civics test scores by state

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Peter

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) periodically measures US students’ knowledge of civics with an instrument that looks like a test, although it has no stakes for the students or teachers. I have served on the design committee for that instrument for many years. I don’t love the framework, which is dominated by the formal structure of the federal government. However, the NAEP is a carefully constructed assessment with a large, representative sample, so the data are certainly worth using.

Because states adopt their own standards, course requirements, and other policies for civics, we would like to understand which state policies are most effective. In a recent paper, Steven Michael Carlo presents mean NAEP civics scores for each state for 2014-18. Importantly, he adjusts these scores for other factors that might affect the results, namely: individual students’ race/ethnicity and gender, whether their school is public or private, the party of the state’s governor and legislature, the state’s adult and student demographics, state per-pupil expenditures on k-12 schools, and the state’s percentage of private school students.*

Of course, one could add more variables of interest, including various state policies. However, Carlo has presented a plausible answer to the question: Which states do better at civics?

I thought it might be useful to display two columns of data from Carlo’s paper in the form of maps, because a visual display can help to suggest hypotheses. At a minimum, states like Louisiana, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Vermont that have low adjusted scores should investigate possible causes. States like Virginia, West Virginia, Washington and Florida that have high scores may provide models.

First, here are the adjusted NAEP civics scores from the most recent year (2018).

And here are changes in those scores from 2014-18.

Another research step would be to add state civics policies (such as course and test requirements) to the model.

*Carlo, Steven Michael. (2024). The State of State Civics Scores: An Application of Multilevel Regression with Post-Stratification using NAEP Test Scores. (EdWorkingPaper: 24-954). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/rn72-q717. See also: the new NAEP civics results; some surprising results from the 2010 NAEP Civics assessment; CIRCLE’s release on today’s Civics results etc.

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An Association as a Belief Network and Social Network

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Peter

This is a paper that I presented at the Midwest Political Science Association on April 6, 2024. I hope to reproduce this study with another organization before publishing the results as a comparison. I am open to investigating groups that you may be involved with–a Rotary Club like the one in this study, a religious congregation, or something else. Please contact me if you are interested in exploring such a study.

Abstract

A social network is composed of individuals who may have various relationships with one another. Each member of such a network may hold relevant beliefs and may connect each belief to other beliefs. A connection between two beliefs is a reason. Each member’s beliefs and reasons form a more-or-less connected network. As members of a group interact, they share some of their respective beliefs and reasons with peers and form a belief-network that represents their common view. However, either the social network or the belief network can be disconnected if the group is divided.

This study mapped both the social network and the belief-network of a Rotary Club in the US Midwest. The Club’s leadership found the results useful for diagnostic and planning purposes. This study also piloted a methodology that may be useful for social scientists who analyze organizations and associations of various kinds.

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simulating the French Revolution

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Peter

In The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris, Colin Jones offers so much vivid detail about the events that unfolded within a single day that I realized it would be possible to base a simulation on his work. I have not been involved in role-playing games since I was a kid, but I do use light simulations in teaching and believe in their pedagogical value. Therefore, I wrote the rules for an educational simulation/game called Thermidor. It could contribute to a history course or a more abstract course about politics and decision-making. Someone would have to write private objectives for each character, and perhaps my rules should be improved before they are used. In any case, I am making the draft available for anyone who wants to use it.

Blurb:

When the sun rises on July 27, 1794, Maximilien Robespierre is the most powerful man in France. Under the official policy of “Terror,” the revolutionary government has executed at least 16,000 people since June alone, including many politicians. France is at war with implacable foreign enemies and struggles to suppress an insurgency in the countryside. Inflation is severe despite laws limiting prices and wages. Rumors of plots and purges abound.

By the end of this fateful day, Robespierre is under arrest and on his way to the guillotine, and a period of political reaction is about to begin.

What would have happened if you had been involved?

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tracking the Biden climate investments

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Peter

The United States began a major experiment in 2022. After decades without an intentional industrial policy and not much action on the climate crisis, the federal government decided to spend something on the order of a trillion dollars over a decade to subsidize green industries.

I interpret this decision not only as a way to purchase lower emissions by (for example) buying solar panels, but also as a strategy for changing the power-base of the economy. As long as the livelihoods of many voters are tied to carbon, it’s very hard to regulate emissions. But once many people are involved with green technologies–as producers and/or consumers–they will demand green policies. This is also a competitive move, challenging other countries to subsidize their green sectors.

I believe this experiment should be on almost everyone’s minds. Conservatives and libertarians should acknowledge that it’s underway–because that’s the truth–and criticize it on its merits. Center-left people should defend it and also think hard about what comes next–whether Trump is elected and tries to undo it all or Biden gets another four years to build on it. Economic and environmentalist radicals are free to criticize the Biden strategy or to vote based on other issues, including the Mideast, but they should at least discuss the opportunities that a green industrial policy creates.

Instead, many conservatives seem locked into the idea that Biden is feckless and has done nothing. At least some on the center-left want to base the 2024 election entirely on Trump and abortion. And most radicals seem uninterested. For every thousand articles about Israel-Palestine debates on elite college campuses, I think I see less than one about the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act–which, by the way, was given a blatantly misleading name on the assumption that voters care about inflation, not climate. I am alarmed at how this whole topic is submerged.

As a very minor and amateurish effort to direct attention to the Biden climate policy, I recommend that people check out the official page for Clean Jobs America. Some points that strike me:

About $150 billion has been committed so far to concrete projects. For reference, that’s about the same as the annual budget of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s somewhat less than the annual cost of the US Navy (about $200 billion).
On a per capita basis, the largest investments are in South Carolina ($2,800 per resident), Arkansas (almost $2,000 per resident), and North Carolina ($1,800 per resident). Eleven states and DC have no specific projects yet.
South Carolina got $14 billion in investments. The same state sends $28 billion to the federal government in tax revenues annually. Basically, South Carolina is getting half its federal taxes back to fund green industry. On the other hand, Washington State sends $100 billion to DC each year and has received no clean energy support.
If you think of this as a jobs program, it is expensive. I calculate that about one job is created for every $1.2 million spent. On the other hand, the impact is not only on direct employment but also on carbon emissions, and there may be long-term positive effects on employment.
The cost of the jobs created varies a lot by sector. Only 200 jobs have been created so far in energy efficiency, but those were cheap at $30,000 per job. (If you want to accomplish something important, and it only costs you $30k to create a new position to do it, that’s a bargain.) On the other hand, the electric vehicle sector has seen more than 60,000 new jobs at $1.3 million per job.

The Biden Administration has also taken regulatory actions regarding hydrofluorocarbons and electric vehicles–see the tracker from the World Resources Institute. But I would regard the industrial policy as much more innovative and significant–for better or worse.

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read slowly, read aloud

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Peter

It feels hard to read deeply these days. Our devices distract us constantly, the world is frenetic, and we have developed habits–as well as tools–for scanning and searching instead of following someone else’s thought across many pages. I find that some students are concerned about these trends and are striving to focus more on their own reading. Yet I also perceive a decline in many students’ attention (as well as my own) during the short period since the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Alexandra Moe recently wrote a piece in The Atlantic that reports extensive research on the benefits of reading aloud–even privately. Compared to silent reading, giving voice to written words involves different regions of the brain and has documented benefits, including helping people to manage chronic pain. It sounds like a form of meditation. Indeed, in his book about Tibetan Buddhist monks, Georges Dreyfus writes:

Reading or reciting aloud is considered virtuous for several reasons. Vocalizing a text in a rhythmic pattern helps it penetrate one’s mind, where it starts to take on a life of its own. One finds oneself spontaneously repeating the words. Such absorption of religious texts is thought to have soteriological value. The virtuous nature of recitation is also tied to a view of the world as alive with a number of invisible entities [who can hear the spoken words and benefit from them].
Dreyfus, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (Kindle Locations 1212-1215).

However, in the Tibetan monasteries where Dreyfus studied,

Reading aloud was used for liturgy or by beginners, not by seasoned scholars. As scholastics, Tibetan intellectuals had to consult a vast literature, and they thus read intensively and swiftly… . Tibetan scholars often practice comparative reading, matching the opinions of several texts point by point; this practice, too, requires speed and is incompatible with vocalization. [Scholars] read silently even in their daily recitations.
Ibid., Kindle Locations 2125-2129)

It is a familiar pattern that professionals read silently to find things, thus perhaps missing the spiritual benefits of reading aloud. Declaiming written words slows us down and forces us to think about how each syllable and sentence should sound. It’s an activity for amateurs, in the best sense of that word.

With those points in mind, you might try reading Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” aloud. I’ll paste the text below.

This work has generated a large and learned literature with unresolved questions. For instance, is it about endings alone or also about rebirth? Is it apolitical or a subtle response to the dramatic political events of 1819? Is it patriotic–about a specifically English fall? Why is the narrative “I” missing?

These questions are good, but for the moment, I’d recommend simply hearing the sounds of Keats’ words in your own mouth; asking yourself where the stresses and pauses belong; visualizing, as concretely as you can, his sequence of images; and following the trajectories–as I read the poem–from September to November and from feeling through sight to sound.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

I also found my way to images of John Constable’s “The Hay Wain,” painted just two years after Keats wrote this Ode and a frequent object of comparison.

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on the current crisis

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Peter

Almost every day, I am in conversations about protests on US college campuses. Some of these encounters take place at Tufts (in committees or one-on-one with students and colleagues), but I have also been part of discussions at Stanford, Harvard, and Providence College, and in DC–just to mention events during April.

In decades past, I would have posted frequent reflections here. These days, I am relatively quiet. I hear the argument that people in positions like mine should speak out more. I think I disagree, for four reasons.

First, although taking positions can be appropriate, or even obligatory, it can create challenges if one wants to facilitate open discussions in settings like classrooms or if one wants to advise and help people who have divergent views. I am privileged to receive requests for advice from people with almost the full range of positions on Israel/Palestine, and my interpretation of my own professional role is that I ought to try to help them all.

Second, I often find myself wrestling with what individuals have said in various settings. Sometimes I am moved, challenged, and educated, and sometimes I am somewhat appalled. However, these tend to be confidential statements that are not suitable for public assessment.

Third, although I believe that everyone has a right to form and express opinions, there is also value in talking when you have a solid basis for your views and listening when you don’t. Restraint is especially important for people in my kind of position (as a full professor and associate dean)–people whose opinions may have more weight than they deserve. Just because I teach Civic Studies does not mean that anyone needs to listen to me about Israel/Palestine.

Fourth, there are other people who should be heard: those whose views are well-informed, complex, and challenging in various ways. I feel an obligation to find and share those voices but not to compete with them. (Just as one example: “Najwan Darwish on living in doubt.”)

For whatever it may be worth, my views on Israel/Palestine would probably align best with “What being pro-Palestine means to me / my platform” by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He is sharply critical of both Hamas and the Israeli government. My views on campus speech and civil disobedience are libertarian, with a strong tilt toward countering speech with speech instead of banning or punishing it. (And yes, that does also apply to really nasty speech.) In thinking about movement tactics and strategy, I’d go back to Bayard Rustin’s “From Protest to Politics” (1965). I’d interpret nonviolence not as a set of restrictions (i.e., don’t cause physical harm) but as a powerful repertoire of strategies that can accomplish political goals while increasing the odds that the activists themselves will be wise. (Please join this summer’s Frontiers of Democracy conference for more discussion of that topic.) Finally, I would support efforts to promote dialogue and listening across differences, but not to the exclusion of adversarial rhetoric, which is also essential in a democracy.

The previous paragraph was something of a disclosure, and I will regret making it if it discourages people who disagree with any of it from engaging with me.

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Unequal opportunities for voice in high school civics classes

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Peter

In CIRCLE’s 2024 national survey of youth, about 40 percent of the 18-24-year-old Americans who were polled recalled having “experiences in class, in student groups, or with school leaders where they felt their voice and opinion mattered” while they were high school students. “White (41%) and Latino youth (40%) were more likely to say they remembered such student voice experiences compared to Black and Asian youth (both 34%).”

White youth were also more likely to recall taking a course labeled “civics,” “American government,” or just “government” in high school (77% of Whites versus 64% of Blacks). After controlling for race/ethnicity, gender, college experience and age, CIRCLE finds strong positive relationships between experiencing voice in high school and planning to vote in the 2024 election. Of those who had positive experiences of voice, 81% say they are “extremely likely to vote,” as compared to 44% of those who did not.

This relationship is probably not entirely causal, with experiences of voice completely explaining the higher intentions to vote. To some extent, people who want to vote now may have sought out high school experiences or may remember those experiences when they are surveyed in the present. Some communities may both support voice in schools and encourage voting later on. Nevertheless, the correlations are stark and apply across demographic groups, which suggests that voice has a substantial impact.

We need two aspects of policy: ensure that every student takes courses on civics, government, and history, and make sure that meaningful discussion of current issues is part of those curricula.

Voting is an indicator here, not necessarily the goal. We teach civics to prepare and enourage young people to engage in many ways, not only at the ballot box. Still, voting is a clear measure of engagement.

See Kelly Siegel-Stechler, Naraya Price, Alberto Medina (with Abby Kiesa, Noorya Hayat, and Sara Suzuki), “Youth Who Develop their Voice in High School Are More Likely to Vote,” March 12, 2024

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Frontiers of Democracy Conference: The Emerging Agenda and Logistics

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Peter

Frontiers of Democracy is an annual conference hosted by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University since 2019.

Please hold the dates for this summer’s conference (June 13-15), register and purchase tickets, and consider proposing one or more sessions for the conference.

The deadline for session proposals was April 16, and we received many strong proposals, but we can still accept proposals by April 22 at midnight.

On this year’s agenda so far:

An opening plenary panel about nonviolence with Damien Conners, Heather Cronk, Jalene Schmidt, Maria Stephan, and Thupten Tendhar.

An interactive plenary session on “Prime Time Propaganda: Using Narrative, Dialogue, and Facilitation Techniques to Confront Violent Forms of Communication” with Jessie Landerman and Keisha E. McKenzie from Everyday Democracy

Presentations based on new books: Adam Seth Levine on Collaborate Now! and Samantha Majic on Lights, Camera, Feminism?: Celebrities and Anti-trafficking Politics.

Many concurrent interactive discussions or trainings, including sessions that introduce Baha’i and Buddhist approaches, efforts to lower the voting age and pass Equal Rights Amendments, community responses to violent incidents, democracy in schools and colleges, media training, and various specific methods for community conversations.

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the humanities as civic education

Posted on April 16, 2024 by Peter

Heads bent over copies of the same text, young people discuss how the author presents matters of high moral import. Their teacher is a facilitator who asks thoughtful questions and demonstrates reading with attention and care.

This is how I was introduced to college, through the Directed Studies “great books” program at Yale in the 1980s. Similar methods persist and are being revived at institutions like Stanford, which has recently enacted a Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement.

The approach dates back at least to 14th-century Italy, when Cicero’s phrase studia humanitatis became the name for a curriculum and pedagogy designed mainly for future political leaders. We might render his phrase (from Pro Archia 2:3) as the “studies appropriate for making people humane or urbane.” Gradually, a humanista became the word for a tutor–often a layman–who helped gentlemen read literature, history, and moral philosophy in order to become eloquent and virtuous. This is the origin of the “humanities,” a word that has been closely associated with notions of civic leadership and civic virtue.

I appreciate this humanistic style of civic education and would support using it more widely. By the way, there is no good reason to restrict the assigned texts to a portion of the world labeled “The West” or to label the curriculum “Western Civilization” (using a phrase that’s not very old). Texts can come from anywhere, although it makes sense to choose traditions or dialogues that extend across time. For example: from the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospels to Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi. Or from the Republic to al-Farabi to Utopia to Rousseau to the Communist Manifesto to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

However, this version of humanistic civic education conflicts with several other plausible educational theories.

One rival idea is that the humanities are cumulative research programs that benefit from specialization. On this account, we don’t want a person who wrote a thesis about Plath to teach Plato. Plato should be taught by a scholar who knows Greek, the original context, and the recent literature and its interpretive problems. Reading texts from across time and space is amateurish. It extracts the texts from their contexts and teaches students that they are free to form opinions without doing much homework.

Another rival idea assumes that citizenship is really about addressing current social problems. In that case, the most important intellectual skill is understanding and applying relevant empirical information. Instead of reading Plato or Plath, students should create literature reviews of recent social science and learn how to assess abstracts, methodology sections, and results critically. Quantitative skills become more important; interpreting texts, less so.

A third idea is that people should prepare for responsible civic engagement by learning a set of concepts. We can debate the list, but it might include separation of powers, opportunity costs, social stratification, and habeas corpus, among (many) others. Maybe students won’t remember long lectures or textbook assignments about these topics, in which case a more engaging pedagogy would be more effective. But the point is to transfer such concepts to the learners.

A fourth idea is that civic learning must be deeply experiential because it is primarily about interpersonal relationships, practical knowledge, and an appreciation of one’s specific communities. It cannot come primarily from books. Alexis de Tocqueville and John Dewey are famous proponents of the idea that we should learn the arts of citizenship from civic engagement outside the classroom.

It’s tempting to endorse all five of these ideas, but they trade off, especially given limited time and resources.

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Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689

Posted on April 11, 2024 by Peter

(Palo Alto) I recommend Healey’s 2023 history of 17th-century England as an important and enjoyable work.

I grew up thinking about this topic, since my Dad was a scholar of English intellectual life in the 1600s and he regularly taught British political history.

In that century, England was on a path toward global power and influence and was already forming the colonial societies that later became the USA, the Irish Republic, and the Anglophone Caribbean. England also experienced the ferment of revolution, radical political and religious ideas, and the Scientific Revolution. Key interpretive questions, such as the causes of the Civil War and the originality of the early Enlightenment, have long been contested; and the rival interpretations of Whig liberals, Marxists, evangelical Christians, and others have implications for the present. The events of 1640-1690 cast long shadows, and I wanted to get one current interpretation of them.

Healey meets my criteria for good historical writing. First, he makes broad points but is not locked onto a few reductive theses. He tends to emphasize the cultural aspects of the Civil War, particularly the clash between radical puritanism and traditional forms of recreation and worship that the Puritans sought to ban. This explanation may compete with political or economic accounts, but Healey doesn’t exclude a range of evidence as he makes a case for what he calls a “culture war.”

I was left thinking that it was unfortunate that a culture war coincided with the effervescence of republican ideas, because the backlash to puritans’ religious reforms may have prevented them from building a durable republic with a broad base of support. However, perhaps 17th-century political radicalism needed religious inspiration.

Second, Healey chooses stories with vivid protagonists to make serious points. For example, his title comes from a science-fiction novella of the same name that Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, published in 1666. Cavendish is a fascinating character, and Healey relates her life for several pages. But he chooses his stories to illustrate general patterns, not to entertain with zany anecdotes or to present historical figures as strange and colorful (as popular historians often do).

Finally, Healey documents facts, quotes, interpretations, and stories by citing a large number of primary and secondary sources. Although he wears his learning lightly, I felt in safe hands, since he has obviously read widely and carefully. This period is very well documented, compared to earlier times, and Healey takes advantage of the evidence. (For example, weekly and daily publications devoted to political news originated during the year 1641 and then proliferated manically.)

I learned much from The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, but a few larger points stand out for me.

I was surprised by the scale and cruel destructiveness of the Civil War. I knew about the set-piece battles but not the massacres.

I see more clearly how the intense political debates of the 1650s morphed into the intellectual debates and innovations of the Restoration period–the English Revolution shifting into the Scientific Revolution once many thinkers became disillusioned with political conflict.

I hadn’t realized the extent to which England developed economically from 1600 to 1700–with slavery serving an essential role in the nation’s substantial growth and development.

Healey doesn’t dwell on the following point, but he provides support for it. I would describe England in 1600 as a country with a monarch but very little national government. The government could not field a standing army or collect taxes from a broad spectrum of the society; it didn’t even have a rough idea how many people, farms, and businesses lay within its borders. One reason for high rates of violence was a lack of capacity for social control. Each Stuart monarch struggled with parliaments because the only way to obtain enough revenue to project power was to persuade the big landowners and towns to provide it by consent, although sometimes a king would amass enough money to rule for a time without the legislature.

In contrast, the England of 1700 had a government with considerable capacity. As Healey notes, it occupied the former location of the royal palace at Whitehall, while the monarchs moved west to St. James and Kensington. The government had officers, employees, and statistics. This is the fundamental reason that the monarchy was now much less significant and on it way to irrelevance.

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