Category Archives: advocating civic education

the drawbacks of thinking about discrete educational programs

I gave a speech this morning (early this morning) to recipients of federal grants for service-learning. People in the audience run programs that meet the criteria of the Learn & Serve America program: they provide a certain amount of community service to each child, connect the service to academic work on the same topic, etc. This is the dominant way that we think about education today: as combinations of programs that can each be defined according to general criteria. Their average impact can then be measured (holding other factors constant), and we can decide to fund, require, reward, or test only the types of programs that we think work. See the What Works Clearinghouse for the quintessence of this approach.

This was also the approach we used in writing The Civic Mission of Schools report (2003), which identified six “promising practices” for civic education: classes on American history and civics; moderated discussion of current issues; extracurricular activities; student voice (i.e., honoring students’ opinions about school policies); simulations of legislation, diplomacy, and courts; and service-learning (i.e., combinations of community service with academic study). Since 2003, the evidence of positive effects from service-learning has increased.

However, as I told this morning’s audience, there are several pitfalls to basing policy on service-learning, or any such “method,” “approach,” or “practice”:

1. Practices that are institutionalized and defined receive the most support, even if they are not the most important. In our field, two of the “promising practices” in civic education get most of the attention: social studies classes and service-learning programs. I think that’s because they have budget lines (albeit too small) and job titles. In contrast, there’s very little organized advocacy in favor of student voice in schools or extracurricular activities, because no one has a powerful self-interest in advocating for them.

2. There may be a risk that schools check off one or two of the promising practices and consider themselves to be meeting their civic missions. There is no research that allows us to say that particular combinations of practices work better than one program or another. But my gut tells me that you need a comprehensive approach. If, for example, you offer a single service-learning project but everything else about the school “teaches” the kids that they are not active and responsible citizens, it’s hard to believe the service-learning course will work. Certainly, the effects of social studies classes and service-learning programs, while statistically significant, are not very large.

3. Such practices have to be done well. We should be concerned with quantity, quality, and equality. Quantity means how many kids get the opportunity. Quality means how good it is. And equality means how evenly is it distributed. There is a tendency for service-learning to degenerate into pretty meaningless exercises and for the high-quality opportunities to reach only the students who are bound for college.

4. Service-learning and other discrete educational programs need to be connected to much broader purposes or they will become ends in themselves. Service-learning can be connected to two ambitious movements:

  • The effort to redefine adolescence as a time of positive opportunity and contribution, not as a time of risk.
  • The effort to reform society by getting young people involved in changing institutions for the better.

    • If we merely offer service-learning because research studies find that it has positive effects on test scores or behavior, it will be stripped of its essential purpose and will degenerate. This is what happened, in my opinion, to the curricular innovations of the Progressive Era.

    civic skills/workplace skills

    America’s Promise has identified five supports that every child needs to develop successfully: caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities to help others. The America’s Promise research team frequently releases interesting studies showing the positive consequences of having these five supports and the unequal degree to which we provide them.

    The latest published report (pdf), entitled “workforce readiness,” identifies several skills that are essential for success in the workplace: decision-making, teamwork and leadership, communication, working with diverse people, computer skills, and money management. The Alliance’s survey data show that most students report few opportunities to develop any of these skills; and outcomes (as assessed by the kids themselves) are unequal. For example, “fewer than half (46%) of the youth surveyed believe that they communicate well with others. African American youth were nearly twice as likely to report poor communication skills as white youth.”

    For those of us who want schools to develop civic skills, these data provide an opening. Surveys cited by the Alliance show that business employers want workers who can communicate, collaborate, and make decisions in diverse groups. If we can harness that demand to persuade schools to teach such “soft” skills, we should be able to prepare students better for active citizenship. That will require more team projects in schools and less narrow preparation for paper-and-pencil tests.

    good news about NCLB

    Rep. George Miller, who leads the House Democrats on education policy and strongly backed No Child Left Behind, has issued draft language regarding reform of that Act. It says, in part:

    Title I, Part I, includes a new program to provide funds to low-income districts to support high quality instruction in music and arts, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, history, geography and physical education and health. Funds would support expanding the amount of instructional time in such subjects, developing high quality curriculum, providing essential materials and textbooks and partnering with community- based organizations to increase student learning in these subjects.

    This is a big deal in my little world of “civic ed.” But I’d suggest it matters to all Americans, and the full argument goes like this:

    Children who have experiences to participate as citizens and learn about their communities and politics flourish better in adolescence and develop lasting habits of civic participation that benefit our democracy.

    … but …

    Current education policy revolves around the testing of reading and mathematics. As a result, schools, and especially those with low rates of academic success, are cutting civics, arts, and community partnerships.

    … so …

    We need incentives for schools–especially those with low academic performance, which usually enroll mostly poor kids–to provide civic opportunities. And this is what Mr. Miller appears to be trying to do.

    why service learning policy is stuck

    Service-learning (the intentional combination of community service with academic study) is a pretty significant phenomenon. According to CIRCLE’s fact sheet, “As of February 2004, over 10 percent of all K-12 public school students and 28 percent of all K-12 public institutions are involved in some type of service-learning, affecting approximately 4.7 million K-12 students in 23,000 public schools.” Yet the number of students who participate seems to have reached a plateau, and federal support (through the Learn & Serve America program) has declined.

    At last weekend’s conference, the question was raised: Given the large quantity of research on service-learning, why hasn’t policy improved? In short, why doesn’t the research affect policy? Many of my colleagues felt that the problem lay with jargon-filled, overly complex research that isn’t translated or disseminated effectively.

    That could be, but I have another explanation. Learn & Serve America supports an opportunity for schools and kids (i.e., service-learning) by funding it. That is a classic approach to educational policy, but it is not the dominant approach in our decade. The No Child Left Behind Act (which is just a name for the whole Elementary and Secondary Education Act) provides, mandates, supports, or authorizes very few opportunities at all. Instead, it defines outcomes and offers financial support (albeit, too little) for schools that reach those outcomes. (More on this distinction here.)

    The reason for focus on outcomes is a profound lack of trust for schools. Conservatives distrust public schools because they are state monopolies, and unionized to boot. But it is equally important that many liberals distrust schools for being corrupt, reactionary, and discriminatory. I have been harangued by liberals and civil rights activists who completely support the structure of No Child Left Behind (which, indeed, was drafted by liberals). They believe that if you give money to schools to provide opportunities, the money will be wasted or channeled to privileged kids, and the opportunities themselves will be distorted beyond recognition. Their strategy is to hold schools accountable for core outcomes, focusing especially on kids who are likely to suffer discrimination. They are happy to let schools choose their methods. If service-learning actually enhances student performance, fine. But they will not directly support service-learning or any other opportunity through federal policy.

    Very little of the existing research on service-learning is relevant to this situation, which is why (I believe ) it has so little impact on policy. To make a difference, the research would have to:

    a) Show that mandates or funding for service-learning on a large scale actually make a positive difference in typical and struggling schools (not merely in excellent “boutique” schools). Recent research by Davila and Mora and by Kahne and Sporte do find such positive effects.

    b) Show that the strategy of No Child Left Behind is flawed for its advertised purposes (raising student performance and equity). Or …

    c) Figure out how to make schools, which are so deeply distrusted, more trustworthy by actually reforming them.

    [update, June 20: The Senate appropriations subcommittee seems to have approved a 5.4% increase in Learn & Serve America, by a voice vote. If that change survives, it will be the first increase for a long time.]

    discussing current issues in schools

    (Chicago) Surveys consistently find that most American students discuss current events in their classrooms and feel free to express their own views in these discussions. For instance, according to CIRCLE’s 2006 survey, three-quarters of current students ages 15 to 25 reported that they had the opportunity to discuss current political and social issues in their high school courses. The vast majority (80%) reported that they were encouraged to form their own opinions regarding these issues.

    Scholars call the combination of time devoted to discussion plus tolerance of multiple perspectives an “open classroom climate.” Experiencing an open classroom climate seems to predict all kinds of good outcomes (see PDF).

    Yet, as Diana Hess notes, classroom observations consistently find that the vast majority of time in social studies classes is devoted to lectures; real deliberations of current issues are exceedingly rare.

    How to square those two results? Hess suspects that students’ reports of “open classroom climate” are misleading. I’d put it this way (speculating a bit): Most kids recall that at one time or another, their peers and a teacher discussed a controversial issue. Most students also think that their teachers are basically nice people. Therefore, if you (a high school student) say to Mr. Jones, “What did you think about Bush’s speech last night?” or, “I’m really mad about the abortion decision,” Mr. Jones will not bite your head off. He may even encourage your interest by saying something supportive–regardless of the position you take. He’s probably interested in current events himself, if he teaches social studies. But he will soon call class to order and get back to the required material. If you are surveyed about the “classroom climate,” you will say it was “open,” even though there was no real discussion.

    Hess’s most intriguing suggestion: Perhaps the modest positive correlations that we observe between open classroom climates and civic engagement are the combination of no effects from average classrooms and transformative effects from real deliberations. Her research-in-progress will test this hypothesis.