1. "Voice in the Classroom:How an Open Classroom Environment Facilitates Adolescents' Civic Development"
Principal Investigator: David E. Campbell, Notre Dame University

2. Developing Indicators and Measures of Civic Outcomes for Elementary School Students
Principal Investigators: Bernadette Chi of the East Bay Conservation Corps, JoAnn Jastrzab of Abt Associates Inc., and Alan Melchoir of the Center for Youth and Communities at the Heller School , Brandeis University.

3."An Empirical Assessment of the Production of Civic Skills"
Principal Investigator: Melissa Comber, University of Maryland, College Park, Doctoral Candidate

4. "Survey of Civic Learning Opportunities for Out-of-School Youth in the Adult Education and Literacy System"
Principal Investigators: Melanie Daniels and Marilyn Gillespie of SRI International

5 ."Are there Civic Returns to Education?"
Principal Investigator: Thomas S. Dee, Assistant Professor,
Department of Economics, Swarthmore College

6. "The Effects of Catholic School on Civic Participation"
Principal Investigator:Thomas S. Dee, Assistant Professor,
Department of Economics, Swarthmore College

7. "The Civic Bonding of School and Family: How Kids Voting Students Enliven the Domestic Sphere"
Principal Investigator: Michael McDevitt, University of Colorado

8. "The Relationship between Secondary Education and Civic Development: Results from Two Field Experiments with Inner City Minorities"
Principal Investigator: John Anthony Phillips, Yale University, Doctoral Candidate

9. "Research to Assess Citizenship Education at the National, District and School Level"
Principal Investigators: Terry Pickeral and Susan Vermeer, Education Commission of the States

10. "Politics: The Missing Link of Responsible Civic Education" Principal Investigators: Kenneth S. Stroupe, Jr. and Larry J. Sabato

See also CIRCLE Working Paper 22: Education for Deliberative Democracy: The Long-term Influence of Kids Voting USA

CIRCLE Working Paper 28: Voice in the Classroom:How an Open Classroom Environment Facilitates Adolescents' Civic Development
David E. Campbell

Project Summary
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This study looked at whether open classroom environments facilitate adolescents’ civic development. The report suggests that the amount of time students spend in social studies classes does indeed correlate with their civic knowledge and their predictions for future civic engagement. However, the degree to which political and social issues are discussed openly and respectfully has a greater impact
on civic proficiency than the frequency of social studies class.

In addition, it seems that high school students who attend racially diverse schools are less likely to report open classrooms; it appears that discussions of diverse or controversial opinions are more likely to be encouraged in racially homogenous classrooms. Campbell bases his analysis on data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement or IEA Civic Education Study (CES).

CIRCLE Working Paper 47: Developing Indicators and Measures of Civic Outcomes for Elementary School Students
by Bernadette Chi, JoAnn Jastrzab, and Alan Melchoir

Project Summary
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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.

An Empirical Assessment of the Production of Civic Skills
Melissa Comber, University of Maryland, College Park, Doctoral Candidate

Civic skills enable citizen participation in the democratic process. Civic skills include the abilities to communicate with elected officials, organize for policy influence, understand and participate in one's polity, and think critically about civic and political life. Citizens without civic skills may not be capable of effective political participation. Civics education may teach civic skills, potentially bridging this gap. This study aimed to determine whether the correlation, if any, between civic skills and civic education is different for minorities aged fourteen to twenty-five. This study used two datasets- the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education study and the Civic and Political Health of the Nation: A Generational Portrait. Whites, African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants report receiving different levels of civics education. In terms of civic skill development, civics education has different effects on minority groups than whites.

This grant funded a Dr. Comber's dissertation. The text of the dissertation is available upon request.

CIRCLE Working Paper 34: Survey of Civic Learning Opportunities for Out-of-School Youth in the Adult Education and Literacy System
Melanie Daniels and Marilyn Gillespie of SRI International

Project Summary
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Today more than 1 million young people (ages 16 to 24) enroll in adult literacy programs each year. A new CIRCLE Working Paper by Melanie Daniels and Marilyn Gillespie of SRI International looks into the type of civic education young people receive through adult literacy programs. The paper finds that much like the K-12 education system, the adult literacy system faces several barriers in trying to implement civic education. First, much of the funding available is tied to performance on standardized tests and at this time civics is not part of the testing and funding system. With limited resources, teachers are often forced to teach what is tested. Second, there is a need for professional development activities that allow teachers to learn more about how to teach civics-related knowledge and skills to youth.

The research is based on an online survey of over 400 programs in 46 states as well as a literature review on the adult literacy system. While the survey is not representative of the entire adult literacy system, it does provide some interesting information about the type of civic education that students receive. The report includes recommendations for researchers, policy makers and practitioners on ways to enhance civic education. Finally the report provides a list of resources for programs interested in providing civic education.

CIRCLE Working Paper 08: Are there Civic Returns to Education?
Thomas S. Dee, Swarthmore College

Project Summary
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The hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education. In CIRCLE Working Paper 08: Are There Civic Returns to Education? , Dee presents evidence on whether these externalities exist. He assesses and implements two strategies for identifying the effects of educational attainment. One is based on the availability of junior and community colleges; the other, on changes in teen exposure to child labor laws. The results suggest that educational attainment has large and statistically significant effects on subsequent voter participation and support for free speech. He also finds that additional schooling appears to increase the quality of civic knowledge as measured by the frequency of newspaper readership.

CIRCLE Working Paper 09: The Effects of Catholic School on Civic Participation
Thomas S. Dee, Swarthmore College

Project Summary
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The putatively negative effects of private schooling on civic engagement provide one of the most fundamental motivations for public schooling. In CIRCLE Working Paper 09: The Effects of Catholic School on Civic Participation, Dee examines the comparative effects of Catholic and public high schools on adult voter participation and volunteering. He finds that students who attended Catholic high schools are actually more likely to vote, though not volunteer, as adults. He also finds that these effects are robust to conditioning on a rich set of background traits. Estimates based on conventional instrumental variables for attending Catholic schools also generate similar results. However, he presents evidence that the biases due to violations of exclusion restrictions are often quite large. Therefore, the possibility that the positive, partial correlations between Catholic schooling and adult voter turnout reflect selection biases cannot be dismissed.

CIRCLE Working Paper 07: The Civic Bonding of School and Family
Michael McDevitt, University of Colorado

Project Summary
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Adding to a growing list of empirical evidence, new research on Kids Voting USA—an interactive civics curriculum taught during election campaigns in 39 states—indicates that the program has positive effects on the civic and political growth of both students and their parents. “CIRCLE Working Paper 07: The Civic Bonding of School and Family” provides a comprehensive explanation of just how this program brings together two powerful institutions—schools and families—to address generational declines in political engagement.

According to the paper author, Dr. Michael McDevitt of the University of Colorado, “We felt it was important to focus our research on the under-examined but powerful linkage between school and family. The goal of the study was to develop a better understanding of how Kids Voting USA creates a civic bonding of school and family, in which students influence parents to pay more attention to politics, and parents encourage students to participate more actively in civic activities at school.” The paper includes findings from the first wave of a panel study in which over 500 high school students and their parents, representing over 150 schools, were surveyed in Maricopa County, AZ; El Paso County, CO; and Broward/Palm Beach Counties, FL. Focus group interviews were also held with students to supplement the survey data.

WHAT WORKS: ACTIVITIES THAT PROMOTE CIVIC GROWTH

Students in Kids Voting learn about civics by participating in a variety of activities such as taking sides in classroom debates, analyzing political cartoons, and even working at polling sites. One of the main purposes of this research was to determine which of these activities had the greatest influence on the civic growth of students.

Two curriculum activities in particular—frequent classroom discussion about election issues and asking others to vote—stood out as the most influential with respect to students’ media use, cognition, discussion skills, political opinions, and civic behaviors and intentions. For example, discussing election issues gave students the opportunity to receive real-time feedback in response to their opinions on a variety of issues.

CLOSING GAPS ALONG ETHNIC LINES: THE
CONTENT MAY MATTER

In addition to pinpointing the effects of different curriculum components,
the study is the first to document systematic evidence
that the Kids Voting program promotes equality of civic development
among students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Traditionally, there have been substantial gaps between
non-white and white students in many indicators of civic and
political involvement, with white students scoring at higher levels.
However, in El Paso County, CO Latino students (along with adolescents from other minority groups) scored the same as non-
Latino white students on numerous indicators of civic involvement, including newspaper use, knowledge, strength of partisan opinions, and frequency of discussion. Here, the Kids Voting students followed the narrow defeat of Amendment 31—an initiative which would have curtailed bilingual education in Colorado. The gap-closing may have occurred as a result of Latino students applying what they learned through the curriculum to an issue that had a very direct and personal effect on their lives.

CREATING NEW FAMILY HABITS

While Kids Voting directly affected student behavior, at the same
time it helped to alter family behavior. For example, according to
McDevitt, “Families with students participating in the program
increased the frequency with which family members encouraged
each other to use news media; strengthened the perception of family
members that they can carry on political conversations; and promoted
an environment in which parents and students held strong
opinions on political issues.” The paper shows that the interactive curriculum causes a “boomerang influence,” in which students initiate
conversations with their parents about political issues, which in
turn stimulates parent conversations about such issues and leads to
more parental interest in their children’s civic education.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CIVICS INSTRUCTION

In light of these findings, the authors offer the following recommendations for civic education.

1. School administrators and parents should encourage teachers
to allow for political discussion and debate, even if the
topics are contentious. Frequently in the focus groups, students
stressed the need for enthusiastic teachers who engage
students in the learning process with interactive approaches.

2. Schools should engage students and families through issues
that directly and personally affect them. While many of these
students were already interested in politics, they suggested
that their peers would become more involved when issues that
were highly relevant to them were emphasized at school.
Some of these topics include higher education funding, drinking
age, voting age, and school policies. In addition, many students
explained that their use of media was partially determined
by whether news sources presented information of
direct interest to teens.

3. Teachers should implement activities such as student campaigns
that mobilize adults to vote. Along with classroom discussion,
service-learning activities and the act of encouraging
others to vote are the types of activities that empower students
and heighten their sense of political efficacy.

CIRCLE Working Paper 14: The Relationship between Secondary Education and Civic Development: Results from Two Field Experiments with Inner City Minorities

John Anthony Phillips, Yale University, Doctoral Candidate

Project Summary
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This study uses two field experiments with high school students to test whether practical civics lessons and participation in student government and community service actually affect civic knowledge, attitudes and behavior. In addition, these experiments are conducted in areas that arguably have the greatest need for civic engagement: America's blighted inner-cities.

Using two experiments, Phillips found the effects of local service learning to be small and elusive. In one experiment, he measures whether students who engage in clubs have different levels of civic knowledge and attitudes. Participation had little impact on civic knowledge and attitudes. Results suggest that 5 more attendances in school clubs result in one more question answered correctly on a 9-item civics exam and a half-point increase in political understanding (measure on a 4-point scale).

In another experiment, he found that students who participate in a 1-hour seminar on voting procedures and neighborhood activism showed no statistically significant relationship between the lessons from the seminar and subsequent changes in civic knowledge, attitudes, or behavior.

Other findings include...
- With regard to different types of civic knowledge, local politics is just as appealing to students in the inner city as it is to suburban and rural students.
- Inner city juniors and seniors are less tolerant of divergent opinions and less confident in their civic skills (i.e. public speaking, letter-writing) than students nationwide.

Research to Assess Citizenship Education at the National, District and School Level
Terry Pickeral and Susan Vermeer, Education Commission of the States

Project Summary
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A series of products by the Education Commission of the States’
National Center for Learning and Citizenship (ECS/NCLC) reveals
that wide variation exists in the extent to which state policies
address citizenship education. Forty-one states have laws that call
for the teaching of social studies which may include lessons in
government, civics and/or citizenship. However, only a handful of
states require students to pass a social studies exit exam in order
to graduate from high school. In practice this means that most
students in the United States go through a one-semester course
in government, usually taken during their senior year of high
school, and successful completion of this course is not a graduation
requirement.

ECS has created a 50-state, interactive Web database that gives
users a picture of where and how state policy supports citizenship
education. The database can be accessed by going to
www.ecs.org/nclc. Teachers, administrators, policymakers, and
others interested in civic education can use the database to locate
the most up-to-date information on state policies that support citizenship education in K-12 schools. In addition to the database, an
ECS/NCLC policy brief reviews existing state policies, and lists
resources that policymakers can turn to as they deliberate over
the best solutions for their state. Finally, ECS/NCLC produced
State Note—a summary report—that illustrates state by state how
policies differ.

By clearly showing that states have widely different policies mandating
what students learn about citizenship, ECS/NCLC draws more
attention to the role schools play in helping students acquire the
tools they need to effectively participate in civic life. “The civic mission
of education should be given equal status as the focus on academic
knowledge; this is consistent with the heritage of American
education,” said Terry Pickeral, NCLC Executive Director. “The nation
depends on each generation’s active participation in our democracy,
and schools have a specific obligation to implement and sustain corresponding courses, teaching strategies and activities.”

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION POLICY VARIES WIDELY FROM STATE TO STATE

According to the research, every state has some type of policy on
citizenship education; however the policies vary. For example,
policies regarding whether or not students must demonstrate a
certain level of civic understanding in order to graduate are different
depending on the state. Students hoping to graduate from
high school in Colorado have to complete a one-semester course
in the civil government of the U.S. while students in the District of
Columbia must complete one and a half credits in history plus 100
hours of community service in order to graduate.

Despite the national focus on assessment and accountability in
education, only a few states are taking steps to include civics in
their evaluation systems. The authors found, “assessment and
accountability systems remain a primary focus of state education
reform efforts, but less than half of state systems address civics.”
Only 22 of states’ assessment systems include knowledge of government or civics, while 13 states include performance on
civics/government or social studies assessments within their
accountability systems.

Vast differences arise among states when the age of students
being assessed is considered. For example, beginning as early as
the 4th grade, Missouri students are tested in both social studies
and civics. However, in North Carolina, knowledge of U.S. history
is not tested by the state until high school.

CREATIVE APPROACHES: ENHANCING CITIZENSHIP
EDUCTION ONE STATE AT A TIME

Whether through commissions, increased funding, or innovative
programming, many states are taking the need to enhance civic
education seriously. For example, the North Carolina Civic Education Consortium recently released a “civic index”— the firstever
statewide assessment of civic education and engagement.
Results from the index led state lawmakers to pass legislation
encouraging more classroom discussion of current events and
increased responsibility for student councils in the North Carolina
schools.

Delaware lawmakers are making concerted efforts to ensure their
teachers receive the necessary preparation and training to teach
students effectively about their rights and responsibilities as citizens.
Recently the state authorized $100,000 to fund civics education
for teachers. Similarly, the state of Michigan authorized
$750,000 for the development of the Michigan virtual high school.
Initial plans for the project include developing a rigorous civics
curriculum that teachers could access by going online.

Other states are concentrating on finding innovative ways to
address the decline in the number of young people who vote.
A bill signed by Governor Davis of California would require the
Secretary of State to provide voter registration forms and information
to all high school, community college, and state university
students. In Illinois, recent legislation created a joint voter education
program of the State Board of Elections and the State
Board of Education for K-12 students. The program will allow students
to vote in a simulated election taking place at an actual
polling place during the general election.

As part of this series on policy and citizenship education,
ECS/NCLC will also release a set of surveys and case studies that
examine citizenship education at the district and school levels. To
access them, and to find out what your state is doing to improve
citizenship education, visit www.ecs.org/nclc.

CIRCLE Working Paper 18: Politics: The Missing Link of Responsible Civic Education
by Kenneth S. Stroupe, Jr. and Larry J. Sabato

Project Summary
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This research shows that using experiential methods to teach explicitly about electoral politics has a positive impact on increasing students' political knowledge.

The study used control groups to assess the impact of using different teaching techniques, including mock elections, legislative simulations, and exposure to elected officials. Called Politics: The Missing Link of Responsible Civic Education, it was done by Kenneth S. Stroupe, Jr. and Larry J. Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and sponsored by CIRCLE.

Conducted in 2002 and 2003, the study compared classes that used the UVA Center's National Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI) curriculum and a control group of similar classes that did not. According to the study, "the YLI programs have substantial, positive effects on students' level of political knowledge" and, to a lesser degree, some "positive effects on students' political efficacy, pride in politics, and propensity for future political participation." Findings also suggest that increasing the amount of time students spend participating in YLI mock elections can have a positive impact on students' attitudes and behaviors.

The YLI program includes five major teaching resources: a student mock election, an online simulation of Congress called "e-Congress", an interactive CD-ROM used to simulate a US Senate campaign, a "Democracy Corps" an experiential learning program that provides direct interaction with elected officials, and an online social studies curriculum.