Even some of the most experienced civics teachers are avoiding certain topics in the classroom amid the current political climate, worried about courting controversy, according to a new, small survey from the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, an organization that promotes civics education.
The group surveyed 24 veteran teachers from across the country who participated in a summer program on the Constitution, and conducted in-depth interviews about teachers’ concerns and the strategies they used in their classrooms. About three-quarters of them said they have “self-censored or avoided certain civics topics due to fear of pushback or controversy.”
The majority said that “fear of controversy” was a primary challenge to teaching civics today, while 71% said the same about “fear of pushback from parents/community.”
The findings only represent a tiny slice of civics educators nationally, but the results are “jarring,” said Liam Julian, the vice president for programs and public policy at the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute.
“My hypothesis was that we would hear from them that actually, this isn’t as big of a deal: ‘We can handle it.’ And the results were the opposite,” he said. “These teachers are super prepared. There’s no content or pedagogy problem with these teachers. … They just don’t know in this new environment what they can and can’t say.”
Civics teachers have been under a microscope for the past several years. Since January 2021, 20 states have restricted how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, or other issues perceived to be controversial in the classroom. Texas has outlawed civics instruction that encourages students to take an active role in local political issues (legislators in other states have introduced similar measures that have failed to pass).
With the reach of social media, a clip of a lesson that a student shares could become “an international story within hours,” Julian said. “Teachers are wary, not just of the professional consequences, but of the personal consequences that somebody half a world away is going to find their address and post it online.”
Now, the political climate has introduced new, thorny instructional dilemmas. In President Donald Trump’s second term, teachers and students both are navigating near-daily headlines about challenges to the constitutionality of his administration’s actions.
“A civics teacher is going to wonder,” said Julian, “What is my role here?”
Why it’s hard for civics teachers to stay out of the political fray
Studies of social studies educators’ comfort teaching their subject have presented a complicated, and sometimes conflicting, picture over the past several years.
In 2024, a sweeping report from the American Historical Association surveyed 3,000 middle and high school history teachers across nine states, and found that most said they weren’t frequently worried about being accused of bias. Students say open debate is mostly welcome in their social studies classrooms—a 2025 Education Next survey of high schoolers found that more than three-quarters said their teachers never or rarely make them feel uncomfortable sharing opinions that differ from their teachers’.
But a 2024 EdWeek Research Center survey found that almost 1 in 3 principals said the idea that civics is too political is an obstacle to teaching the subject in their schools. And in a 2025 RAND survey, district leaders reported that teachers were “tiptoeing” around discussions of potentially controversial topics. (It’s possible that history, with further remove from current events, might seem safer ground for teachers to tread than civics.)
In the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute report, teachers cited the strategies that they used to try to avoid the fray.
Some started the year by developing with their students shared classroom norms for discussion; others said they tried to steer conversations back to primary source documents and constitutional principles, rather than students’ opinions.
“I intentionally start with constitutional questions rather than political ones,” said one teacher, from Pennsylvania. “Instead of asking, ‘Should the president do X?’ I ask, ‘Where does the president have the authority to do X according to Article II?’”
Going back to the documents offers some safety for teachers, Julian said. “When you do that, you’re sort of putting a buffer between the issue and the personalities involved.”
But the founding documents often don’t provide simple solutions—and ultimately, even they can’t insulate the classroom from politics, teachers and constitutional law experts said in a recent story about civics education for Education Week’s Big Ideas issue.
The interplay of partisanship, lobbying, and other evolving forces outside of the Constitution shape the decisions Congress makes and the way courts interpret laws.
In an EdWeek Research Center survey this summer, one teacher summed up the challenge: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to teach the Constitution and the separation of powers while the current administration, the Congress, and the [U.S.] Supreme Court work together to violate the constitutional separation of powers.”
But Julian maintained that it’s possible to create a course that honestly wrestles with civic problems, while also avoiding allegations of political bias. The Advanced Placement United States Government and Politics class, shaped by experts across the political spectrum, is one example, he said.
“You can get credit for it at Oberlin and you can get credit for it at Liberty University. What I’m saying is, it can be done. But it takes political will at the highest levels,” said Julian. “I don’t know that that’s a satisfying answer, because it seems so far off from what is happening in a lot of places right now. At some point, that’s got to change.”
