no threat from the Latvian government regarding the assimilation or "Latvianization" of ethnic minorities. (SM)

"Can You Hear Me? The Right of Young Children to Participate in Decisions Affecting Them" emphasises that participation enhances children's self-esteem and confidence, promotes their overall capacities, produces better outcomes, strengthens understanding of and commitment to democratic processes and protects children more effectively. Participation provides the opportunity for developing a sense of autonomy, independence, heightened social competence and resilience. The benefits are therefore significant, and adults with both direct and indirect responsibility for children need to acquire a greater humility in recognising that they have a great deal to learn from children. But the case for listening to young children goes beyond the beneficial outcomes. It is also a matter of social injustice and human rights. All people, however young, are entitled to be participants in their own lives, to influence what happens to them, to be involved in creating their own environments, to exercise choices and to have their views respected and valued. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Civic education is essential for sustaining constitutional democracy in the United States, a country with the world's oldest constitutional democracy with political institutions whose philosophical foundations serve as a model for aspiring peoples around the world. This task force paper involves a nation-wide discussion of civic education, what its principal goals should be, and how civic education can be revitalized. The paper answers the following questions: "What is civic education and what should its principal goals be?"; "What evidence is there of the need to improve civic education?"; "What is the relationship of civic education and character education?"; What are the characteristics of successful programs in civic education?"; and "How can civic education be revitalized?" (Contains 25 references.) (CB)