Assessing the Civic-Building Capacities of Schools: Early Findings from a Survey of Parents and Students

Schools in the U.S. have long been charged with the work of preparing young people for engaged citizenship. Do they, in fact, accomplish this work? Using survey data from 164 schools, we find mixed performance of schools in terms of their civic-building capacity, with striking disconnects between rh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2023-01, Vol.705 (1), p.118-137
Main Authors: berner, Ashley, Spring, Crystal, Ochoa, Andrea
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Capacity building approach
Charter schools
Citizenship
Classrooms
Parents & parenting
Polls & surveys
Public schools
Rhetoric
Schools
Students
Youth
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Summary:Schools in the U.S. have long been charged with the work of preparing young people for engaged citizenship. Do they, in fact, accomplish this work? Using survey data from 164 schools, we find mixed performance of schools in terms of their civic-building capacity, with striking disconnects between rhetoric and reality. We show that although students rate citizenship as a strong school priority, they are infrequently exposed to activities that support community engagement. Similarly, parents expect classrooms to have open climates in which students are free to discuss and disagree about controversial topics, but students report that such environments are a rarity. Additional findings indicate that lower-socioeconomic-status, female, nonbinary, and public/charter school students are significantly less likely to perceive their classrooms as open, and Black students perceive more open climates than their White counterparts.
ISSN:0002-7162
1552-3349
DOI:10.1177/00027162231179825