THE CENTER FOR INFORMATION & RESEARCH ON CIVIC LEARNING & ENGAGEMENT
www.civicyouth.org
March 2014
CIRCLE Working Paper #79
Civic Education Policy Change:
Case Studies of Florida, Tennessee, and
Hawaii
By CIRCLE Staff
Funded by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
1 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Project Overview
Preparing the next generation of Americans to engage in their communities civically and
politically is a shared responsibility. Although civic education takes place every day in
homes and community centers, our nation’s K-12 schools are in a unique position to
nurture and reinforce the civic development of all young people. States influence their K-
12 schools by enacting and implementing policies that include standards, tests, credit
and course requirements, teacher certification rules, and funding streams.
This paper describes case studies of three states that have recently examined their civic
education policies. The goal of this document is to inform other states' policymakers and
advocates as they consider K-12 civic education policies.
In 2010, Florida passed legislation requiring all middle school students to take a
high-stakes civics test.
In Tennessee, 2012 legislation requires a project-based assessment in civics for all
students.
In Hawaii, advocates defeated a proposed change to the state graduation
requirements. At stake in Hawaii was a particular course, Participation in
Democracy, that was relatively new (launched in 2006) and that embodied the
principles of “action civics.”
1
Had the proposal passed, this course would no
longer have been required.
We chose these three examples because they represent strikingly different approaches
to state policy: a high-stakes standardized exam, a project-based assessment, and an
interactive course without any state assessment at all. The focus of this paper is on the
efforts to influence policy: who was involved, how they worked, and what made the
difference in the policy being passed or rejected. We cite the perspectives and
experiences of key people involved in these three efforts. We also describe apparent
keys to successful advocacy across the three states.
In conjunction with this paper, we have also released a fact sheet that summarizes the
main elements of each policy. Both documents were made possible by the support of
the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation.
Florida Case Study: Direct Advocacy to Key Policymakers
Making progress on serious statewide civic education required getting it on the agenda
… on the public policy agenda … it simply was not on anybody's agenda other than a
few people who sat around a table occasionally and talked about it.
-Dr. Doug Dobson, Executive Director of the Lou Frey Institute
In July of 2010, the "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Civics Education Act” took effect in
Florida. The Act had taken more than ten years to pass despite having bipartisan
support. As its name suggests, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
was a major champion of the bill, which also received valuable political support from
former U.S. Representative Lou Frey (R) and former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Bob
1
Action Civics is a type of civic education defined by a focus on youth taking action on issues they care about on top
of learning civic content. For more on the concept, see Building an Evidence-Based Practice of Action Civics at
http://www.civicyouth.org/building-the-case-for-action-civics/.
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
2 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Graham (D). The legislation requires that Florida students take an end-of-course civics
assessment in middle school. Additionally, the bill mandates that civic education content
be integrated into the K-12 language arts curriculum.
The Act was driven by the theory that people are more likely to participate in
government if they know how it works. According to Dr. Doug Dobson, Executive Director
of the Lou Frey Institute of Politics and Government at the University of Central Florida
and one of the bill’s biggest champions, the purpose of the legislation was to “return
civics to the Florida curriculum in a systematic way, in hopes that by doing that we
strengthen Florida’s overall civic health and the level of civic involvement across the
state. What that means, of course, is producing students with the combination of
knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be active citizens in their communities.”
The bill’s language strongly emphasizes instruction in how government functions. The bill
has specific provisions that require that: (a) civics content be included in the reading
portion of the language arts curriculum for all grade levels, and (b) middle school
students complete an end-of-course (EOC) assessment in civics.
Key Findings from Florida
One of the driving forces behind the development of the Sandra Day O’Connor Civics
Education Act was the national rise of high-stakes testing and, specifically, the new
Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). The introduction of the FCAT was
perceived to expand the teaching and testing of reading and math, leaving little room
for social studies instruction.
The Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Education Act developed over many years with the
help of several key organizations. The Florida Law Related Education Association (FLREA)
played a key role in the early stages of the Act’s development. In 2004, that organization
surveyed Florida school districts to determine the status of civic education at all grade
levels. According to the FLREA’s Executive Director, Annette Boyd Pitts, “As a result [of the
survey], participating gatekeepers such as the League of Women Voters and Common
Cause in Florida were instrumental in securing legislation in 2006 mandating the teaching
of civics in middle school. Representative Curtis Richardson and Senator Ron Klein
introduced the inaugural legislative language which was included as a single line in a
160-page Middle School Reform bill which successfully passed both Chambers and
ultimately became law” (2011).
Despite the passage of the 2006 bill requiring that civics be taught, students were still not
experiencing the level of civic education that the bill’s sponsors and civic education
advocates had envisioned.
Following the passage of the 2006 legislation, the Florida Association of Social Studies
Supervisors (an organization dominated by teachers) and the Florida Council for the
Social Studies began advocating for legislation to include civics in the FCAT. According
to Dobson, “The general theory driving this Act was that in Florida’s very test-driven
system … unless civics and social studies in general was tested, it was very unlikely to be
actually taught despite the provision in 2006 calling for civics instruction [in middle
school].”
The next step involved building a team of civic education advocates among Florida’s
political leaders. In late 2006, former senator Bob Graham and former congressman Lou
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
3 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Frey joined forces in an effort to return civics to the Florida curriculum. In 2007, they
released a white paper outlining the need for more civics education. They went on to
secure then Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s support for the idea of testing civics. In addition,
in 2009, Florida State Representative Charles McBurney began to champion the
legislation and helped push it through the Florida House of Representatives. That effort
was topped off by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who championed the bill before the
state legislature.
Despite the desire of many leaders to pass a civic education bill in Florida, it did not pass
easily. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, civic education bills were introduced in the Florida
legislature but died in session. State Senator Steve Wise, then head of the Senate
Appropriations Committee on Education, reported that the cost of statewide civics
assessments was a major reason the bills failed; it was estimated that a new standardized
test, once up and running, would cost about $1.5 million per year (Postal, 2010).
Educators in Florida posed another obstacle. Originally, it was proposed that students
would have to pass the civics EOC assessment in order to receive credit for the course,
regardless of the grade the teacher assigned the student. The Florida Association of
Social Studies Supervisors argued this put too much weight on the civics EOC assessment.
The organization did, however, support a measure to make the civics EOC assessment
account for 30 percent of the student’s final grade.
The bill finally passed the Florida House and Senate in 2010. Dobson attributes the bill’s
passage to several factors. First, the legislation’s advocates had to figure out the detailed
processes for getting a bill through both the state House and Senate. This took inside
knowledge of legislative procedures, including who should introduce and sponsor a bill.
(State Senator Nancy Detert introduced the bill in the Senate and played a key role in its
passage.) Second, they had to trim the bill down so that it was fiscally acceptable.
According to Dobson, “We started the process asking for the world. We wanted civics to
be taught and to be tested exactly like other subjects were tested in the FCAT.” In the
end, the bill passed with a provision for an EOC assessment just in the middle school
grades.
It will likely be years before the Act is fully implemented. The middle school EOC took
three years to develop and pilot. The requirement to include civics instruction in the
reading portion of the K-12 language arts curriculum will likely take even longer to be fully
realized. According to Linda Whitley, Supervisor of K-12 Social Studies for the Pinellas
County, Florida, schools, “it has been difficult to inform teachers about legislation that is
passed at the state level.” She notes that there are many mandates for teachers coming
from both the state and federal level, making it difficult to keep up with changing
requirements. In addition, each county is responsible for interpreting the mandates and
may implement them differently.
Another challenge to implementation is teacher preparation and professional
development. Administrators like Whitley have worked closely with Dobson to develop
professional development opportunities for middle school teachers who are starting to
teach civics. The Lou Frey Institute also worked with elementary teachers in Pinellas
County to provide curricular materials and professional development opportunities.
According to Whitley, “We continue to offer extensive professional development but, as
civics is now a required course, it is more difficult to ensure that all teachers have
sufficient professional development before tackling the curriculum.”
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
4 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Time will also tell whether or not the civics EOC assessment can fully measure student
civic learning. According to Dobson, “The Florida experience offers a perspective on the
difficulty of testing civic skills.” He points out that Florida instructional benchmarks call for
students to have “experiential” learning opportunities in a variety of ways, such as
through simulations, problem-based learning, discussion, or other methods. He notes,
“The test, however, emphasizes those benchmarks that are susceptible to objective,
multiple choice testing. Thus, the question of whether the Florida approach will result in
increased levels of civic participation by students who have completed civics remains
unanswered.”
Tennessee Case Study: Collaboration among Policy Champions
“This bill is real significant, because it’s the first time that I know that any state's required a
project-based assessment for civics-based assessment.”
- Janis Kyser, Tennessee Center for Civic Learning and Engagement
In 2012, SB2066/HB2114 passed in the Tennessee legislature, requiring students to take a
“project-based assessment in civics at least once in grades 4-8 and once in grades 9-
12.”
2
This means that all students would have to conduct some kind of civics project and
be graded on it. According to Janis Kyser, a leader of the Tennessee Center for Civic
Learning and Engagement (TCCLE), the purpose of the bill was to provide a foundation
for students to engage in a local community-based issue and to encourage the
teaching of “deeper civics.” As Kyser explained, “In order to do the assessment, students
would have had to be actively involved in a local community issue.” It would not be
enough “for them to look at world peace, but a local public policy issue.” The
assessment, according to Kyser, would therefore promote the teaching of civics, with the
long-term goal of helping to “solidify these students in helping to continue to be involved
in their communities and government, and show them they have a voice.”
Key Findings from Tennessee
The passing of Tennessee’s project-based assessment legislation resulted directly from
years-long collaboration between several key individuals and support from Tennessee
policymakers. Major strategies that led to passing this legislation included: collaboration
between practitioners and Tennessee Department of Education staff, relationships with
powerful officials, and strategic support from political figures. Additionally, support from
the full legislature and strong support from a select group of Tennessee lawmakers
played an important role in the bill’s passage.
The collaboration between lead organizer Janis Kyser and Brenda Ables, a social studies
specialist at the Tennessee Department of Education, was fundamental to the bill’s
passage. For several years leading up to the bill, Kyser and Ables worked to support
teachers in using the Project Citizen curriculum, a national program in which students
build an action plan to address an issue of their choice. Both received positive feedback
from teachers and students who were able to experience the Project Citizen curriculum.
Although the resources to teach Project Citizen were available, and civics standards
existed, Kyser and Ables recognized that civics wasn’t being tested like math or
language arts. A project-based assessment ensured that: a) civics would be taught in
the state, and b) students would be tested on their active involvement in the community.
2
http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/Billinfo/default.aspx?BillNumber=SB2066&ga=107
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
5 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
These two organizers received support from two key state legislators: Senator Mark Norris
(R) and Representative Kevin Brooks (R). The organizers made sure to introduce these
legislators to active civic learning. Additionally, Kyser said she “brought in relevant
materials to show that civic learning was necessary (including student reflections). We
took in all of the relevant materials that he would need to show that civic learning was
necessary, that it had the research behind it, so we gathered pertinent intelligence for
our legislators.” From her perspective, this legislation was critical because she “witnessed
positive outcomes from students and teachers. What [she] found in those [the schools
with Project Citizen] was that the attendance improved, kids came to school, their
inappropriate behaviors decreased.”
Additionally, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor challenged Tennessee
legislators to consider the policy and emphasized the need for civic learning in the state.
Ultimately, the legislation was passed because of collaboration between the lead
advocates and public officials.
Currently, there are two major challenges to implementation. First, 114 school systems are
each charged with developing their own assessment, which reduces uniformity in how
civics is being assessed across the state. Each Local Education Agency (LEA) is also in a
different stage of developing their assessment. Kyser noted that there has been a push to
revise the bill to address this challenge, so that only one measurement tool is used across
the state. Second, given the unique nature of the assessment, new measures must be
created. According to Kyser, a pilot assessment is being developed with the schools
using the Project Citizen curriculum to evaluate what common measures could be used
across each LEA.
Hawaii Case Study: Ground-Up Advocacy
“We always joked they picked the wrong group of people, the wrong discipline to try
and reduce credits for because … we are political agents and, you know, we are active
and we are going to make this a teaching lesson for our students, too. And this is an
avenue for them to become involved … this is part of their civic duty.”
-Dr. Amber Makaiau, Director of Curriculum and Research, University of Hawaii Uehiro
Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education, University of Hawaii, Manoa
In 2011, Hawaii’s Board of Education proposed a change to the state’s graduation
requirement policy that would have reduced the number of social studies courses from
four to three. If that change had gone through, “Participation in Democracy,” which had
been a mandatory course for students since 2006, would no longer have been required.
Ultimately, the policy proposal was not approved, leaving Participation in Democracy
(PID) a required course. Thus, the advocacy campaign to save PID had two outcomes:
preventing a change detrimental to civics and preserving a relatively recent reform that
was fundamentally different from those in Florida and Tennessee (an action-oriented
course rather than an assessment). The group facilitating this campaign was Aloha POSSE
(Preserve our Social Studies Education), which was made up of social studies teachers,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), associations interested in promoting civic
education, university faculty, parents, and students.
The proposal to cut the number of social studies credits was intended to give students
more flexibility to take elective courses. According to Amy Perruso, social studies teacher
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
6 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
and department chair at Mililani High School, the proponents of the reduction felt that
there’s “no real emphasis or priority placed on civics or social studies education in No
Child Left Behind or Race to the Top requirements, so [Hawaii’s] requirements should also
reflect that [lack of] emphasis.”
However, Aloha POSSE felt the proposed reduction was a reflection of the low priority
given to social studies by public officials in the state.
Key Findings from Hawaii
Collaboration among diverse stakeholders was critical to influencing the Board of
Education’s decision on this policy. Advocates in Hawaii collaborated and campaigned
to push for the rejection of the proposal to reduce social studies credits in Hawaii. Major
strategies included: collaboration with multi-sector networks, one-on-one meetings with
the Hawaii Board of Education members, and use of media to influence public opinion.
Additionally, strategic support from a key political figure, State Senator Les Ihara (D), was
essential to the advocacy group successfully navigating the political landscape.
Aloha POSSE, the advocacy group created in response to the Board of Education’s
proposal, had the biggest influence on the policy outcome. In the years before the
proposal, there were efforts in Hawaii to build awareness and support for civic
education, through advocates’ attendance at national civic education meetings and
pushing for the state’s Kids Voting results being published in the school trends report.
Aloha POSSE originated when members of the social studies community networked at
the Hawaii Board of Education meeting at which the policy proposal was first put up for
discussion. Representatives from the Department of Education (DOE), social studies
teachers, faculty from the University of Hawaii, and representatives from several NGOs
were present. As Dr. Amber Makaiau, of the University of Hawaii, explained, “It was
through this group’s efforts, and community organization and activism, that the board
asked the DOE to go back and … work together to revise the policy.” State Senator Ihara
supported Aloha POSSE by providing political and strategic advice. His guidance led the
organization to meet with each board member and argue their position. By the time the
final board meeting was held, said Makaiau, members of Aloha POSSE “had individually
met with most of the Board of Education members. So they knew us personally... [and]
the reasoning behind why we were taking the stand that we were taking.”
In describing the collaboration in Hawaii, Dr. Lyla Berg, founder of Kids Voting Hawaii and
former Hawaii state representative, said it was “an example of civic engagement and
participation in our representative democracy at its best … we were able to connect
with constituencies on all the islands and influence the decision-making process of the
appointed Board of Education.” Practitioners, adults, and students from the independent
schools were also involved with the campaign to preserve the PID requirement.
Shifting public perception was also critical to Aloha POSSE’s campaign. There was a
general consensus among interviewees that the public did not see a link between
education and a thriving and healthy democracy. One strategy was to leverage media
to effectively communicate the group’s position. Makaiau said it was critical to
continually have “somebody write something that was going to be in the news all the
time. So whether it was letters to the editor or an editorial, or a piece of writing in the
community voices section of Civil Beat, which is an online investigative journalism kind of
outlet … we would constantly have something in the media.” Beyond fighting against
the policy, it was “an effort to educate the larger population of the role of public schools
in preparing people for democracy,” Makaiau said.
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
7 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Through these methods, the advocates sought to explain the role of the social sciences
in our democracy; to connect the dots for those who were “not making a connection
between all the things that social studies can do and have the potential for — especially
civics education,” said Makaiau. Rosanna Fukuda, Social Studies Educational Specialist
at the Hawaii Department of Education, reflected on the 2006 mandate:
There was only knowledge-based courses being taught in both political
science and civics, and there wasn’t a component of being an active
citizen in those courses. Knowledge without informed action is only
potential. We needed to build something where students would take on
real-world issues, locally or nationally, conduct research around them to
see what had been done or what hadn’t, what had worked or what
hadn’t, etc. and either propose novel solutions to these issues, or find ways
to be ‘value added’ to people and groups already working on them. The
final reflection component that was required of all students engaged this
course is vital. This enables the students to think more deeply about what
they just experienced and make adjustments in future undertakings.
Perruso, who currently teaches the course, said that the “action component is
the best part of the course … it’s when they get the most engaged with civic
action.”
Before 2006, PID had been offered as an elective course. The experiences of instructors
who taught the courses were valuable once PID became mandatory. However,
interviewees noted challenges in implementation. First, in many cases educators require
several years to build their PID curriculum as well as their confidence in teaching the
course. Second, social studies budgets decreased in the state after 2006; while
professional development was offered early on, it did not trickle down to all educators
teaching the course. Both of these challenges are also complicated by high teacher
turnover in the state. Despite these obstacles, the Hawaii Department of Education and
community-based organizations have provided professional development for teachers.
Moving forward, advocates are interested in exploring new measures for assessing the
type of project-based learning conducted through PID.
Cross-State Findings on Successful Civic Education Policy Advocacy
Despite the varied approaches to policy change in Florida, Tennessee, and Hawaii, some
common factors were essential to maintaining or strengthening each state’s civic
education policy. Theories of policy change emphasize the importance of official
leaders, grassroots coalitions, policy entrepreneurs, and the general public (see, e.g.,
C.W. Mills, 1956; Stone, 1989; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1999). We found that policy
entrepreneurs and legislators were essential to success in all three states, with some
differences in their relative importance. Of the three states, Florida seemingly had the
most “top-down” effort, whereas coalition-building and public outreach were most
important in Hawaii.
1. Leadership from a Major Advocate
Each state benefited from at least one major civic education advocate who was not a
policymaker. In Florida and Tennessee, policies passed after a long period of heightened
efforts to increase the quality of civic education. These extended periods of advocacy
helped develop continuity in leadership that was critical in passing the legislation. In
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
8 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Hawaii, leadership from local practitioners was vital to the development and
strengthening of Aloha POSSE, which in turn led to the defeat of the proposed policy
revision.
2. Developing Connections with Policymakers
In each state, advocates developed important relationships with policymakers. In Florida,
sponsors from the state Senate and education committee were vital in helping to
navigate the legislative process. They provided seasoned advice on how to get a bill
successfully through the Florida legislature. Political advocates for civics education then
helped push the legislation through the House of Representatives. In Tennessee,
relationships with state legislators facilitated advocates’ meeting other policymakers and
broadening support. In Hawaii, strategic guidance prompted advocates to initiate direct
conversations with Board of Education members who would ultimately make the
decision.
3. Navigating the Political System
Understanding and navigating the political landscape in each state was also important.
In each case, the major advocates were supported by savvy policymakers who
provided valuable strategic advice about who to talk to and how to work within the
existing political climate.
Cross-State Findings on Strategies and Challenges to Implementation
As part of the study, we interviewed key stakeholders, asking about strategies, barriers,
and next steps. The number of interviews we were able to conduct in each state
differed, and in most cases we did not speak to a wide range of school district
representatives. However, the three states seemed to share commonalities which could
prove helpful to the writing of future state civic education policy.
1. State Department of Education’s role in preparing teachers for implementation
Implementing the recent legislation in Florida and Tennessee and the 2006 mandate in
Hawaii required the support and time of people in each state’s Department of
Education. Each state has its own mechanism for communicating state policies to
teachers. Each state also differs in the number of people who would be directly involved
in implementing policy changes: Hawaii has one school district, whereas Florida has 74
and Tennessee has 142.
In Florida, steps have been taken at the state level to prepare a guiding framework for
civics, including course descriptions, instructional benchmarks, and the civics assessment.
However, the state is not required to provide the curriculum to meet those benchmarks.
As we heard from Linda Whitely, Content Specialist for K-12 Social Studies for Pinellas
County Schools, administrative support is a barrier to implementation in Florida, because
it is challenging to communicate with multiple districts at the county level.
The Florida policy is particularly complex, because it includes mandates for elementary
school reading teachers to incorporate civics content so that students coming into junior
high will be prepared for the civics assessment. As Whitely explained, “It’s statutory for K-
12 ELA (English Language Arts) students to read civics content within those classes. That is
statutorily required. I can say that this is not happening across Pinellas County.” Dobson
said “more than half of ELA teachers don’t even know it’s a requirement.” The
interviewees suggested that staff from middle schools could have influence on the
elementary schools and encourage integrating civic content into K-5 lesson plans.
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
9 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
The Tennessee legislation, which requires a project-based assessment in civics, specifies
that each Local Education Agency create its own assessment. The fact that there is no
required uniformity among LEAs to measure civic learning has posed a challenge.
According to Kyser, LEAs have not taken the required steps, and, to her knowledge,
neither has the Tennessee Department of Education. There is confusion as to whose
responsibility it is to craft this assessment, because other state tests come from the state,
rather than being developed by each LEA. Said Kyser: “School systems aren't provided
the opportunity to decide what standardized test to take for math, or language arts, or
social studies, so why would they be given the opportunity to design their own
measurements of civics [education]?” Currently, there is a push for the Tennessee
Department of Education to develop measures for the assessment, and there have been
statewide efforts to pilot an assessment in the upcoming year. Kyser “look[s] forward to
working with the Tennessee Department of Education to develop a project based civics
assessment that can be utilized on a statewide basis.”
The mandate for Participation in Democracy was present in Hawaii since 2006. Planning
for the implementation started prior to the mandate. According to Fukuda, experts from
around the state were brought together to talk about what a course with an action
component, like PID, would look like. According to her, schools were given three years’
notice that the course would be a graduation requirement. Several interviewees
described how community-based organizations played a major role in professional
development for the PID course.
However, Hawaii faced similar challenges in outreach as the other states. Says Fukuda,
“The end result was that while professional development was offered to [the state
Department of Education], it didn’t always filter back to the schools evenly. So, the
actual implementation of Participation in Democracy ... and the completeness of it, the
rigor of it, varied depending on who and how messages were being delivered.”
Although the proposal to eliminate the course mandate was defeated, interviewees still
indicate that social studies and civics may not be a priority for the Hawaii Department of
Education. As Berg says, “the state civic education policies in Hawaii are sorely lacking …
there is implied ‘civic education’ attention in the Hawaii DOE strategic plan and goals,
but nothing really specific or substantive.”
2. Need for teacher development (pre-service & in-service)
No state mandate will work well unless the teachers who must implement the policy are
educated appropriately. But interviews in all the states suggest that professional
development for civics has been weak.
As Dobson explained, “Colleges of Education need to pay attention to social studies,
and they haven’t for a very long time, by and large.” The teacher workforce is turning
over rapidly (which makes it especially challenging to ensure that all teachers receive
the necessary in-service training). Future teachers must develop identities as civics
educators while they are undergraduates. Most often, a civics teacher sees herself or
himself as a “1st grade teacher,” or “social studies teacher” first, rather than as a “civics
teacher.” According to Kyser, in Tennessee, “especially in teacher education programs,
[education majors] were not taught any civics at all … if they were taught civics it was in
a social studies methods class.” As Makaiau of Hawaii explained, “It’s a really small
scattering of people who identify as civics teachers, or who say ‘civics’ is my specialty. In
the process of becoming civics teachers, educators find themselves learning a lot of new
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
10 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
skill sets, or content knowledge … and that takes time.”
3. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide professional development, but more
is necessary
In all three states, NGOS have provided some professional development of current
teachers. The Tennessee Center for Civic Learning and Engagement has been providing
professional development to teachers despite a lack of funding allocated specifically for
that purpose. In Florida, the Lou Frey Institute was funded through the legislation;
however, according to Dobson, it’s a “drop in the bucket” given the number of teachers
and students who need to be served.
Several community-based organizations (such as Kids Voting, Project Citizen, the Hawaii
State Bar Association, and the Center for Civic Education) provided teachers in Hawaii
with curricula to teach Participation in Democracy. As Makaiau explained, “This is not an
endeavor that’s just done by the Department of Education; it really takes the support of
all of these different community organizations and groups. We're starting to break down
the walls between … the legislature, the Department of Education doing its own thing …
making it more of a collaborative effort on what we mean by civic education.”
4. Relationship to the Common Core and C3 Framework
Two new frameworks for state standards are relevant to civic education policies. The
Common Core English Language Arts standards are being adopted by 45 states and
have some provisions relevant to civics. Meanwhile, the National Council for the Social
Studies has published its own College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for the
social studies (2013).
In Tennessee, implementation of the state’s project-based assessment policy was put on
hold until the new C3 Framework was implemented, so that the assessment could be
aligned with the framework. The Tennessee Department of Education has also provided
trainings on the Common Core and C3; however, this left little funding for professional
development for the new civics assessment. Additional efforts in Tennessee were made
to connect project-based learning with the Common Core. As Kyser said, “We wanted
them to see that project based learning was great for Common Core learning because it
involved challenging questions based on what students were interested in, because
students chose their own issues.”
In Florida, some teachers are confused about how the civics assessment aligns with the
Common Core, which is an additional challenge for implementation. Dobson said,
“More recently, Common Core has become a political issue in the state. The state has
withdrawn from the testing consortium and has dropped the name ‘Common Core’ in
favor of ‘Florida Standards.’ As recent developments in New York suggest, this may not
be over yet.”
Conclusion
Florida, Tennessee and Hawaii exemplify three distinct strategies for improving civic
education. No firm evidence exists yet about which approach will benefit students the
most, but all have promise. This paper has suggested strategies for passing ambitious
state policies, whether they involve tests or course mandates. The details vary in
important ways, but in all three states we attribute success to a coalition of educators
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
11 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
and other civic specialists who received support from political leaders, including current
or former legislators. In each case, the implementation of the policy after its passage has
proven challenging. These are lessons to be considered in other states that wish to
strengthen civic education.
Methodology & Limitations
CIRCLE explored these three unique state civic education policies by collecting
perspectives from stakeholders involved with either the policy passing or implementation.
The research question was: Why did each of these states pass the policy that they did,
and what will be done to implement the policy?
We used a qualitative methodology and a convenience sample. Two CIRCLE staff
interviewed stakeholders who were selected based on their knowledge and expertise in
the state policies. In total, CIRCLE staff contacted 31 people: 12 from Hawaii, four from
Tennessee, and 15 from Florida, each of whom were contacted multiple times via email.
From the sample of 31, we received on-the-record interviews from 7 interviewees.
In order to grasp nuances and details in the data, we used a thematic analysis strategy
for this report (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The goal of thematic analysis is to understand
themes that are common across interviews. We followed a set of procedures
recommended by Braun & Clark (2006):
● Become familiar with the interviews by listening to each tape: In this project, we
generated an initial skeleton coding scheme which included higher-order
headings based on post-interview synopsis from the initial listening of the
recordings.
● Collaboratively categorize theories under higher-order headings: In our case, it
was important to discuss recordings that were categorized by sub-research
questions under the main research question.
● Review candidate themes, define and name themes: For this project, there were
three primary coders (two of the coders conducted the interviews). Four out of
the seven interviews were double-coded by the coders, and in successive
meetings, coders agreed on a list of codes. During the sessions, codes were
revised iteratively.
● Code checking: The remaining three interviews were coded individually by each
coder. Any questions were discussed as a coding group to ensure there was
agreement on coding and themes.
● Limitations: The sample selected for this study is a convenience sample with a
limited number of perspectives. Consequently, all perspectives of the policy
change and implementation are not accounted for.
CIRCLE Working Paper 79 www.civicyouth.org
________________________________________________________________________
12 | P a g e
CIRCLE Staff
Works Cited
Boyd, A.B. (2011). From the director: campaign for civic education. Retrieved from
http://flrea.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=11&Ite
mid=7.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research
in Psychology, 3, 77–101.
Mills, C. W. (1956). The power elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Postal, L. (2010, March 15). More civics education, advocates say. Orlando Sentinel.
Retrieved from http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-03-15/news/os-civics-fl-schools-
030210-20100315_1_civics-education-florida-joint-center-testing/2
Sabatier, Paul A. & Jenkins-Smith, Hank C. (1999). The advocacy coalition framework: an
assessment. In Theories of the policy process, ed. P. A. Sabatier, 117–68. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press
Stone, Clarence N. (1989). Regime politics. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas
CIRCLE (The Center for Information and
Research on Civic Learning and Engagement)
conducts research on civic education in
schools, colleges, and community settings
and on young Americans’ voting and political
participation, service, activism, media use,
and other forms of civic engagement.
It is based at the Jonathan M. Tisch College
of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts
University.
CIRCLE Working Paper 79: March 2014
www.civicyouth.org
