In lieu of a post here today, I have an article up on the American Federation of Teachers’ Shanker Institute blog, entitled “Educational Equity During A Pandemic.” It begins:
My wife and I have each spent many hours teaching by video this spring. While sitting in the same house, I meet online with college students who attend a selective private university; she meets with 5-to-9-year olds in an urban public school system, helping them learn to read.
Both of us think and worry about equity: how to treat all students fairly within our respective institutions and across the whole country (even the world). And both of us discuss these issues with our respective colleagues. I suspect that many other educators are similarly wrestling with the challenges of teaching equitably while schools are closed.
I hope it may have some value for people currently teaching remotely (at any level) or for parents and other adults concerned about education while schools are shut.
CIRCLE is out with the 2020 YESI (Youth Electoral Significance Index). It identifies the House and Senate races and states where the youth vote will make the most difference to the 2020 election.
For instance, the graphic shows the top-10 House races in the YESI.
The YESI page also explains why these states and districts will matter, which can be useful guidance for analysts, observers, and political actors.
Every young person should vote. Parties, candidates, interest groups, and election officials should encourage youth voting everywhere. Reporters should cover the youth vote as a news story everywhere.
That said, political realism dictates that all these players will concentrate their attention and resources where it matters most to electoral outcomes. Informing them can increase their net investment in youth voting, with benefits for democracy. Hence the YESI, which proved influential in 2018.
The apparently intentional release of Navy videos showing strange flying objects has prompted discussion of UFOs in respectable places like Vox and Bloomberg. I don’t take the news very seriously, although I do agree that the videos are interesting artifacts and people should be able to explore all intelligible hypotheses about them, including ones that involve visitors from other planets. There should be no UFO taboo.
I’m thinking instead about the moral significance of the hypothesis of alien visitors and how that fits into the history of science. What aliens think about us would be entirely contingent on them. They might admire us, condescend kindly to us, ignore us, or view us as food. From our perspective, their stance would be entirely random. Even if the first group of alien visitors happened to be disarmingly appreciative, the next batch might decide to spray us like a nest of termites. Whatever we happen to think of ourselves as a species would have no relationship to what they think of us. Their attitude would depend entirely on what kind of creatures they were. Arrogant technocrats? Intergalactic manatees, browsing peacefully through space without a hint of aggression? Simply hungry?
Most human beings have believed in gods or a god of some kind. Our theories of the divine have varied; by no means all divinities have been seen as perfect or even as particularly good. But a common thread is their interest in us. Whether they are prone to fall in love with some of us, or give us laws, or sacrifice their only-begotten Son to save us, they seem to care about people. Although one style of religious rhetoric reminds us to be humble, trembling in the sight of a just God, a simultaneous implication is that the divine has turned its face to us and cares what we do. Therefore, most religions–Buddhism perhaps offering an important exception–have emphasized the importance of human beings even as they have compared us to something better.
Many scientists are also religious, yet science can be seen as a break with the elements of religion that tend to build us up. It investigates nature as a domain without purpose, in which each event occurs because of the events before it–not in order to accomplish any independent end. Facts are distinct from values, and only hypotheses about facts are testable. We are part of nature, determined by efficient causes that could be understood without any reference to values. Science presumes that nature exists independent of our intelligence and seeks to purge human subjectivity from our understanding of nature.
In all these ways, science tends to diminish the human. In 1963, Hannah Arendt wrote: “To understand physical reality seems to demand not only the renunciation of an anthropocentric or geocentric world view, but also a radical elimination of all anthropomorphic elements and principles.” It therefore undermines the idea “that man [sic] is the highest being we know of.” The idea of superiority is “alien to the scientist, to whom man is no more than a special case of organic life and to whom man’s habitat — the earth, together with earthbound laws — is no more than a special borderline case of absolute, universal laws, that is, laws that rule the immensity of the universe.”
She had in mind at least several epochal events that were recent when she wrote. Physicists had discovered laws and processes that allowed them to build weapons that could destroy human life on earth. Computers had begun to “supplant and enlarge human brain power.” And human beings had left the earth and taken pictures of it.
She was also concerned that physics had revealed truths about nature that were deeply counterintuitive, thus severing the traditional link between ordinary experience and the refined experiences achieved with scientific instruments and methods. However, the “the lost contact between the world of the senses and appearances and the physical world” had been restored in the most horrible way, when the insights of theoretical physics had enabled massive terrestrial explosions.
Arendt doesn’t mention the Shoah in this essay. For her teacher, Heidegger, Auschwitz demonstrated the evil of technology and what we might call a scientific view of the world. But that was itself an evil theory, since the cause of the Holocaust was actually Nazism, with which Heidegger was complicit. Arendt carries forward some of his deepest ideas about science and nature but avoids or evades this particular application of his theory.
She considers the idea that our quest for truth dignifies us–that science boosts our stature by making us the great discoverers. However, she says,
man, insofar as he is a scientist, does not care about his own stature in the universe or about his position on the evolutionary ladder of animal life; this ‘carelessness’ is his pride and his glory. The simple fact that physicists split the atom without any hesitations the very moment they knew how to do it, although they realized full well the enormous destructive potentialities of their operation, demonstrates that the scientist qua scientist does not even care about the survival of the human race on earth or, for that matter, about the survival of the planet itself.
For her, space travel does not show that human beings can expand our knowledge and escape our limitations. It rather exemplifies the way we have turned everything we experience into products of our science:
The astronaut, shot into outer space and imprisoned in his instrument-ridden capsule where each actual physical encounter with his surroundings would spell immediate death, might well be taken as the symbolic incarnation of Heisenberg’s man — the man who will be the less likely ever to meet anything but himself and man-made things the more ardently he wishes to eliminate all anthropocentric considerations from his encounter with the non-human world around him.
It can certainly be argued that the progress of science makes us humble in a good way. We are part of nature, not uniquely valuable but deeply integrated and interdependent. Therefore, we should start treating our natural environment with more respect. The problem, however, is that science demonstrates its success even as it avoids any intrinsic values, including the value of nature or human beings. The “should” in the sentence, “We should start treating …” makes no sense for science.
Arendt thought that space travel would bring the end of our respect for ourselves, because we would be able to view ourselves explicitly and literally as science has always implicitly understood us. “If we look down from this point upon what is going on on earth and upon the various activities of men …, then these activities will indeed appear to ourselves as no more than ‘overt behavior,’ which we can study with the same methods we use to study the behavior of rats.” Technology will no longer appear “as the result of a conscious human effort to extend man’s material powers, but rather as a large-scale biological process” (quoting Bohr). If our technology is destroying the environment that sustains us, science will explain why that outcome is biologically determined without supplying any reason for us to stop it.
I would suggest that space travel did not reorient us as much as Arendt expected, partly because it has proven rather disappointing. No colonies on Mars 57 years after her essay. But the thought-experiment that aliens are flying around our earth–and the argument that we ought to study them scientifically–this captures the moment when “the stature of man would not simply be lowered by all standards we know of, but have been destroyed.”
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (May 6, 2020)—To bolster participation and keep voters safe in 2020, Massachusetts needs to quickly redesign its voting system, according to a new policy report from the Center for State Policy Analysis (cSPA) at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. The report, titled “Preparing for elections in the shadow of COVID-19,” details the essential decisions and difficult choices facing the Commonwealth as it responds to the challenge of holding elections during a pandemic.
Key findings:
Demand for absentee voting and vote-by-mail will likely be enormous, requiring dramatic upgrades to state and municipal capacity. Centralizing parts of this process could help alleviate the burden on cities and towns and reduce the risk of local bottlenecks.
There is no definitive answer to the question of whether Massachusetts should automatically send absentee ballots to all registered voters, only a complex balance between expanded opportunity and election security.
Keeping the voter registration period open longer—or allowing election day registration—would help offset the disruptions COVID-19 will have on field operations and traditional registration drives.
Polling places need to remain open as an option for all voters, including those with unstable housing, individuals with serious disabilities, and black and Hispanic voters, who have historically shown a preference for in-person voting. Allowing early voting for the September primary could also improve access.
The cost of necessary changes could be substantial, particularly for cities and towns. However, Massachusetts has access to significant federal funding for voting access, including a large amount of unused money from the 2002 Help America Vote Act.
Keeping voters informed of these changes will require a concerted communications campaign. Young voters, including college students, may benefit from robust partnerships connecting election officials with universities, educators and youth-serving organizations.
The COVID-19 crisis makes Massachusetts susceptible to other risks, and contingency planning needs to account for the threats of voter suppression, disinformation and more.
“We have four months until the September primary,” said Evan Horowitz, executive director of cSPA. “These kinds of system-wide changes take time—whether it’s recruiting poll workers from less vulnerable populations or reorganizing operations to accommodate the projected spike in absentee voting.”
”Now is the time to closely consider and enact changes to the Commonwealth’s election procedures to ensure that all voters, including young people voting for the first time, can safely and securely participate in the 2020 primary and general elections,” said Alan Solomont, dean of the Tisch College of Civic Life. “While there are many legislative, regulatory and financial considerations, we also must be ready to deploy innovative partnerships—between state and local officials, universities, schools, non-profit organizations, and the media—to ensure that Massachusetts’ voters have access to clear and reliable information about voting.”
In developing this report, cSPA was aided by a number of election experts, including Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tisch College, and Brian Schaffner, Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies at Tufts.
In the coming months, cSPA plans to release:
An analysis of the Transportation Climate Initiative, which would establish a regional cap-and-trade system covering emissions from cars and trucks; and,
Research on the projected impact of the fall 2020 ballot questions, potentially including right to repair, nursing home reimbursement rates, expanded sales of beer and wine in food stores and ranked-choice voting.
In a new paper from Tisch College entitled “The Civics of a Green New Deal,” Carmen Sirianni proposes civic strategies to address the climate crisis. A “civic” approach means engaging citizens and a wide range of organizations in planning, negotiation, and coordinated action.
Below is a preface that I wrote. The whole document is on the Tisch College site.
Command-and-control regulation and taxing-and-spending will not suffice [to address the climate crisis]. To see why, consider the example of public transportation. If more people made more use of trains, we would burn less carbon and could mitigate local effects of climate change by shifting commuting and development patterns to better locations. Public spending is necessary for this purpose, but it is insufficient. To help the climate, large numbers of people must actually use new public transportation options. If many residents oppose construction, they will block or delay public works projects in their own backyards. On the other hand, if people have a say in where and how the money is spent, their input will help to ensure that new transportation is genuinely popular and heavily used. People who are involved in the public effort are also more likely to adjust their purchases, business decisions, and volunteering to benefit the environment.
Addressing the climate crisis is all the reason we need to make a Green New Deal civic. Sirianni offers much advice, based on decades of experience and research, about how to incorporate public involvement in such large-scale efforts. For readers who are primarily concerned about the environment, his paper speaks for itself.
I will, however, add another reason to support a civic version of the Green New Deal. Like the environment, democracy faces deep challenges globally, arguably amounting to a second crisis. Freedom House has “recorded global declines in political rights and civil liberties for an alarming 13 consecutive years, from 2005 to 2018. The global average score has declined each year, and countries with net score declines have consistently outnumbered those with net improvements.”[1] Many powerful and influential countries are authoritarian (e.g., China) or have moved from democracy toward authoritarianism (e.g., Brazil and India). Public opinion data from many countries, including the United States, reveals disaffection with liberal and democratic values and growing support for authoritarianism.[2]
Two responses are widely considered and promoted. One is to reform the processes or systems of democracy in a given country: how elections are financed, how electoral districts are drawn, how rights are defined and enforced, how corruption is investigated and punished, and related topics. The other response is to support political movements, parties, and candidates who honor democratic principles while they also effectively address concrete problems that matter to large constituencies, such as recessions, inequality, violence—or, indeed, climate change.
Both responses are appropriate and worthy, although the details vary in each country (and each US state). But there is also another way to strengthen democracies. Citizens need opportunities to address crucial problems together. They need the skills, encouragement, and support to be part of improving their own communities. They must work together across demographic and partisan divides and with various kinds of institutions and professions. Such opportunities generate support for democratic political systems. In their absence, we can expect alienation and polarization that weaken democracy.
The original New Deal was designed to address an economic crisis. The unemployment rate reached 24.9% in 1933. That was the main—and perhaps a sufficient—rationale to launch massive public works programs, just as the climate crisis is the main reason for environmental programs today. But the original New Deal also helped to save democracy at a time when most of the world was governed by dictators or foreign empires. Americans gained a sense of agency, optimism, confidence, loyalty to democratic institutions, appreciation for differences, and public purpose by serving in or cooperating with New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Many WPA projects explicitly extolled democracy in innovative and compelling ways that still resonate today.[3] The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) not only gave productive employment to the same demographic group that was a bulwark of fascism in Europe—unemployed young men without college educations—but also offered a nonpartisan curriculum in support of democracy.[4]
The New Deal did not adequately confront racial injustice. It largely preserved gender hierarchies. For these reasons and others, it left the project of building democracy badly incomplete. But it arguably did more to preserve and improve democratic institutions than any of the political reforms that occurred in the same era. The change was cultural and proved lasting. The New Deal shifted behaviors, values, and expectations—including expectations for racial justice, which bore fruit in the next generation.[5]
If the United States and other advanced economies attempt to address the climate crisis through substantial public spending (which is the heart of the Green New Deal), they must again take the opportunity to preserve and strengthen democracy. That means applying the detailed advice in Carmen Sirianni’s paper.
[2] Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy, no. 1 (2017): 5-16.
[3] Jane De Hart Mathews, “Arts and the People: The New Deal Quest for a Cultural Democracy,” The Journal of American History (1975): 316-339.
[4] Melissa Bass, The Politics and Civics of National Service: Lessons from the Civilian Conservation Corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2013).
[5] Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
A recent paper entitled “A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology”* presents a theory much like the one I have begun to develop in a series of posts on this blog and other work.
If we construe ideologies as complex systems, we have (at least) two levels of systems embedded in each other. At the individual level, the elements are ideas, beliefs, and values, whose interactions give rise to a person’s understanding of society, which in turn guides individual political behavior. At the group level, the elements are individual minds whose interactions give rise to discourses and power dynamics, which in turn guide collective action and societal change. We thus conceive of an ideological system as a network of minds, where minds are networks of concepts.
The authors of “A Complex Systems Approach” also diagram the ideology of the Tea Party Movement, using the qualitative analysis in a well-known article by Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin as their material.
Their diagram of the Tea Party is not heavily documented, but it demonstrates a payoff of their method. A paradox about the Tea Party is that they were powerful opponents of Obamacare yet passionate defenders of Medicare. The authors of “A Complex Systems Approach” explain this pattern by arguing that “representations of social programs are connected on one hand with representations of the self as a hard worker contributing to society and, hence, deserving of the government check …, but on other hand with the highly negative representations of government, spending, and taxation common to conservative ideologies.”
Each idea and link in the Tea Party ideology is consistent enough in its own way, and the overall system generates a combination of policy positions that only seem inconsistent if you try to place the whole ideology on one linear spectrum from pro- to anti-welfare. As a network of ideas, the ideology is as well structured as many others are. This is not an endorsement, since some of the specific nodes in the Tea Party’s network are objectionable by my lights. But a complex systems model offers a more refined analysis.
The word “complex” is used loosely and in various ways, but the authors of “A Complex Systems Approach” mean systems that exhibit “emergence, nonlinearity (disproportionality of cause and effect), path dependency, and multiple equilibria.” In the Tea Party ideology, for example, resentment of groups perceived as undeserving (which, in turn, is a racialized perception) has a powerful effect because of its location in the whole network. The Tea Party can land in several places (libertarian or #MAGA) that reflect multiple equilibria.
I find it intuitive that our ideas are structured and that the structures matter apart from the lists of individual ideas we hold. I acknowledge that we are not necessarily conscious of the whole structures of our own thought. Self-consciousness requires critical introspection and/or interaction with other people, and it is always partial.
However, I do believe we are conscious of portions of the network at any given time–not just the individual ideas, but the connections among them. Much of our discourse is about mini-structures of ideas, e.g., “I think this because of that.” Methods that reveal structures of ideas and links are alternatives to the family of methodologies that use latent variables to “explain” lists of specific beliefs, as in Moral Foundations Theory. I believe that such methods assume rather than demonstrate that human beings are driven by a few unconscious psychological traits. Although such explanations offer some insight, they should be combined with methods that allow us to see how people and groups build more complex structures. This is why I am excited to see this new paper and the work that underlies it.
* Homer-Dixon, Thomas, Jonathan Leader Maynard, Matto Mildenberger, Manjana Milkoreit, Steven J. Mock, Stephen Quilley, Tobias Schröder, & Paul Thagard. “A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology: Cognitive-Affective Structures and the Dynamics of Belief Systems.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology [Online], 1.1 (2013): 337-363. Web. 4 May. 2020. I had been previously influenced by Thagard’s work although I have not made the detailed study of it that it deserves.
Most trees have leafed out for two or three days. Each leaf unfolding in place to fill its space, green; But the trees that flowered are wilting now, Bold blooms shrinking to leave more space between, Dwindling to stipples along each bough. Superimposed: a lacy screen, damascened, Patches on a slate background--the dripping sky-- Grey except at some hidden place where a break Must let the sun flood up to certain high Shingles, a wire, a spire that's a streak Of brilliant white. All silent, a still sheen, Sheer, stretched thin to fade or end in a blaze.
It was a different time. Also a different place: I wrote it in our usual home in Cambridge, MA, but we have been sheltering for weeks in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard.
I will say one thing for the poem: it is precisely described. “Wire” and “spire” are convenient rhymes, and they probably look forced, but I actually watched the slender white spire of Memorial Church and a telephone wire, both lit from below by a band of setting sun breaking through low clouds.
I am sharing this survey invitation by request and would encourage you to send it to middle-school or high-school students you know, including those in schools or programs where you work (if their own policies allow).
I would like to invite you to participate in a survey on how adolescents are understanding and processing what COVID-19 means to humanity and their societies, as well as thinking about themselves, their societies, and their future trajectories and opportunities during the COVID-19 global crisis. I want to know more about your perspective on what is going on, and your participation is valuable to helping better understand what impacts the changes related to COVID-19 have on young people.
The study is being conducted by myself, Gabriel Velez, with the approval of the Marquette University Institutional Review Board. You are eligible to participate in this study because you are a middle or high school student.
If you decide to participate in this study, you will be asked to complete an online survey of approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Your answers will be recorded, but they will only be connected to your name if you provide us with your name to be contacted for a follow up survey. Your responses will not be shared with your school. At the end of the survey, we will ask for your email address if you are willing to participate in a follow up interview with a researcher.
In order to participate in this survey, you will have to give your informed consent. If you are under 18 years old, you will also need your parents to indicate that they give you permission to participate. When you click the link to the survey, the first page will be for you to read and agree to. The second page will then be for your caregiver, and they should read it over and click that they give permission for you to participate.
Remember, this is completely voluntary. Your decision to participate or not will not be known by anyone at your school or affect your relationship with your school or with any school personnel.
You can choose to be in the study or not. If you’d like to participate or have any questions about the study, please email Gabriel Velez (Gabriel.velez@marquette.edu).
Thank you very much. Sincerely, Gabriel Velez Marquette University College of Education
This is just a salvo in the current debate about whether the feds should send money to states:
“It’s not fair to the taxpayers of Florida. We sit here, we live within our means, and then New York, Illinois, California and other states don’t. And we’re supposed to go bail them out? That’s not right,” GOP Sen. Rick Scott tells poolers of sending more money to states— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) April 27, 2020
The Rockefeller Institute calculates the net flow of money from state to state on a per capita basis. Note that net money flows from New York and Illinois (although not actually from California) toward Sen. Scott’s Florida (h/t Jonathan Cohn).
But this is as it should be. The progressive position should be that people in the band of states from Pennsylvania to Arizona deserve support from states like New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. It is not a matter of noblesse oblige or the kindness of Yankees. Wealth is concentrated in places like Manhattan and Boston. These places are home to many rich individuals and concentrations of organized capital. Progressives believe that concentrated capital is problematic. At a minimum, it distorts power. At the worst, it is exploitative, expanding at the expense of people in Alabama or New Mexico. People in those states have a right to a larger share of the national wealth.
It’s OK to make fun of conservative politicians from recipient states who won’t acknowledge that they benefit from federal redistribution.
It’s important to think about why people in recipient states often vote against redistribution while people from supplier states may vote for it.
There is also a troubling paradox that the political party that is at least mildly more favorable to redistribution draws so much of its votes from states that lose out from redistribution. From William Jennings Bryan to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the states that wanted a strong federal role in the economy were net recipients of federal aid, and they viewed Wall Street as their enemy. Now the Senate Democratic Leader, the nation’s most prominent Democratic governor, and the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee all directly represent Wall Street.
These are paradoxes and conundrums, but the best response is not to object to the interstate flow of money, to mock Red State politicians for mischaracterizing it, or to ask people in poorer states to be more grateful for the help they get from the north. The right response is to reinforce public support for the social contract that rightly sends money from Massachusetts to Mississippi.
Today, the National Assessment Governing Board released new results for social studies subjects from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). EdWeek says, “8th Graders Don’t Know Much About History, National Exam Shows.” Betsy DeVos calls the findings “stark and inexcusable.”
History and geography scores fell, although I don’t know if I’d agree with EdWeek’s Stephen SawchukandSarah D. Sparks that “Eighth graders’ grasp of key topics in history have plummeted.” Here are the median history scores over time:
I would probably say that history scores “declined to a significantly significant degree compared to 2014, meaning that the change from 2014-18 is unlikely to reflect sampling bias.” The differences between 2018 and all other years are within the margin of error and therefore may not be improvements or declines at all.
Civics is my own field of interest, and I was one of the designers of the NAEP Civics Assessment instrument. The results for Civics were flat. (Unless you want to say that they “plummeted” by one point.)
The NAEP is extraordinarily useful for analyzing differences in scores by demographic group and for understanding how educational experiences (e.g., taking an 8th grade civics course) relate to outcomes. Unless you have worked with the dedicated folks at the Educational Testing Service and the National Assessment Governing Board, you cannot imagine how careful they are about test-design and implementation or how complex the whole process is.
However, as in the past, I would like to offer these caveats about the NAEP results and the surrounding commentary.
First, as noted above, the changes are subtle, and some are within the margin of error. There is no evidence here of dramatic decline.
Second, the definitions of “proficient” and “advanced” are basically arbitrary. The 1998 designers chose scores that would count as “proficient,” based on their own judgment. Based on the data from that year, they said that just 22% of American 8th graders were proficient. They must have been aware that they would communicate a message of crisis.
The subsequent Assessments have been normed to the 1998 instrument. Roughly speaking, if we drafted an instrument that indicated a major improvement, it would probably not be fielded as such, because the high scores in the pilot phase would suggest that it was an invalid measure–the questions must be too easy.
Therefore, it isn’t really news that the proficiency level is in the neighborhood of 25%. That is how the test is designed. This is not to say that we can’t gradually boost it to 30% or higher if we make a lot of progress in classrooms. But you should understand why the numbers could not be much higher.
The judgment that most kids are not proficient is subject to debate. If you look at the actual questions and how many 8th graders got each one right, you may conclude that most students are below proficient. Or you may think that the questions are surprisingly hard and that we are expecting a lot from 13-year-olds.
For instance, 50% answered this item right:
The United States Congress can pass a bill even if the President disagrees with the bill because
Congress must make sure that the needs of all citizens are met
Congress can make laws more quickly when it does not have to involve the President
Congress usually knows more about what the laws mean than the President does
Congress is the primary legislative power of the government
Is 50% a terrible result, or not too bad? That is a matter of judgment and expectations, not statistics.
Third, the NAEP measures some things but not others. The Civics assessment includes many items about the structure of the US government–which branch or level has what authority. It excludes current events, value-commitments (such as patriotism or commitment to equality), items about social issues, detailed questions about civic institutions outside of government (e.g., What does a PTA do?), items about specific state and local governments, and measures of students’ civic activity outside of school.
Finally, it is difficult to separate reading from civics, particularly at the 4th and 8th grade levels. I don’t think anyone does that better than the NAEP does, but it’s an intrinsic challenge.
A kid who hasn’t actually learned anything specific about the US government but is used to reading advanced texts–The Lord of the Rings, for example–could glean a lot of correct answers based on the meaning of words like “primary” and “legislative” in the example above. A different kid who has dutifully learned some specific civics content might be thrown by the language of the Assessment, especially when the prompts contain longer passages.
It is true that literacy is a civic asset and that people who can do a lot with words are better prepared for civic life. However, if we think there is a separate domain of civic learning–as I do–then measuring it with a written instrument that isn’t confounded with literacy is a challenge.
Overall, I believe there is valuable information in the NAEP (and it’s important for Congress to fund it regularly). But the headlines are hyped. The data show evidence of stability in the relatively narrow set of outcomes that the Assessment measures, with the caveat that the test is designed to be stable over time. If we want to improve civics, we should focus mainly on what helps various kinds of kids to learn the various domains of content that are on the test–plus the important outcomes that the NAEP does not measure at all.
