Federal Judge Rules That Harvard Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-American Students

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
57

In a closely-watched case, a federal judge ruled that Harvard University does not discriminate against Asian-Americans in its admissions decisions.

The case was filed by a far-right group hoping to outlaw affirmative action, which Harvard used to promote diversity in its student body.

The challenge came from a group hoping to overturn a longstanding Supreme Court precedent that allows race to be considered as one factor among many in the admissions process, but prohibits universities from using racial quotas. The group argued that Harvard’s practices had benefited black and Hispanic students at the expense of another minority group, in a strategic reversal of past affirmative action lawsuits in which the plaintiffs denounced a perceived unfairness to white students.

The judge, Allison Burroughs of Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts, rejected the argument that Harvard was using affirmative action as a weapon against some races and a boon to others, and said that the university met the strict constitutional standard for considering race in its admissions process….

Students for Fair Admissions made four interrelated claims: that Harvard intentionally discriminated against Asian-Americans, that it used race as a predominant factor in admissions decisions, that it racially balanced its classes, and that it had considered applicants’ race without first exhausting race-neutral alternatives to create diversity.

Judge Burroughs cleared the university of all four claims, saying that while Harvard’s admissions process was “not perfect,” the court would not tear down “a very fine admissions program that passes constitutional muster.”

As I noted in an earlier post, the proportion of Asian-Americans at Harvard far exceeds their proportion of the population.

The U.S. population is about 6% Asian, African Americans are 13%, whites are 61%, Hispanics are 18%.

The Harvard class of 2021 is 22% Asian, 14.6% African American, 11.6% Latino, and 2.5% Native American or Pacific Islander.

On the face of the data, it is hard to make a case for discrimination.

Categories Higher Education

Trump’s Roy Cohn Defense: Deny, Attack, Attack Again

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
45

 

James Hohmann of the Washington Post yesterday  described Trump’s defense when his hand was caught in cookie jar in broad daylight:

The president is running the smashmouth playbook he learned from Roy Cohn, his mentor and Joe McCarthy’s hatchet man. It’s worked repeatedly for Trump, from fighting the Justice Department’s investigation of racial discrimination at his family’s rental properties in the 1970s to overcoming Bob Mueller’s investigation the past two years. Among other things, this strategy involves denying everything and counterattacking critics by accusing them of whatever you’ve been accused of.

The don’t-give-an-inch mentality is what prompts someone like White House policy adviser Stephen Miller to declareon “Fox News Sunday” that “the president of the United States is thewhistleblower, and this individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government.” And it is why Trump allows Rudy Giuliani, his ferocious personal attorney, to keep defending him on television despite the messes he seems to make each time he goes on the air.

Inother words, he did it, it was the right thing to do, who cares, so what, and anyone who says he did it is a liar and a traitor and should resign or be shot.

Categories Education Reform

Rob Schofield: The War on Public Education in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
9

There was a time when Norh Carolina was widely seen as the most progressive stTe in the South. That time ended abruptly when the Tea Party took control of the state in 2010 and began to decimate public services, especially public education. The Tea Party introduced charters and vouchers, killed the state’s successful NC Teaching Fellows Program for career teachers (giving its funding to Teach for America for temps).

Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch assesses the war on public education and its ties to the Koch ideology of strangling government.

He writes:


There was a time in the United States not that many years ago in which K-12 public education was taken as a given – something as fundamental to the health and wellbeing of society as drinking water and law enforcement and public roads.

It may not have always lived up to this ideal (particularly in places where the great evil of racial discrimination and segregation held sway), but it’s fair to say that the American public school classroom was widely understood to be the glue that brought our broadly middle class society together and moved it into the future, the unifying institution that inculcated the fundamental civic values of democracy, and the place where society combated ignorance and superstition and prepared members of the next generation to build a better world.

Tragically, this began to change in the latter part of the 20th Century. In her powerful 2017 book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Duke University historian Nancy MacLean makes a compelling argument that the advent of racial integration – and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education) – helped spur a conservative resistance movement that served to undermine the general consensus about public education.

And when this sad development was combined with two other toxic trends – perhaps most notably the aggressive, corporate-sponsored revival of dog-eat-dog, market fundamentalist economics and the explosive growth in what’s-in-it-for-me? American consumerism – it wasn’t long before prominent leaders of the American Right were referring derisively to “government schools” and treating K-12 education as a commodity in which “winners” and “losers” aggressively bargained and shopped for the best deal.

Now, add to all of this a healthy measure of obliviousness from mostly white male elites that could not and cannot see the amazing advantages they enjoy merely by virtue of their race and gender, and you’ve got a recipe for the situation that confronts North Carolina today – a time in which an entire cohort of children will soon graduate from 12th grade, having experienced nothing but declining public education budgets and a sustained ideologically-driven effort to depopulate public schools.

And while some on the political right continue to insist on paying lip service to the notion that they still support public education, a long litany of ills tells a very different story. Consider the following facts about the education system that students and educators return to this week as they begin the 2019-‘20 school year:

Actual state funding for K-12 education is down 6.7 percent (when one adjusts for enrollment growth and inflation) since the 2008-’09 school year – a time when North Carolina ranked 43rd in the nation in terms of per pupil spending and in spending as a share of Gross State Product.

Most per student funding allotments are actually down more than 6.7%. For instance, the state has 9% fewer “instructional support personnel” (counselors, nurses, librarians, etc.), 8% fewer principals and assistant principals, 36% less funding for teacher assistants, 57% less for textbooks, 56% less for classroom supplies, and 17% less for non-instructional support like custodians and bus drivers.

The state’s mushrooming charter school and voucher programs are contributing to declining public school enrollment, increased racial segregation and a pernicious situation in which children with higher incomes and fewer disabilities are “creamed” away and children with greater challenges disproportionately remain.

Despite recent modest improvements for some, North Carolina teachers still earn far less (5% less) than their college-educated, private sector peers. Only five states fare worse by this measurement.

The state faces a school infrastructure need of at least $8.1 billion.

While most states made use of the post-Great Recession recovery to rebuild their public education investments, North Carolina instead enacted a series of aggressive, multi-billion dollar tax cuts that mostly benefited the top 1% and that lowered the state’s overall funding effort (as a share of Gross State Product) to 48th in the nation. Indeed, it would take billions in additional spending just to match spending levels in South Carolina.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, North Carolina

Michael Kohlhaas: The California Charter School Association’s Secret, Reprehensible Goals

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
11

Last June, blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of documents from the Green Dot Charter Chain in response to his request filed under the state’s Public Record Act. He has been reviewing these documents and releasing them.

In this post, he summarizes a Powerpoint presentation (and provides a link to the actual document) in which the California Charter Schools Association lays out its goals.

He headlines the post:

A SECRET POWERPOINT FROM THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION REVEALS 2019 LOBBYING PRIORITIES AND STRATEGIES — IN PARTICULAR THEY CONSIDER POSITIONING THEMSELVES AS CHAMPIONS OF EQUITY AND EQUALITY BUT WORRY THAT THEIR SUPPORTERS MIGHT SEE THAT AS “MISSION CREEP” — THEY CONSIDER SUPPORTING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLS BUT WORRY THAT SUCH A POSITION MIGHT ALIENATE THE “CHOICE WING” OF THEIR BASE — THEY LIST AMONG THE GREATEST THREATS THE BARE POSSIBILITY THAT CHARTER SCHOOLS MIGHT BE REQUIRED TO EARTHQUAKE PROOF THEIR BUILDINGS TO THE SAME STANDARD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS — IN SHORT THIS IS A SEETHING STEW OF PRIVILEGE — AND ARROGANCE — AND CLUELESS SELF-EXPOSURE — IN OTHER WORDS MORE OF THE DAMN SAME STUFF!…

If you want to understand this powerful lobbying group, which spends millions of dollars every year to protect the charter industry and to block accountability and transparency, you have to read the post.

He adds:

As you must know by now the California Charter School Association is the premiere wingnut loony tunes mouth-frothing privatization advocacy organization in the state. And we’ve been learning an unprecedentedly awful1 lot about them since June due to a huge set of records2 released by Green Dot Charter Schools in response to a request I made of them under the California Public Records Act.

These records are so rich, so complex, so voluminous, that it’s taking me freaking forever to go through them, sort them, write about them, and I’m therefore laying them on you in increments. And the increment at hand is this powerpoint presentation, created by the CCSA in August 2018 to explain the next year’s goals and fears to their members. I have also exported this as a PDF for ease of use.3There are also JPEGs of the slides at the end of the post if that’s better.

And my goodness, what a revealing heap of steaming and pernicious arrogance we have here. Under recent wins, for instance, we learn that the CCSA “Conditioned Legislature to defeat a half dozen harmful policy and budget proposals in preparation for less reliable Executive branch.” That’s the California Charter School Association right there telling how they “conditioned” the Legislature in preparation for Gavin “Less Reliable than Jerry Brown” Newsom’s ascension to the throne.

And further down the line we learn the assumptions behind CCSA’s policymaking agenda for 2019, probably actually for always, but I don’t (yet) have the evidence. And again, what’s revealed is appalling but not surprising. For instance they pledge that “CCSA will seek compromise on legislation that minimally constrains flexibility but only in exchange for new entitlements.” This item casts the CCSA’s support of SB126, which makes it exceedingly clear that charters are subject to both the CPRA and the Brown Act, in an interesting light.

Perhaps in 2018 they thought that this new law only “minimally constrain[ed] flexibility” and that they were going to get a bunch of goodies in return. But I’m willing to bet they’re rethinking that concession now given that the fruits of a single CPRA request have subjected them to months of pain-writhing exposure, some scathing articles in the Los Angeles Times, and may ultimately end the career of theirmanchild knight in shining hair product, Nick Melvoin.

And their listing of what they see as the greatest threats against them for 2019 is very instructive as well. I’m not up on the details enough to comment on all of these but the ones I do understand are as appalling as the rest of it.

If you thought that the CCSA was discussing how to improve education for all of the state’s children, you would be wrong. Their discussion is about power and protecting the self-interest of their industry.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Ohio Reduces Oversight of Failing Charter Operators and Gives More Money to Attend Low-Performing Voucher Schools

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
11

Jan Resseger reports here on Stephen Dyer’s astute analysis of Ohio’s state budget. Dyer is a former legislator who is now an Education Policy Fellow at Innovation Ohio.

This is Dyer’s report. Read it and weep. Ohio’s rightwing Republicans care more about campaign contributors than they care about the state’s students or the quality of education.

In looking at the plums for charters and vouchers, please bear in mind that most charter schools in Ohio are low-performing and score far below public schools, even in urban districts. And remember too that a study of Ohio’s voucher program sponsored by the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute concluded that students who used vouchers actually lost ground academically. So, when you see legislators increasing funding for vouchers and reducing oversight of charters, be aware that Ohio is underwriting and rewarding failure.

Resseger writes:

In the 2020-2021 biennial Ohio budget signed into law in July, lawmakers quietly embedded the radical expansion of school privatization. Rewards for charter schools and tuition voucher expansion are written into the budget in a lots of little ways, however, which means that, during the budget debate, few noticed the overall significance of exploding state support for school privatization. A new report released last week by Innovation Ohio, however, connects the dots among several measures which together will undermine oversight of charter schools and at the same time radically expand tuition vouchers. The report includes an examination of the fiscal implications for local public school districts.

The former chair of the Ohio House Education Subcommittee of Finance and now Innovation Ohio’s education policy fellow, Steve Dyer authored the report, which ought to be essential reading for legislators and a broad range of citizens—from experts to people who have not previously tracked the issue. Dyer writes a basic primer and at the same time an analysis sophisticated enough to teach experts something new.

Dyer begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.”  Dyer explains that the new Ohio budget:

  • weakens Ohio’s 2015 charter school oversight law that mandated automatic closure for academic failure after two years;
  • weakens standards for Ohio’s already deplorable sector of “dropout recovery” charter schools;
  • weakens Ohio’s oversight of its many charter school authorizers; and
  • increases the transfer of state and even local taxpayer dollars to private—mostly religious—schools.

Read this summary of the state’s preferential treatment of failing charters and see if you can overcome an impulse to gag:

Although in 2015, the state cracked down on academically failing charter schools by mandating their closure after two years of failing test scores, the new budget awards these schools an extra, third year to stay in business. The new budget gives 52 schools which had been preparing to close another year of life. Dyer adds: “Interestingly, of the 52 charters that were scheduled to be closed under the old standard, 34 are run by for-profit charter school operators, including almost 20 percent of the former White Hat schools now being operated by Ron Packard—the founder of K-12 Inc.—the nation’s largest (and most notorious) online charter school operator. Another big operator set to take a hit was J.C. Huizenga’s 10 Ohio-based National Heritage Academies. Six of those were on the chopping block before the legislature offered a legislative reprieve. Huizenga is an acolyte of Betsy DeVos—the controversial U.S. Secretary of Education—and his political connections have kept his schools afloat for years, despite complaints….”

The new state budget also weakens standards at a set of charter schools described by their promoters as providing opportunity for students who have dropped out of school. While the education of school dropouts is a worthy purpose, in Ohio, the state has been providing millions of dollars of support for schools that clearly fail to accomplish that stated goal: “Some graduate less than two percent of their students in four years and less than 10 percent in eight years. The state’s already lax standards only require that dropout recovery schools graduate eight percent of their students in four years.”  Before they can graduate, students in these schools must pass a state-approved test, but the new budget permits these schools, “to adopt another, easier test, and reduces the passing score.” It is predicted that the change in standards will save some of these schools from mandatory closure.

Ohio’s legislature is either bought and paid for by privatization advocates (very likely) or it is dominated by ideologues who want to reward failure regardless of how many children are miseducated.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny: The Road to Unfreedom

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
55

 

During the protests in Hong Kong, demonstrators carried placards of Timothy Snyder’s lessons about losing democracy.

 

On Tyranny: the Road to Unfreedom

Timothy Snyder – Yale University – Nov 15, 2016.

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics.
When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of- law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the internet before bed.
Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics.
Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state.
The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a
historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life.
Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.

20. Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Categories Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Fascism

NPE National Conference: Last Day to Get Early Bird Rate!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
0

 

Register today for the Network for Public Education’s National Conference in March 2020 in Philadelphia.

Today is the last day to get early bird discounted rate. 

Great speakers, great panels, and a chance to meet the leaders of the Resistance! Including you!

Categories Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Philadelphia, Resistance

A New Year’s Greeting from Around the World

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
16

This is a lovely way to usher in the New Year 5780!

Thanks to my dear friend David Berliner for sharing!

And a happy New Year, L’Shana Tova, to all!

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Personal

ProPublica: Trump Has Been Working the Ukraine Story in Plain Sight

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
33

 

ProPublica documents that Trump has been proclaiming his interest in the Ukraine investigation  on Twitter for months. Why are we surprised when he has told the story out loud for months?

Conspiracy theorists convinced him long ago that Ukraine—not Russia—interfered in the 2016 election, to aid the hated Hillary. He also telegraphed his belief that Ukraine leaked damaging information about Paul Manafort (accurate but that’s beside the point).

Rudy Guiliani’s trips to Ukraine were no secret.

It was all out there.

Why are we surprised?

Trump seems to believe that if you commit a crime, an indiscretion, a betrayal of your oath of office to protect the country, and you do it in plain sight, it’s just fine. If they catch you, your defense of “So what?” is good enough for his fanatical base. This is the base that Trump predicted would not care if he murdered someone in Fifth Avenue in broad daylight.

Will they now tolerate his invitation to Ukraine to smear Joe Biden?

Categories Education Reform

Andrea Gabor: The Demand for A New Kind of Civics

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
42

 

Andrea Gabor wrote this article for Bloomberg News.

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”

The College Board, which administers college entrance exams to high school students, is trying to use its advanced placement courses and tests for high-achieving students to get American schools to take civics seriously again.

That’s a welcome development after years of neglect by both schools and policymakers. Even better, last year’s redesign of its AP U.S. government and politics course — the first since it was introduced in 1986 — goes well beyond requiring basic knowledge of, say, how a bill becomes law, and seeks to get students engaged with civic life. While the academic part of the AP U.S. government course explores the diverse forces that shape everything from legislation to Supreme Court precedents, students also are required to put their knowledge into action by working on a civics project, even one that takes sides in today’s partisan political battles.

The new U.S. government AP is part of a nationwide push — both inside and outside schools — for high-school students to engage in civic debate and action. Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to require schools to coordinate student-led civics projects, though that state’s high school projects must be nonpartisan.

A civics revival is long overdue. As of 2018, only eight states required students to take a yearlong civics and government class, and only 19 required students to take a civics exam to graduate. Even the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is considered the nation’s report card, dropped its 4th- and 12th-grade civics and American history exam, in 2014. The ostensible reason was to save money, but the NAEP then adopted a new technology and engineering literacy test a year later.

Indeed, civics fell victim to the narrowing of curricula under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and to the standardized testing regimen that focused on math, science and English. Worried about economic competition from China, neither Democrats nor Republicans anticipated the recent populist and authoritarian threat to Western democracies that civics education is meant to forestall.

The reality is, schools need to do both: prepare students for a global economy and to be engaged citizens in a democracy.

Putting action at the core of civics education may seem counterintuitive at a time when basic knowledge of the three branches of the U.S. government is in short supply and especially considering that college students’ activism has often been seen as controversial — think of the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the South during the civil rights era and the protests against the Vietnam War.

Yet the benefit of getting high-school students working on civics projects of their own choosing — even partisan ones — goes beyond tapping into the innate desire of teenagers to change the world. Having students work on new legislation or lobby their city council representatives can promote a deep understanding of local, state and federal government and provide the basis for future political engagement.

That’s especially true for immigrants and members of minority groups. Studies conducted nearly 50 years apart — including one by the American Enterprise Institute — show that civics education is especially effective both in teaching poor students and immigrants about government and in increasing their sense of political empowerment.

Students already are demonstrating the power of action civics. In Chicago, high schoolers lobbied Illinois legislators to change harsh disciplinary practices that often pushed minority students out of school and into the criminal justice system, and were instrumental in helping to draft a new school-discipline law in 2016. In New York City, minority student activists are suing the education department for equal access to athletic facilities and school teams. And schools across the country are experimenting with efforts to let students determine school spending priorities on extras such as building a greenhouse or funding a music club.

The Stoneman Douglas High School students in Parkland, Florida, may provide the best argument for a civics approach that encompasses both knowledge and action. Their gun-control advocacy since the 2018 shootings there, which killed 17 students and school staffers, was inspired by research they were already doing for both their AP government class and a district-wide debate program.

Educators also are developing ways to measure the educational value of such projects. In New Hampshire, New York City and Oakland, they have developed assessments that treat the projects like mini dissertations and often require a written report as well as an oral presentation. The AP’s civics projects, however, will count only toward a course grade and not its college-level U.S. government test; that’s in large part because most college government courses do not require projects, according to the College Board.

The biggest challenge may be to scale the efforts at action civics. Only about 281,000 public-school students take the AP U.S. government course — last year, about 30 percent of these students were African-American or Latino and 23 percent were low-income; indeed, the College Board has come under criticism recently for failing to make its tests more accessible to minority students.

States and districts also will need to resist pressures from both the political left and the right that could dilute the push for more robust civics. The movement to require ethnic studies must not be allowed to erode time and attention devoted to civics. And states that require high-school graduates to pass the U.S. citizenship test must resist the lure of a rote multiple-choice approach to civics.

Instead, embracing a meaningful civics project as part of a broader U.S. government and history curriculum may be the best way to help kids make the connection between what they learn about the nation’s political institutions and a future they can affect.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Andrea Gabor at Andrea.Gabor@baruch.cuny.edu

 

Categories Civics, Education Reform
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