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Kids Activities Blog
K-12 Dive
$1.1M civics framework launches with support from 6 former ed secretaries
Shawna De La Rosa
March 3, 2021
Dive Brief:
Educating for American Democracy on Tuesday announced the launch of The
Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy, a cross-ideological
framework that aims to enhance K-12 civics and history education to
reflect the country’s diverse student population.
The project is the work of 300 scholars, educators and practitioners
led by a team from iCivics, Harvard University, Tufts University and
Arizona State University, and funded with $1.1 million from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of
Education.
The plan urges districts to develop civics learning plans that include
goals marking progress toward civic excellence and says states should
require districts to develop civic learning plans, adopt social studies
standards and reflect EAD guidance. It also recommends the federal
government build a national data infrastructure for teaching history
and civics and revise the National Assessment of Educational Progress
framework for civics and history.
Dive Insight:
Years of increasingly divisive political discourse culminated in a
particularly contentious election season, capped by the Jan. 6
insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Reflecting on the role of education in bridging those divides and
reuniting the nation, six former U.S. secretaries of education from the
administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush and Barack Obama penned a joint op-ed for The Wall Street Journal
celebrating the announcement of EAD's Roadmap project and warning of a
dire need to enhance civics curriculum. They also urged education
leaders to incorporate uncomfortable parts of the nation’s history into
curricula like slavery, segregation, racism, indigenous removals and
Japanese-American internments during World War II.
Lagging focus on civics education has troubled a number of key
officials and public figures for several years. In 2019, for example,
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts mentioned the lack of
civics education in his year-end report and referred to the “classroom
ready” materials available through the Supreme Court's website.
Last summer, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences also recommended
investing in K-12 civics education. Its report, "Our Common Purpose:
Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century," recommends
embedding civics education in curricula through projects, service
learning, student government and debate training.
An Annenberg Public Policy Center study found only 26% of Americans can
name all three branches of government, while public trust in government
was only at 18%. Just 23% of 8th-graders performed at-or-above
proficiency in civics on the National Assessment of Educational
Progress that year.
Read this and other stories at K-12 Dive
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