New CIRCLE Research Reveals Higher Income School Districts Offer More Opportunities to Learn about Politics and Citizenship

February 2008

Although half of young Americans ages 18-29 have never enrolled in college, 79 percent of the young voters on Super Tuesday attended college, according to new CIRCLE research. This gap was also evident in youth turnout rates: one in four eligible young voters with college experience voted on Super Tuesday, compared with one in 14 eligible young voters with no college experience. Click to download the research:

• Fact sheet on the youth vote in the 2008 Super Tuesday States (with detailed demographic data)
• Press release on the deep divide in the primary youth vote
• Listen to the NPR Story “Non-College Kids Outsiders to Rising ‘Youth Vote.” with CIRCLE director Peter Levine

Instead of making things more equal, school systems exacerbate this political inequality by providing more opportunities to learn about politics to higher income students, white students, and academically successful students, according to a new CIRCLE study written by Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh of the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) at Mills College. Students in higher-income school districts are up to twice as likely as those from average-income districts to learn how laws are made and how Congress works, for example. They are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to report having political debates and panel discussions. Click to download the research:

• CIRCLE Working Paper 59: “Democracy for Some: The Civic Opportunity Gap in High School”