The 12th-Grade NAEP Civics Assessment is Threatened with Termination

The 12th-grade NAEP Civics Assessment is threatened with termination. The federal officials responsible for NAEP are inviting comments right now (see below for responses).

The NAEP in General

First of all, some general background about the NAEP itself. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the "Nation's Report Card," looks like a test to the kids who take it, but it's an assessment of our educational system, not of individual students or schools. There are no "stakes" for the kids: no consequences for doing well or poorly. Indeed, no score is computed for a given student. That is because the test instrument is very long, and each person is asked to complete a random part of it. Asking many questions is the best way to measure skills and knowledge, so it's useful to ask a whole population more questions than any child or adolescent could sit still for. The results are then combined to generate statistics for the population.

Assessments are conducted in reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography, and the arts. Traditionally, participation was voluntary; either a state, a school, or an individual child could decline to participate. This has changed somewhat with the passage of No Child Left Behind. Now all states are required to conduct the NAEP reading and mathematics assessments every two years at the 4th and 8th grade. They must conduct the NAEP in such a way as to generate statistically valid results for their whole student populations in those subjects. In principle, the NAEP is funded by the federal government and designed by the Educational Testing Service as a federal grantee. In practice, there are some costs for states and schools-in time if not in money.

In addition to knowledge and skill questions, students are asked some survey questions about their backgrounds and experiences in school and outside. Teachers complete a separate questionnaire. Students' transcripts are collected and connected to their performance on the assessment. All this data-collection makes NAEP a superb source of information about what seems to work in education. To name one example, Richard Niemi and Jane Junn have shown, using NAEP data, that social studies courses increase students' knowledge and also seem to improve their civic attitudes.

The National Assessment Government Board sets standards for Basic, Proficient, and Advanced in each NAEP. The Department of Education is thus able to say, for example, that 2 percent of students score at the Advanced level in civics at the 12th grade level. It is important to note that these cutoff points are subject to debate. They are set by panels of experts and citizens who have exercised their judgment to determine what should constitute Basic, Proficient, and Advanced mastery of a subject. A different group might reach a different conclusion.

A NAEP civics or citizenship assessment has been conducted five times since 1969 (and only three times at the 12-grade level), although history, geography, and economics have also been assessed periodically. The results were representative of the nation's student population, but there was no effort to assess a statistically representative sample in each state--or even in some of the states. Organizing state samples is more expensive than measuring a national sample.

The NAEP Civics Assessment

Many experts consider the NAEP civics assessment to be a fine instrument for measuring skills and knowledge. Many would also like to measure civic attitudes and behaviors (tolerance, patriotism, concern for the common good, voting, volunteering, and many more). By law, NAEP scores only reflect students' knowledge and skills, although a few attitude measures were included in the survey portion of the 1998 civics NAEP.

The next NAEP civics assessment is tentatively scheduled for 2006, after an eight-year gap. It will again be a national sample without separate state results. Given the long gap and the lack of state-level data, we can't observe trends in civics. Nor can we compare state standards and curricula to find out what works, nor can we measure progress either nationally or by state, nor can we hold policymakers accountable for civics. Some people also think that it is symbolically damaging to assess civics every eight years if we are going to test reading and mathematics every two years, because what we assess is what we seem to care about. For these reasons, the many and diverse signatories of the Civic Mission of Schools report called for civics assessments every three years, with representative samples in each and every state.

The Future of the 12th Grade NAEP

This target appears to be receding. The National Commission on NAEP 12th Grade Assessment and Reporting issued a report on March 5, 2004 that calls for making reading and math NAEPs mandatory in all states. Twelfth-grade civics is to be an entirely optional assessment, conducted only at the national level and only if funding permits. Civics is explicitly placed in a third tier below reading and math (which are to be mandatory) and science and writing (which are treated as highly desirable). The report is a purely advisory document which the National Assessment Governing Board will review critically. NAGB is currently inviting public comments.

There appear to be three reasons that the advisory commission recommended emphasizing reading and mathematics and making civics a low priority. First of all, reading and math are the priorities of the No Child Left Behind law, which mandates NAEPs in those fields at the 4th and 8th grade. NCLB is silent about the 12th grade NAEP, but this report is in the spirit of NCLB. As the Washington Post reported recently, schools are dropping other subjects in order to concentrate on the NCLB mandates. Education Secretary Rod Paige defends the emphasis in the law. "A child that can't read is not going to learn history or civics," he says. But the narrowing of the curriculum has attracted critics as diverse as the National Conference for the Social Studies; NAGB's Executive Director, Charles Smith; and the Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn, who wrote "the omission of social studies-and, more importantly, of history, geography, and civics-from NCLB is beginning to have deleterious effects. It's causing some states and schools to downplay these subjects in favor of those for which they'll be held publicly accountable and compared with each other. As the old educator truism puts it, what gets tested is what gets taught."

Second, only 55% of high school seniors who are asked to take NAEP assessments are now complying. It is likely that those who decline to participate are not a random group but have particular characteristics: compared to other students, they may be busier, or enrolled in poorer or more focused schools, or less academic. Such a low participation rate makes the results virtually meaningless. The report suggests solving this problem by making state participation in reading and mathematics mandatory, and conducting the other assessments occasionally, with national samples, if resources allow.

The third reason is an apparent assumption that schools do not have an essential civic mission. The report urges that NAEP "report on the readiness of 12th graders for college, training for employment, and entrance into the military." It passes over the readiness of 12th graders to be citizens, active in civil society, communities, and politics. This omission feeds fears in our community that testing is driving out civics.

What Should be Done?

In principle, there are at least four policies that could be adopted:

1. Separate federal legislation could mandate NAEP civics assessments in every state on a regular basis (e.g., once every three years), as a condition of federal funding.

2. NAEP civics assessments could be offered every three years, and funding could be provided to encourage states to organize separate representative samples.

3. The NAEP civics, history, geography, and economics assessments could be combined into a single "social studies" NAEP (with separate subscores for each subject); this NAEP could then be offered every three years in as many states as possible.

4. A completely new--and much shorter--assessment of adolescents' civic knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors could be conducted as a random survey, with a big enough sample to generate state-level results in at least the large states.

Please email any responses to Gary Homana or post comments.

Responses:

From NCSS President Jesus Garcia:

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) President Jesus Garcia has released a letter strongly supporting the NAEP civics assessment. Responding to the recommendations of the National Assessment Governing Board's (NAGB) report, Garcia says that although the "report does acknowledge the importance of student's knowledge of civics and history, the recommendations in the report do no adequately reflect a serious commitment." More specifically, he is concerned with that the recommendation to only "assess the these subjects [social studies, particularly U.S. history and civics] 'if resources permit' does not square with the revitalization of concern in our nation over students' civic awareness and knowledge." Furthermore, he indicates that the lack of state-by-state comparison in U.S history and civics, as well as the other social studies "is unacceptable" and that NCSS was "appalled to learn that the governing board did not recommend state-by-state comparisons for grade 12 social studies assessments, and in fact recommended to continue testing these subjects only as a national representative sample and only if resources permit." Garcia points out that in a time when the civic mission of schools is paramount especially with increasing numbers of people who "are coming from nations without strong democratic traditions [the] NAGB plan will only encourage many more states to disband what remains of their civics assessments." To read the entire response please go to: http://www.socialstudies.org/advocacy/nagbresponse2004/.

From Sandy Diamond, Kids Voting Missouri:

As a former civics teacher (10 years), former Newspaper in Education Coordinator (13 years) and current director of Kids Voting Missouri, I am appalled at this report on the NAEP and Civics/Social Studies assessments. As part of my job as director of Kids Voting Missouri, I conduct in-service workshops for teachers. At these workshops, I have been noticing a decline in the actual civics/social studies knowledge of some of our teachers--especially elementary teachers. If testing for civics/social studies disappears or is tested infrequently, many of our elementary teachers (who seem to have the greatest lack of content knowledge in social studies), simply will not "teach" social studies as part of their day. I have already heard through the grapevine that this is already happening.

A few years ago, the Missouri legislature withdrew appropriation for social studies testing; without funding, school districts were given the choice to pay for the testing themselves or drop it. Many dropped the social studies testing--this past year, only 50% of school districts in Missouri tested in social studies and I have heard from our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that that number may drop to 30% for next school year.

The ramifications of this can be very dangerous to our students and our schools. If teachers stop teaching social studies or spend very little time on it in elementary school, students will enter middle school and high school with very little or no knowledge of our basic foundations of government--local, state, national, and global. Furthermore, without dialogue in the classroom, these students will be missing out an opportunities to learn some basic skills such as decision-making, compromise, cooperation, respect for others, etc--skills that social studies lessons and research help students acquire. And voting--why vote, if you don't even know what an issue is or what the office stands for.

Personally and professionally, I would like to see mandated civics/government assessments and civics/government courses as requirements for graduation. However, until this happens, one possible answer lies in the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them." I believe that as civic educators we should try and demonstrate to the reading folks, how to integrate civics into the reading curriculum. I would also like to see the Reading Assessments, as part of NCLB, include questions having to do with civics and government. We need to demonstrate to the Reading Teachers that there are some wonderful story books about the Revolution, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Civil War Amendments, U.S. Presidents, good neighbors, voting, etc. and then help them learn how to teach the civics/government content of these resources as part of their reading programs.

Sandy Diamond, M.Ed.
Kids Voting Missouri
University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Education