Shauna Cihacek, one of three newly named American Civic Education Teachers of the Year, graduated high school in 1996—the year the “nation’s report card” last updated its civics assessment.
Civics instruction has grown much more complicated in the 30 years since—from campaign finance Super PACs to algorithmic fracturing of political and social groups—but Cihacek, now a 26-year veteran 8th grade civics teacher at Gerald W. Kirn Middle School in Council Bluffs, Iowa, said it’s more critical than ever for civics to be a living, engaging subject for students.
“Now I feel like it’s more real-world understanding of civics,” said Cihacek, who was honored by the Center for Civic Education. “We’ve had the lawyers come in, the judges come in, and the kids are starting to see how it applies to them so much more than it did when we just said, ‘OK, memorize the first 10 Amendments.’”
The next national civics test needs to reflect civics classrooms that prepare students to not just understand historic documents, but evaluate modern sources of information and grapple with real community issues, say the nation’s top civics educators.
Classroom-level understanding of civics education will be critical for the next iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 8th grade civics assessment, the only nationally comparable test in the subject. The National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees and sets policy for what’s known as the nation’s report card, plans to spend the next year or so updating the test.
Interest in the exam surged in recent years, both because of this year’s 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and the most recent 2022 administration of the test, which showed a decline in students’ civic understanding for the first time in the test’s history.
NAGB charged the panels of civics scholars, educators, and administratorswho are updating the test to “center civics content knowledge, with the inclusion of civic skills and dispositions only through the application of that content knowledge,” focusing on “foundational documents” such as the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers and landmark legal cases like the Dred Scott case on slavery.
A needed ‘reality check’ from teachers
Along with teachers on the working panels for civics content and framework development, NAGB this year included a separate group of educators to advise both panels—a change first added in the recent update of NAEP’s science assessment.
The educator panel was developed to provide more input from teachers without requiring them to take multiple days off school to participate in the crafting of the assessment framework, said Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of NAGB.
Teachers provide a needed “reality check” during NAEP test development, Muldoon said.
“You can have a bunch of academics who are extraordinarily gifted in their fields come together and say, ‘this is what students need to master in this domain by the end of high school,’” Muldoon said, “but if a 4th grade teacher says, ‘yes, but this is how much time I have to teach social studies or science, and this is what’s in state standards,’ you want that more practical on-the-ground perspective.”
Kaylea Dominguez, a 5th grade social studies and science teacher at Kitley Intermediate School in Indianapolis and the national elementary grades civics teacher of the year, praised the focus of the NAEP framework on documents like the Bill of Rights as early as elementary school.
“I became a social studies teacher in the first place because of my passion for civil rights,” she said, “and I think it’s important that every citizen knows their rights and knows how they got those rights.”
For example, Dominguez said, students often don’t understand the point of the 3rd Amendment unless they understand the historic context of Colonial-era Americans being forced to house British soldiers against their will.
Civics teachers call for more of a focus on media literacy
Media literacy has become deeply entwined in students’ civic skills, according to Derrick Johnson, a 21-year-veteran Advanced Placement U.S. Government, Constitutional Law, Criminology, and Debate teacher at Hialeah Gardens High School in Miami.
“We need to have an exam adapted to that shift, that movement toward technology and social media, because the current generation is completely immersed in it,” said Johnson, who was awarded the high school civics teacher of the year by the Center for Civic Education. “We’re seeing more fake, AI-generated political ads, ... and I think we have to help our students understand what are legitimate sources.”
For example, Johnson, a practicing attorney, teaches his students to understand legal rules of evidence and apply critical thinking to civic and political issues.
NAEP test prompts that ask students to relate a civics scenario to the law, as opposed to a debate centered on right and wrong, “tend to require learners to think about legal and Constitutional guarantees in the context of a historical or contemporary scenario and use critical thinking to support their response,” said Jen Reidel, an English and social studies teacher at Bellingham High School in Bellingham, Wash., who was just tapped to join the NAGB’s civics educator panel.
Reidel, who started teaching in 1996, said in an email that she has used the national assessment framework when local or state civics standards are vague or spotty.
“Civic education is one of the most important responsibilities we have as educators,” said Justin Mitchell, an 8th grade social studies teacher and gifted and talented coordinator at Franklin-Simpson Middle School in Franklin, Ky., and a member of the NAEP educator panel, in a emailed statement. “At a time when students are navigating an increasingly complex world, it is more important than ever that they understand our constitutional system, think critically, evaluate evidence, engage in civil discourse, and become informed citizens.”
The next administration of the test in 2028 (under the existing framework) will, for the first time, provide state-level civics data as well as national results.
The first civics test under the new framework is expected to be administered in 2032. The new assessment will also include a broader array of questions at the lowest “below basic” performance level.
“It just allows us to have better information and to differentiate more,” NAGB’s Muldoon said. “We can only say what they can’t do now. We’d like to have a little more information about what they can do.”
