The Work of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship

Data is, of course, what we in education are now obsessed with. Everything comes back to data. How are we doing? Let’s look at the data. How have our kids grown? Lets look at the data. How effective are our teachers? Let’s look at the data. Well, this is no less true for the work we do here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. And, happily, we have some data for you to share in the wonderful infographic our own Mike Barnhardt has put together. Now, we are not normally ones to toot our own horn, but, well, one has to these days, doesn’t one?

infographic

We are quite proud of the work that we do here, and we hope to be able to continue this work if the legislature continues our funding. We do believe, based on the data that we have gathered, that our work and our resources have had an impact. This is the result of a team effort:
Valerie McVey: Curriculum Director
Peggy Renihan: Regional Program Coordinator
Dr. Elizabeth Washington: Pedagogy Specialist
Dr. Terri Fine: Content Specialist
Mike Barnhardt: Web Developer
Laura Stephenson: Assistant to the Executive Director of the Lou Frey Institute
Shena Parks: Office Manager
Dr. Doug Dobson: Executive Director of the Lou Frey Institute 

One of the most important elements of good citizenship is the ability to work together as a team and collaborate for the common good. Here at the FJCC, we believe that we have that ability and we love our work. We look forward to continuing this sort of self-evaluation over the course of the next year.


Florida Middle School Civics EOCA Review Resources

The Middle School Civics EOCA is just around the corner, and we have been asked about resources that might be useful in reviewing for the exam. So without further ado, here are some possibilities that could serve you well! I have personally reviewed each of these resources, and am comfortable recommending them to you. And if you have any additions to this compilation, please feel free to share! Click on the link in the heading or in the text to access the resource.

FLDOE 2015 Civics Content Focus Reports

CFR

The 2015 Civics Content Focus Reports give you at least some idea of what the test might look like. Be sure to note the cautions on page 9. You will also want to review the Civics EOC Test Item Specifications, which you hopefully have been using throughout the year!

Florida Students Civics Tutorials

tutorial

We have written about these tutorials before, and they are the first resource I recommend for both instruction and review. They are excellent for a flipped classroom model as well. If you are planning on using them as a review resource, I recommend assigning students only the parts of the tutorials they need, and it would be more effective to perhaps set these up in learning stations across the classroom. You could require that students screen-capture or write down responses to the assessment elements in order to ensure completion and comprehension.

Escambia County Civics EOC Review Site

escambia aa

The Escambia site is one that we helped develop, so we do have some attachment to it, but we also believe that the Student Friendly Readings for each benchmark clarification, as well as the assessment items (with answers) and Quizlet vocabulary review tool can serve you well in a review effort. Students can use each of the one page readings to refresh key content that they need, and it lends itself well to a learning center or small group model of review.

Florida Virtual School Resources

RRSFLVSThe recorded review sessions, available for free at the bottom of the FLVS page, do a good job covering elements of each of the four reporting categories that will be assessed on the EOC. Because they are about 2 hours long, you will want to preview each one and determine where you might want students to focus their attention. They may also provide you with a model for your own approach to classroom-based reviews. I especially appreciate how an effort is made to integrate assessment elements. Please be aware that you will need to download Blackboard Collaborate to run the videos. 

You will also want to check out the FLVS Civics EOC Practice test, which may be of use to you. Again, however, this shouldn’t be the first time that students are being exposed to these types and styles of items. Answers to the practice test items are available here. Note that answers are actually explained as well, which is an excellent element of review. I would suggest actually having students explain WRONG answers. If they can tell you why an answer is wrong, they should have a much easier time of figuring out why an answer might be right!

Civics EOC Boot Camp Model

We wrote about this review model last year, and it may be one that you find useful as well. It worked well for Randall Middle School, and it is a positive way to mix things up a little for both you and your students. We explored this model in great detail in this post, and I encourage you to take a look and see if it is something you might like to do.

District Review Sheets and Practice Tests 

Many districts have done a good job developing practice tests and review sheets for the EOC. Based on what I have had a chance to see, I can recommend a couple at the least.

Marion Review

Marion County, which has fantastic leadership in the social studies department, has provided teachers and students with an EOC study guide, made up of a mix of short answer questions, EOC style questions, and vocabulary, all of which draw on the test item specifications. All or part of this is something that I encourage you to adapt and adopt for your own review. Even having the students collaborate on the completion of the study guide could be a huge help for them in preparing for the EOC. Note that the guide is developed in conjunction with their own particular pacing guide and text; you can adapt the chapter and unit headings where necessary.

pasco

Pasco County has provided a quality practice test as well, though I prefer the FLVS version because of the answer explanations. Still, it is another way to measure student understanding and get a sense of areas of need while also ensuring ongoing exposure to EOC type questions.

TEACHER WEBSITES

Civics With Mr. Kula

Kula

Mr. Kula, social studies teacher at Westpine Middle School in Broward County, has compiled a number of quality content rich and illustrated study guides for the Civics EOC that could be useful for you. While they don’t cover every benchmark, what IS there is effective, and broken down by topic. These would be appropriate for students to use in conjunction with a written review or in small groups using an ‘expert group’ teaching model.

Mrs. Hirsch’s Civics Page

hirsch

Mrs. Hirsch, a teacher at Fruit Cove Middle School in St. John’s County, has gathered a number of excellent tools for EOC review. The EOC Content Review sheets that she has provided are well done and engaging, and definitely worth sharing with your own students:
Q1 Civics What You Need to Know

Q2 Civics What You Need to Know

Legislative Branch Content Review

Executive Branch Content Review

Judicial Branch Content Review

Civics Assessment Strategy Guide

Kotkin Strategies

Here is an EXCELLENT and short powerpoint covering strategies for the EOC. I cannot recommend it enough!

Ruckel Middle School Civics Flashcards

ruckel

Ruckel Middle School, in Okaloosa County, has developed a tool using Quizlet that provides students with flashcards for review. These might be useful as a bellringer or exit slip activity as you wrap up content this year and start to transition to in depth review.

Ms. Sirmopoulos’ Civics Review Materials

Jackie

Jackie Sirmopoulos, an excellent and wonderfully effective teacher at PK Yonge Lab School in Gainesville, has been teaching Civics, with some of the highest scores in the state, for awhile. She has provided a plethora of useful review materials that I encourage you to explore. I have looked at almost all of them in each folder, and are all well aligned to the benchmarks and useful in helping you start to address possible student deficiencies while ensuring understanding among all of your students.

These are just a few of the quality review resources that you might find beneficial. If you have any additional resources to share, please shoot me an email or leave it in the comments!


New Civics Certificate Program!

Well, we here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship got some great news recently. Last year, I told you about our effort to create a civics certificate program for pre-service social studies teachers. Well, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the program here at UCF has been approved! While the program is, for budgetary, personnel, and university reasons, currently limited to University of Central Florida students, we hope in the future to create a graduate version of the program that we can offer to practicing teachers. We also hope to establish this certificate in other academic institutions across the state!
So what will this program involve? Well, the idea behind the certificate is that it will
provide the content, skills, and pedagogies needed to deliver instruction for 7th grade Civics in Florida. This would, we hope, improve the teacher’s ability to prepare their kids for the Civics EOCA at the end of the course (NOT the naturalization test, mind you!). It will also, we believe, support US Government instruction in high school, especially as there is some overlap across the benchmarks. It is open to UCF students who meet the following requirements:

  • 3.0 GPA in major
  • Completion of POS 2041 (American National Government) with at least a C.
  • One page letter of intent: ‘Why does civics teaching matter?’
  • Admission (or pending admission) to Social Science Education BS program

The program sequence is focused on best preparing students for the course that they will hopefully teach, and it includes an internship component that focuses on local government. After all, what better practice can you get to teach civics than to actually see civics in action at the local level! The course sequence is provided below:

12 Credit Hours:

  • POS 4932: Teaching American Politics and Government
  • POS 3272: Civic Engagement
  • POS 4941: Internship in Florida Local Government
  • SSE 4932: Teaching Civics in Florida

We will be hosting an open house here at the Lou Frey Institute on Tuesday, 01 December at 5pm to talk more about this exciting new program! We hope to see you here. :)

open house flyer


A bellringer for teaching about campaigns, elections and the media

It’s always exciting when we can share ideas for teaching about important stuff, and today’s suggestion was inspired by Cherie Arnette, the social studies supervisor for Escambia County (check out their civics review site!). She emailed us asking if we could come up with a bellringer activity to help teacher Florida Civics benchmarks SS.7.C.2.9, 2.10, or 2.11. For those unfamiliar with these benchmarks, 2.9 asks students ti evaluate a candidate for political office. 2.10 asks students to examine the impact of media, individuals, and interests on monitoring and influencing government. 2.11 has students analyzing media and political communications. You can get a good overview of each benchmark and their associated clarifications by visiting the Test Item Specifications book.
Cherie also asked us to start with this wonderfully evocative ‘Draft Biden’ ad below that aired during the Democratic debate (obviously before his announcement that he wouldn’t run).

For me, tears for sure. In any case, our own Valerie McVey suggested that the following might be perfect benchmark-aligned bellringer options for this ad. Note that ‘BC’ refers to ‘Benchmark Clarifications’. Review the test item specifications to explore those more.

C.2.9:  Evaluate candidates for political office by analyzing their qualifications, experience, issue-based platforms, debates, and political ads. 
BC 3 – Students will be able to analyze and/or evaluate the qualifications of candidates for public office based on their experience, platforms, debates, and political advertisements.

– What does this advertisement tell you about Joe Biden’s experience? Personal and professional? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?
– What does “Run, Joe” at the end of the advertisement mean?
– Is he a candidate for president?

C.2.10:  Examine the impact of media, individuals, and interest groups on monitoring and influencing government. 
BC 1 – Students will identify the methods used by the media to monitor and/or influence the government.

– The Draft Biden SuperPAC created this advertisement. (You might include a point about the difference between PACs and SuperPACs, but encourage teachers not to get caught up in this and forget the other questions. :)
– What is a political action committee? (content focus term)
– What is Draft Biden’s goal in creating this advertisement? How do you know?

C.2.11:  Analyze media and political communications (bias, symbolism, propaganda). 
BC 1 – Students will use scenarios to identify bias, symbolism, and propaganda.

– Remind students of the definition of bias.
– What is the bias of this advertisement? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?

BC 2 – Students will evaluate how bias, symbolism, and propaganda can impact public opinion.

– Remind students of the definition of public opinion.
– How might this advertisement impact or influence the public opinion of Joe Biden? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?

My own suggestion was to compare this ad to the language and elements of ‘The Man from Abilene’ (1952 Eisenhower) or ‘The Man from Libertyville’ (1956 Stevenson), which take a completely different tone concerning the qualifications of a presidential candidate and what matters. Both of those ads are available on the fantastic ‘Living Room Candidate’ website!

We are always looking for new ideas and ways to approach content. If you have anything, please share!


A bellringer for teaching about campaigns, elections and the media

It’s always exciting when we can share ideas for teaching about important stuff, and today’s suggestion was inspired by Cherie Arnette, the social studies supervisor for Escambia County (check out their civics review site!). She emailed us asking if we could come up with a bellringer activity to help teacher Florida Civics benchmarks SS.7.C.2.9, 2.10, or 2.11. For those unfamiliar with these benchmarks, 2.9 asks students ti evaluate a candidate for political office. 2.10 asks students to examine the impact of media, individuals, and interests on monitoring and influencing government. 2.11 has students analyzing media and political communications. You can get a good overview of each benchmark and their associated clarifications by visiting the Test Item Specifications book.
Cherie also asked us to start with this wonderfully evocative ‘Draft Biden’ ad below that aired during the Democratic debate (obviously before his announcement that he wouldn’t run).

For me, tears for sure. In any case, our own Valerie McVey suggested that the following might be perfect benchmark-aligned bellringer options for this ad. Note that ‘BC’ refers to ‘Benchmark Clarifications’. Review the test item specifications to explore those more.

C.2.9:  Evaluate candidates for political office by analyzing their qualifications, experience, issue-based platforms, debates, and political ads. 
BC 3 – Students will be able to analyze and/or evaluate the qualifications of candidates for public office based on their experience, platforms, debates, and political advertisements.

– What does this advertisement tell you about Joe Biden’s experience? Personal and professional? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?
– What does “Run, Joe” at the end of the advertisement mean?
– Is he a candidate for president?

C.2.10:  Examine the impact of media, individuals, and interest groups on monitoring and influencing government. 
BC 1 – Students will identify the methods used by the media to monitor and/or influence the government.

– The Draft Biden SuperPAC created this advertisement. (You might include a point about the difference between PACs and SuperPACs, but encourage teachers not to get caught up in this and forget the other questions. :)
– What is a political action committee? (content focus term)
– What is Draft Biden’s goal in creating this advertisement? How do you know?

C.2.11:  Analyze media and political communications (bias, symbolism, propaganda). 
BC 1 – Students will use scenarios to identify bias, symbolism, and propaganda.

– Remind students of the definition of bias.
– What is the bias of this advertisement? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?

BC 2 – Students will evaluate how bias, symbolism, and propaganda can impact public opinion.

– Remind students of the definition of public opinion.
– How might this advertisement impact or influence the public opinion of Joe Biden? What evidence from the video helped you determine your answer?

My own suggestion was to compare this ad to the language and elements of ‘The Man from Abilene’ (1952 Eisenhower) or ‘The Man from Libertyville’ (1956 Stevenson), which take a completely different tone concerning the qualifications of a presidential candidate and what matters. Both of those ads are available on the fantastic ‘Living Room Candidate’ website!

We are always looking for new ideas and ways to approach content. If you have anything, please share!


Teaching Civics in the Sunshine State

Another link for you as we head into the new school year. Recently, Dr. Elizabeth Washington (director of the social studies Proteach program at UF and Senior Fellow here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship) and I had the chance to sit down with Dr. Emma Humphries of iCivics and the Bob Graham Center to discuss teaching civics in the Sunshine State. For me, two big things to remember: civics is NOT history and should not be taught as such, and always always always use the Civics Benchmarks Item Specifications in your planning, teaching, and assessment! Also, I need to lose weight.

I enjoyed the opportunity to sit down with Emma and Elizabeth and just talk civics, and I hope that you find some of what you see and hear in the video useful. Feel free to address any questions or comments my way!


Welcome Back! Resources for Civics Teachers

As we go into the new school year, I just want to take a few minutes and welcome folks back, and to welcome those that might be new to teaching civics here in Florida. This post will share with you some of the resources that are available for teaching civics in this state. Some of these might help those of you teaching civics and social studies in other states as well. An overview of some excellent primary sources for social studies and civics education is also available! Certainly, this is only a very small list; throughout the year, we will continue sharing new resources, spotlighting excellent resources, and discussing ways in which they may be used in your classroom.

The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship
fjccFor obvious reasons, we start with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. As an organization, the FJCC offers free resources and professional development to teachers, schools, and districts, centered around civic education. Most recently, we worked in collaboration with Miami-Dade county teachers to create elementary civics lessons (‘Civics in a Snap’), which will be shared with you as soon as our NEW site goes live later this week! Our most accessed resource, the 7th grade Applied Civics Resources, provides lesson plans, content background videos, benchmark specifications, and assessment items that teachers can use to teach the benchmarks. Please note that in order to access most resources on the site, a free registration is required.

iCivics

icivicsiCivics is perhaps one of the most well known and loved civics resources in the nation. The site provides games, writing tools such as Drafting Board, lesson plans, and other resources for teachers to better teach that next generation of citizens. The FJCC has worked closely with iCivics in developing resources aligned with the Florida Benchmarks, which we have integrated into our lesson plans, though their curriculum and resources are intended for a national audience. Free registration is required, but it is well with your time, and I have never known a teacher to say a negative word about iCivics. Just be sure that you make sure whatever resource you are using fits your state’s standards! Here in Florida, folks from the Florida Law Related Education Association lead the iCivics effort across the state, and are themselves worth a look.

The Center for Civic Education
center for civic edThe Center for Civic Education is perhaps one of the most well known and important national civic education organizations. Their ‘We the People’ and ‘Project Citizen‘ materials are incredibly popular, and they do an excellent job in helping students understand the foundations of citizenship and to start them on the path toward civic engagement.

The United States Youth Senate Program
youth senateThe United States Youth Senate Program is a unique educational experience for outstanding high school students interested in pursuing careers in public service. The 54th annual program will be held in Washington, D.C., from March 5 – 12, 2016. Two student leaders from each state, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity will spend a week in Washington experiencing their national government in action. Student delegates will hear major policy addresses by Senators, cabinet members, officials from the Departments of State and Defense and directors of other federal agencies, as well as participate in a meeting with a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. All transportation, hotel and meal expenses will be provided by The Hearst Foundations. In addition, each delegate will also be awarded a $5,000 College Scholarship for undergraduate studies, with encouragement to pursue coursework in history and political science.To apply, please contact your state selection contact. Here in Florida, the contact is Annette Boyd-Pitts of FLREA.

The Ashbrook Center 
ashbrookThe Ashbrook Center is an excellent resource for both primary sources and teacher professional development. Perhaps more well known for the materials it provides through TeachingAmericanHistory.Org, Ashbrook has some nice resources for civic education as well, and their seminars on aspects of American government, civics, and history are excellent. I had the opportunity to attend one myself, and it was very well done, though reading-intensive. They are expanding more into Florida. Please keep an eye on this blog for information on upcoming seminar opportunities with Ashbrook.

The Bill of Rights Institute 
billofrghtsintPutting aside, for now at least, the somewhat controversial background of the Bill of Rights Institute , the resources provided by the BORI are worth taking a look at, especially the primary sources that are provided.

The National Archives and the Library of Congress
NARAThe National Archives and the Library of Congress have a wonderful collection of resources that any and every social studies and civics teacher should want to use. We have written about the new mobile app before, and the FJCC has worked closely with the National Archives in providing professional development to teachers at all levels of education.

Mock Elections 

Screen capture from http://electionsimulation.floridacitizen.org/

The FJCC/Lou Frey Institute Student Voting Election Simulation, while aligned with Florida’s Civic Benchmarks SS.7.C.2.9 and SS.7.C.2.7, can be used by anyone in any state as a way to have students engage in the process of voting. It is easy to use and pretty flexible in how you choose to use it. Registration IS required, but is as always free.

Civics Tutorials

tutorialThis Civics Tutorial site is aligned with the Florida Civics Benchmarks, and provides some excellent guided tutorial pieces for students to use within a flipped classroom model, as a remediation tool, or in preparation for 7th grade Civics EOC. An overview of the site can be found here. 

Escambia Civics Review Site

escambia aaThe Escambia Civics Review site is just what the name implies: a review site intended to prepare students for success on Florida’s Civics EOCA. However, it contains additional resources that can be used throughout the year. These resources include vocabulary games, connections to Discovery Ed (if you have an account with that specific resource), assessment items, a practice test, and, most significantly, student friendly readings. These readings are about a page long and are intended to be used by teachers to supplement instruction in the benchmarks. They have been rewritten recently to ensure consistency in the vocabulary and that all of the readings are appropriate for middle school students!

The C3 Framework
24250bbf-0fb5-4750-bded-853014aa88fdThe C3 Framework is a relatively new resource provided by the National Council for the Social Studies (and you should be a member; talk about resources!). It’s Four Dimensions lend themselves well to civics, especially the focus on asking questions and taking action. An overview of the C3 can be found here, and I encourage you to check it out, even if your state is not using it.

Florida Civic Health
civic healthThe Lou Frey Institute’s Florida Civic Health site allows you to compare Florida to every other state in a number of measures of civic health. While it is obviously using Florida as a starting point, you CAN use it to compare your own state to Florida, or to compare metropolitan areas within the state of Florida. Simply select your state on the map, as you see in the screenshot below.

ch1

Countable

countable clipCountable is a FANTASTIC new resource for teachers in social studies, and especially civics. It would be an injustice to summarize it in just a few words, so please take a look at the post we did on it here, or simply visit it yourself to explore it! The current topic for discussion? Birthright citizenship. Check it out!

The Civil Debate Wall 
the wallFrom the site: The Bob Graham Center’s Civil Debate Wall is a unique, innovative social media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, and a website. These three synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for the broader University of Florida community to actively engage in local, national and international issues. The website component of the Wall closely mirrors the physical Wall. The website attracts users who are not physically on campus. Providing the same features, the website gathers users from a broader population and allows users to keep track of debates.

These are just a few of the resources that are available for civic education in Florida and across the nation. If you have additional ones, please feel free to share them with me at stephen.masyada@ucf.edu, or leave a comment on this post. Please do the same if you would like professional development or any other help or support! Don’t forget to take a look at the overview of primary resource tools here, and be sure to check out the Florida Civics Teacher’s Facebook Page and the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship Facebook Page! Good luck in the new year, and thank you for the work that you do!


Justifying Our Existence: Does Our Work Matter?

As readers of this blog and supporters of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship are no doubt aware, the past few months here at the FJCC/Lou Frey Institute have been a bit stressful. The Florida Legislature seems to have essentially decided that the state should not be in the business of funding professional development organizations, tools, or resources, and that anything of value can and should be paid for by the districts.

“It’s only valuable if it doesn’t cost anything, is the message,” Gaetz told the Times/Herald. “If yours is so valuable, why isn’t anybody interested in paying any money for it?”

While our own funding was saved at the last minute, thanks no doubt to the efforts of folks like you, we remain in a precarious position. In order to continue to be supported by the state, and not have to charge districts a great deal of money to support us, we have to start providing data to the legislature and to the governor’s office. Now, we do have some excellent data that we have provided them before. We know, for example, that usage of both our own site and the Escambia civics site, for which we provide a great deal of resources and support, is incredibly high. Figure 1 illustrates usage of the FJCC online resources. Figure 3 illustrates usage of the Escambia site. (Click on each image to enlarge it if you need to).

usage 1escambiaThe usage of these resources is also spread across the state, as the two figures below illustrate:

regional usageescambia mapSo what does the data we have say?

  • More than 5,600 Florida teachers and district personnel, from every district in the state, maintain active accounts on the Institute’s website, providing them with access to professional development, instructional and assessment resources.
  • In FY 2014-15 to-date, more than 59,000 users of the Institute’s civics resources website have generated more than 170,000 work sessions as teachers have come to the site for support materials (Figure 1).
    • Monthly utilization rates have grown exponentially in FY 2014-15 following the first administration of the Civics EOC in the spring of 2014. Further growth is anticipated in advance of the 2015 test administration date.
  • The Institute’s daily impact on teachers touches virtually all Florida school districts. Figure 2 shows the distribution of usage sessions by school districts to-date for the current fiscal year. Heaviest use is from the state’s more urban districts.
    • Four of the state’s most rural districts are not making use of LFI/FJCC resources. We are currently coordinating with FLDOE’s outreach to lowest performing districts to address this issue.
  • In the five month period from September, 2014 through January, 2015, almost 40,000 student users accessed materials on the Civics Review Site in just under 120,000 sessions. (Figure 3). The general trend line is up and student access is expected to grow further in advance of the 2015 EOC administration.
  • The Student Review Site is serving the needs of students from virtually every district in the state (Figure 4). Use is most intense in the more urban areas of the state.
    • Five of the most rural districts are not making use of the Student Review Sites. LFI/FJCC is currently coordinating with FLDOE’s outreach to lowest performing districts to address this issue.

This is good data, data that we are excited by and that we believe is making a difference. Civics scores increased this year, and we believe that we may have played a role in that increase. HOWEVER, the data that we have is not data that will impress the state legislature and the governor’s office. We need to directly connect our work to student EOC achievement scores, and in this we face a challenge. The state leadership does not want stories, though we have so many good stories that we can share and will share. They want hard numbers, or the stories that we do have will be nothing more than melancholy reminiscing. It is difficult, however. How do we separate out the noise that is inherent in this sort of data collection effort? After all, we are not the only civic education organization in Florida, nor are we the only resource that is being used. At the same time, we don’t always know just HOW the resources and PD we provided is being implemented in classrooms, schools, and districts. And, of course, the biggest problem we face is actually getting those numbers that we need. We must, essentially, be able to match student test scores to specific teachers, and that requires a great deal of finesse with the system. Most significantly, we must rely on the Education Data Warehouse to share with us this data, and that can sometimes be difficult. We must also convince teachers to allow us to match them up with those student scores. If we are unable to do this, well, despite the good work that we believe that we do, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship will most likely cease to exist.

Of course we recognize the need to demonstrate our impact; it’s getting access to the data that we need in order to do this that is the difficult process, and it is a bit of a frustration that the impressive usage data is not adequate for the task. To facilitate this effort, as we relaunch a revised version of our website in the fall, we are going to ask that all users re-register on the site, and we humbly request that you provide us with enough registration data so that we may match users to scores. Please keep in mind that we will not be publishing individual scores or personally and publicly identifying teachers and scores; rather, this will simply be for justifying our continued existence to the legislature and the governor (assuming, of course, that the data is positive, which we believe it will be).

We believe, deeply, in the mission of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. We believe that the work that we do here does help teachers, schools, and districts in helping to develop that next generation of Florida, American, and global citizens. We hope that we may be allowed to continue that work, and that you might be willing to help us do so. We thank you for the support that you have provided in the past and in any support you choose to offer, and for your understanding as we work to collect the data that we so desperately need.

For now, if you have used our resources or attended our PDs, we would love for you to complete this survey that may help us. 


Good News for Civic Education in Florida!

Putting aside the question of whether Florida’s middle school civics benchmarks and related assessment are actually an appropriate measures of civic learning, some good news here in the Sunshine State concerning the past administration of the Civics EOCA. As you probably know, Florida is currently one of the few states with a somewhat high stakes test connected to civics. This test, while selected response, is crafted using Webb’s Depths of Knowledge as a guide, and students are given multiple choice questions that range from level 1 to level 3 on the cognitive complexity scale. The most recent scoring of the assessment revealed some positive growth on the part of students in Florida, and I am hopeful that this is a sign that civic education could make an impact long term. Let’s take a look at the positives:

Civics EOC Assessment By Achievement Level

Civics EOC Assessment By Achievement Level

This is good news! While one would hope for a greater number of level fours, any growth in the number of students scoring at level 3 can only be a good thing.

Achievement Level by Demographic Background

Achievement Level by Demographic Background

These numbers, again, are a positive. I am most excited by the growth in African American scores. For the first time, half of all African American students taking the assessment scored at least a 3, a jump of 7 percentage points. On the downside, only half of all African-American students scored at least a 3. This needs to change, and we need to figure out how to do it.

Growth in Achievement Level 4, by Demographic Background

Growth in Achievement Level 4, by Demographic Background

Again, we see growth, but it is simply too low. Yes, great that more students scored higher on an equivalent test, but frustrating that so few are scoring at a high level. How do we change this?

Overall, much positive news. I encourage you to take a look at some of the other data in the report, including how your county might have done overall compared to other counties and to last year. One of the projects involving the Partnership for Civic Learning involves looking at what some of these schools and districts that exceed expectations are doing right. Can what they are doing be duplicated across the state? It is an important question to consider. For now, let’s enjoy the good news, review the data, and see how what we are doing might be impacting civic education in Florida.