(Chicago) On April 27, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that will require school districts to assess their students’ knowledge of civics by giving them assignments that are “student-influenced” and that involve an “inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.” These assignments will be used (once in grades 4-8 and a second time in grades 9-12) in lieu of written tests to find out whether Tennessee’s students can “demonstrate understanding and relevance of public policy, the structure of federal, state and local governments and both the Tennessee and the Untied States constitutions.”

The bill doesn’t (and shouldn’t) specify what the assignments will be like, but I hope that many Tennessee students will choose issues of concern to them in their own communities, investigate those issues using rigorous research, and develop plans for improving their communities.

Testing and accountability generally pose a dilemma for civic education. If we don’t test civic knowledge and skills, they become afterthoughts in education, especially in schools where lots of kids are at risk of failing the subjects that are tested. But if we impose a new test, then (1) it becomes yet another way for students to fail, and (2) it encourages teachers to focus on the basic facts of government that are likely to be tested, even though there’s little evidence that learning these facts is motivating or that kids retain them later.

Project-based assessments are much more promising. Kids will have to do something with their civic knowledge, something that seems important to them. At a minimum, Tennessee’s bill is a very worthy experiment. The questions will be: What do kids learn? What kinds of instruction become common? And how reliable is the assessment?

If the experiment works out really well, then civics could cease to be an afterthought and could instead become an excellent means to assess general student performance. After all, if you can complete a complex project involving social issues and governance, you must have good academic skills.

Credit apparently belongs to the indefatigable Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who met with two leading state legislators (Sen. Mark Norris and Rep. Kevin Brooks) earlier this year to encourage them to do something for civics. With the help of Janis Keyser, Executive Director of the Tennessee Center for Civic Learning & Engagement, the legislators wrote a really foresighted bill that passed in less than three months.

I spent an interesting day in DC on Wednesday, visiting a Department of Education official, a White House staffer, and two Senate staffers to talk about civic education in schools and (more broadly) about how to engage young people constructively in their communities. An ideal legislative vehicle would be the Sandra Day O’Connor Civic Learning Act of 2011, H.R.3464, which you should ask your Representative to support. But I wasn’t in the House, so my focus was broader than that bill. I was guided all day by very able lobbyists from Lewis-Burke.

Although I am far from a pro at this, it wasn’t my first experience. In fact, I was a registered federal lobbyist for Common Cause from 1991-3. As in the past, I was struck that federal staffers–and lobbyists who work for public interest causes–are remarkable people. Compared, for example, to run-of-the-mill academics, they master incredibly broad areas. I talked to Senate staffers on the HELP Committee: that’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. They are ready to talk knowledgeably and thoughtfully about the provisions in the education bill that relate to social studies (a few pages, costing basically no money), even though they also have to cover everything from AIDS research to Social Security. A big part of their secret is extremely hard work–and they don’t waste any time on self-promotion.

The phrase “action civics” was coined last year by a group of people and organizations that encourage k-12 students to choose, discuss, and study social issues and take collaborative action. I’m a charter member of the National Action Civics Collaborative and wrote about the first Action Civics Conference on HuffPost.

Much to my surprise, on Jan. 10, Education Secretary Arne Duncan explicitly quoted our phrase. “The new generation of civic education initiatives,” he said, “move beyond your ‘grandmother’s civics’ to what has been labeled ‘action civics.'” He cited Mikva Challenge, one of the leaders of the National Action Civics Collaborative, as an exemplary program.

That reference caught the attention of Chester E. Finn, Jr., an often insightful conservative voice on education. In a column entitled “Should Schools Turn Children into Activists? And Should Uncle Sam Help?,” Finn expresses some concerns about “action civics.”

He begins with the premise that “pretty much everybody favors better ‘civics education,” adding that everyone “is alarmed that barely a quarter of U.S. school kids were at or above the ‘proficient’ level on the 2010 NAEP assessment of civics.”

I share Finn’s concerns about civic knowledge, but I would note that the NAEP is designed to yield scores in the ballpark of the ones we get. The specifications for the test require, for instance, that a certain proportion of the items be “advanced,” meaning that only 5% of students will be expected to answer them correctly. So the idea that “barely a quarter of students” scored at proficient is mainly an artifact of the test specifications. The greatest value of the NAEP is for tracking trends over time and comparing groups of students. Overall, the trends in the NAEP civics have been remarkably flat, and I would describe the test as a hard one. But, just like Finn, I would like to see kids do better.

Finn proceeds to describe the key debate in the field pretty accurately and fairly:

It is, indeed, a modern platitude that “we must do something to improve Americans’ knowledge of civics and government.”

But there is a problem in civics education, a sort of dividing line, about which there is far less agreement across society. On one side, we find an emphasis on infusing kids with basic knowledge about government, an understanding of the merits (as well as the shortcomings) of American democracy, and a sense of what can still be called patriotism: the belief that this country and its values need to be defended. …

On the other side, we find much greater emphasis on civic participation and activism, on voluntarism and “service learning,” and on what is often termed “collective decision making” (or problem solving) and “democratic engagement,” which often boils down into the communitarian view that issues facing society are best dealt with through group action, by people joining hands and working together rather than through the political process.

That description seems about right. I’m on the “democratic engagement” side, but I am afraid I have to agree that it often degenerates into apolitical and unintellectual service. I’d only add that the “communitarian view” is itself controversial among people who support something like “action civics.” If, for you, the real goal is free and robust debate about social issues, or critical use of the mass media, or political activism (important to Mikva), or “public work,” then you may not like to be called a communitarian.

If you read Finn carefully, you’ll notice that he sees some value in the democratic engagement side. (E.g., “I will admit, after watching the antics of Congress, many state legislatures, and the current GOP presidential candidates, that American society would benefit from more ‘working together’ than our elected officials have displayed of late.”) His main rhetorical strategy in arguing for the “basic knowledge” side of the debate is to raise questions about phrases found in a recent report to which I am a signatory. For instance, he asks:

• Values examined by whom? What sort of “action”?
• What exactly are “generative civic partnerships” and who in particular is supposed to be “empowered” to do what?

Those are fair questions. For one thing, they point to actual linguistic vagueness in some of our documents. For another, Finn has a right to be worried lest people whose political views he doesn’t share start requiring kids to examine his values and take action against his policies.

If I had to frame a full response, here would be some of my leading points:

1. The frightening declines (i.e., changes over time) do not involve young people’s political knowledge, but rather their actual experience participating in voluntary groups and deliberating with others who hold different views. Test scores in civics are flat; the number of credits earned in social studies has risen; but membership in groups, attendance at meetings, and discussion of issues have fallen badly.
2. That first point should alarm conservatives at least as much as liberals, because it is evidence of a shrinking civil society and a weakening voluntary sector.
3. Social studies teachers are not a bunch of liberals intent on turning kids into Saul Alinsky; they are very mainstream and perhaps a bit conservative about both politics and pedagogy.
4. Despite segregation by race, class, and ideology, all classrooms contain students who hold diverse political views. Good pedagogy requires evoking their diverse views and getting them to disagree well (with evidence and civility).
5. My own core commitment is to open-ended politics. I don’t believe neutrality is possible or that the pursuit of neutrality is desirable. Any teaching does and should impart values. But you can create discussions and decision-making processes that are outside your control, that go where the group takes them. Open-ended interactions are scarce at a time when politics is manipulative and strategic, education is closely constrained, and people have segregated themselves into ideological silos. For me, creating space for open-ended politics is the heart of “action civics.”