I’m quoted in an article about how to manage controversial issues in elementary and secondary classrooms: see “Hot-Button Handling” from District Administrator Magazine. I make a couple of points in the article, but this is the one that I consider most important: “There is no question that there are horror stories about partisan teachers, racist teachers, teachers [who] give extra points for bringing in certain campaign signs. Those are disciplinary issues and should not be allowed to happen,” Levine says. “But do we throw the baby out with the bath water?”

I think we need to cut administrators some slack on those relatively rare occasions when teachers try to indoctrinate kids politically. If we punish administrators in such cases, they get very nervous and will discourage all political discussion in schools. And then kids can’t learn about issues.

I’m in Princeton, NJ, staying for 24 hours at the headquarters of the ETS, the people who bring you the SAT and your other favorite standardized tests. I’m here with a group of civic education advocates, trying to learn more about testing. A system of high-stakes testing may be good or bad for education in general (I’m genuinely unsure about that). For civic education, it poses three problems:

1) Civic and political knowledge is usually not tested, at least not with high-stakes exams. What isn’t tested, isn’t taught. But even enthusiastic proponents of standards and accountability are leery about piling a civics exam on top of all the other tests. There is thus a serious danger that we will lose civics from the curriculum.

2) Civic knowledge, while important, isn’t all we care about. We also want students to develop civic attitudes, values, habits, skills, and behaviors. Yet we don’t know how to test these things.

3) A good approach to civic education is to involve students, teachers, staff, parents, and community-members in the governance of schools. But to the extent that important policy issues are determined by standards and tests, there are fewer important decisions to be made locally.

Nevertheless, there may be ways to infuse some civic content into the existing system, and that’s what I’m at ETS to explore.

I met this morning with Rachel Tompkins, president of The Rural School and Community Trust. I was persuaded that civic education is exceptionally important in rural schools.

First of all, rural areas face serious economic and social problems because they are devalued–young people feel that they have to move to big cities to succeed. Developing a positive understanding of community (through research and activism) is part of civic education, and it could reduce the “brain drain.” Second, many rural educators believe that rural schools are deprived of their fair share of state education funding. If we assume (for the sake of argument) that this is correct, then rural students can do themselves good and learn about civics by advocating for more funding. Third, it is a general truth that schools work best when they are supported by adult citizens who participate in a rich civic life, with lots of meetings, networks, and organizations. In rural areas, schools provide an essential mechanism for building such networks, and students can play important roles. Many of these factors also apply in urban schools, but we tend to forget about the rural sector. As Rachel points out in this interview, 14 percent of students live in areas with populations of 2,500 of smaller, and 98 percent of the nation’s poorest counties are rural.

I spoke yesterday at the Learn & Serve America conference, which convenes people who run federally-funded community-service programs in schools. I talked about the Civic Mission of Schools report, which my organization and Carnegie Corporation of New York published earlier this year. One person in the audience said that he had read the first sentence to colleagues back at his home college, and they interpreted it as ridiculously and offensively conservative. Neither the questioner nor I had the report with us, so we argued about exactly what it says. In fact, it begins as follows:

“For more than 250 years, Americans have shared a vision of a democracy in which all citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and political life. In recent decades, however, increasing numbers of Americans have disengaged from civic and political institutions such as voluntary associations, religious congregations, community-based organizations, and political and electoral activities such as voting and being informed about public issues.”

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My organization, CIRCLE, promotes a set of 19 "core

indicators of civic engagement" as a way of measuring

the level of engagement of any youthful group or community,

and also as a way of assessing the civic impact of a program, class,

or project. These 19 indicators were chosen after an elaborate national

research project managed by Scott Keeter, Cliff Zukin, Molly Andolina,

and Krista Jenkins, who talked to practitioners and young people in

focus groups and then conducted a national survey. Despite its empirical

rigor, their list of indicators provokes an interesting and important

controversy. I have heard the following views expressed:

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