Civic readiness and engagement is a central purpose of universal public education.

Schools and teachers convey civic knowledge and norms to each generation of students. The facts about these subjects don't change dramatically from year to year, but public understanding of them can. How does civic education in California actually work?

Education standards and frameworks for history

As children advance through grades, they learn about their community, their state, their country and the world. The expected content of education in each grade level is defined by state standards that are further refined through curriculum frameworks. These frameworks are periodically reviewed and adopted by a vote of the State Board of Education.

When the History and Social Science framework was last revised and adopted in 2017, it increased emphasis on civic learning along with other priorities. The revised framework also added financial literacy, voter education, genocide, and a broadened view of the contributions of diverse people including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans and people with disabilities.

After an educational framework is adopted, changes trickle their way toward the classroom experience in each grade level. Publishers revise textbooks and learning materials. Schools select materials and purchase them. Administrators schedule training for teachers to learn about the materials and discuss them. Finally, teachers incorporate the materials into their lesson plans. It takes time for a change to work its way through.

Want to know what's taught in each grade? Here's a summary of the themes:

California's content framework reflects the influence of the C3 Framework (C3 stands for "College, Career and Civic life") developed by the National Council for the Social Studies.

In the past, California's school districts had limited choices when it came to textbooks and other instructional materials. The school finance system provided school districts with dedicated categorical funds usable only for instructional materials. It was sort of like coupons: districts could use the funds only to purchase books that had been specifically approved by the State Board of Education.

In 2012, California's legislature adopted the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which eliminated most categorical funds and placed the money in the hands of school districts instead. Districts must certify that all students have access to materials aligned with state standards, but they have significant freedom to choose materials, particularly for high schools classes.

Civics

"I'm just a bill, yeah I'm only a bill..." There's a lot to be said for the power of music to communicate learning content. Half a century ago, Dave Frishberg's catchy song for Schoolhouse Rock taught a generation of Americans how an idea becomes a law. It's still relevant.

“The qualifications for self-government are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.” —Thomas Jefferson

It's also not enough.

Decades ago, a survey found that only 38% of American adults could name the three branches of government, but 59% could name the Three Stooges. The good news is that this grim statistic has improved. In 2022, a survey found that nearly half of Americans can name the three branches of government. The bad news is that a quarter can't even name one.

In the Ed100 blog:
Learning to vote

The civic mission of schools

One of the critical functions of public education is to prepare citizens to participate in our democracy. There are reasons for concern.

The most basic expression of civic participation is voting, which reflects the public’s sense of engagement or disengagement in their democracy. Young voters and nonwhite voters tend to participate at particularly low levels, especially in primary elections. Primary elections are very important in California because, since 2012, the state has used a top-two primary system for major offices. Depending on the circumstances, the primary can decide the outcome.

But voting is just one expression of civic engagement. In 2011, the Annenberg Institute underwrote an important report, Guardians of Democracy, which recommended "proven practices" that schools can use to deliver on the civic mission of schools. The practices fall in six categories, summarized here:

In 2014 many similar themes and recommendations were echoed in a report by the California Task Force On K-12 Civic Learning. This is a good example of how task forces can help form a consensus for policy action.

The Annenberg Institute has tracked trends in Americans' civic knowledge for decades. Each year on Constitution Day (September 17), it releases annual survey results that quantify the appalling state of basic civic knowledge. One bright spot: the findings demonstrate that students who take a civics course in high school tend to score higher than those who don't.

Register at 16, vote at 18

There are some reasons for optimism about the future of effective civics education in California.

Although students can't vote until they are 18 in California, they can register to vote up to two years ahead of time. This means that the first step to election participation can take place while students are in high school and actively learning about civics.

Under the direction of the Legislature, the office of the California Secretary of State has been working to increase pre-registration, with mixed results. Unsurprisingly, plopping a stack of pre-registration forms in the school office isn't enough to get things going — a successful campaign requires deeper organization and engagement.

In the Ed100 blog
How students earn the Seal of Civic Engagement

To increase ongoing focus on civic learning, in 2021 the California State Board of Education established the State Seal of Civic Engagement, an honor that students can earn as an addition to their high school diploma. The program has struggled for simple, logistical reasons: there are thousands of high schools in California. In each one, someone has know about the program, understand the criteria, identify students who earn the honor, and know how to communicate with the appropriate person at the school district central office about it. That person, in turn, has to order physical stickers by early April at the latest, collect information from each school about which students will receive the honor, and arrange for the stickers to be affixed. All in time for graduation. Simple, right?

Geography

Back in the day, many school teachers kept a dusty globe on top of a filing cabinet, periodically pulling it down to point out countries that had been renamed. Some classrooms still have globes, of course, but today’s teachers have better, more up-to-date options, including Google Earth. Learning the states and capitols? Online games are the best way to learn them, free.

Access to digital learning resources remains uneven, which has a significant impact on geographical literacy.

Pakistan,
Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan,
Iraq —
Can you name
the places on
this blue-green
spinning rock?

Technical jobs related to geography have been growing for decades, driving increased demand for postsecondary education in the field. The College Board offers an Advanced Placement Human Geography exam, which roughly a quarter of a million students take each year.

American students are not star performers when it comes to geography, and national annual testing shows that today's students are basically neither better nor worse than their predecessors when it comes to geographic knowledge.

This is a shame, because the scores show a lot of room for improvement. In 2017 the New York Times commissioned a national poll to see what proportion of American adults could accurately locate North Korea on a map. According to the report, "just 36% got it right." The answers were literally all over the map. In a followup question, the poll asked whether America should take military action against North Korea. "Respondents who could correctly identify North Korea tended to view diplomatic and nonmilitary strategies more favorably than those who could not."

California's grade-level standards for geography are included as part of the social science framework.

Thinking globally

This lesson focused on civic learning with an emphasis on local, state and national concerns. The next will consider language learning, which can connect students to a more global perspective.

This lesson was last updated in July, 2023.
Previous updates: December 2017,
October 2018
April 2019
June 2019