We have many studies that show positive effects of specific programs in which young people are “civically engaged” (e.g., they conduct service, discuss social issues, create news media, conduct research on their communities, organize advocacy campaigns, manage voluntary associations, or advise on institutional policies). We often find positive effects from these experiences on civic motivations, values, skills, and knowledge. Sometimes these experiences also contribute to other desirable outcomes, such as staying in school or avoiding pregnancy. The large AmeriCorps longitudinal study released in May 2008 is the latest in a series of such program evaluations.
In short, we know that high-quality programs work. It is now much less important than it was 10 years ago to make the basic case that civic activities are beneficial. We could still learn more about specific elements of programs and how they affect various specific outcomes. For example, it is controversial whether service-learning projects must be chosen by young people and whether they must include “reflection” activities such as discussions or journal-writing. Studies that investigate such elements of program design are welcome.
It would also be useful to compare various types of active civic engagement so that we knew more about their relative advantages and disadvantages. For instance, it would be helpful to compare community service and political advocacy. Such research will probably not instruct us to pick one type of program over the other. More likely, we will find that each has different impacts on different populations.
Although it is useful to compare types and elements of programs, I believe it is a mistake to imagine that a body of research (no matter how voluminous and rigorous) will ever yield a conclusive list of do’s and don’ts for practitioners. There is too much variation in the populations served, motivations of youth, community assets and problems, purposes of programs, political and institutional constraints, and backgrounds and goals of the adult teachers or leaders. Decisions should be based mainly on local circumstances and opportunities, guided by local experience. There are limits to any general research findings about program design.
Thus I recommend the following research priorities that go beyond program design: i. What are the effects of major educational experiences that are not civic programs? We can hypothesize that youth will develop very different civic identities if they attend, for example, a large, well-funded, clean, and safe suburban high school with numerous academic “tracks” and social cliques and an emphasis on football, versus a small charter school in a poor urban neighborhood that has been founded because the main school system is considered a failure and the charismatic founder has a strong ideological orientation.
66 Those are only two examples of educational contexts that are created by social environments, educators’ choices, and public policies. The full spectrum of educational contexts is enormous. It would be useful to isolate the aspects of these contexts that matter most for civic development (building on studies of school-level effects by Gimpel et al, Torney-Purta, Bryck at al, Campbell, Kahne and Sporte, and others). For example, what are the civic impacts of the following?
High-stakes testing across the curriculum;
Tracking students, versus mixing students of different academic backgrounds; Giving students a wide choice of courses (not only in civics, but across the
disciplines), versus requiring them to take a common curriculum;
Neighborhood schools, versus schools that draw from a wide geographic area; Charter schools;
Small schools;
Schools that are integrated by race, ethnicity, and class versus schools that are de facto segregated;
Spending more (or less) on school facilities.
ii. What are the effects of various public policies on civic outcomes?
Even if it is clear that high-quality civic experiences have good outcomes, we do not automatically know which policies to adopt at the school, district, state, or national level. For example, high-quality service-learning promotes civic identities. But that does not mean that service-learning should be required or even dramatically expanded with additional funds. Quality might fall as scale increased. Thus the effects of policies require separate investigation. It is important to consider a wide range of policy options including:
mandatory outcome measures (such as exams) with various kinds of stakes for students, teachers, or schools;
mandatory experiences, such as specific courses or programs that everyone must take;
mandatory provision of opportunities (such as a rule that every school must have a student newspaper);
funding for programs in and out of schools, for teacher education and professional development, or for curriculum development;
other rewards, such as prizes or citations for civic engagement;
policies not directly concerned with civics, such as charter schools, vouchers, desegregation plans, changes in funding formulas.
Some of promising options have never been tried in the real world, so they cannot be studied empirically. In those cases, research will have to rely on analogies to other areas of educational policy and general findings about how policies affect schools. All of the questions raised so far should be considered with attention to three dimensions: quantity, quality, and equality. Quantity is important because very small- scale or rare programs do not have social impact. Quality is essential because it is perfectly possible to offer a well-intentioned course or experience that has no positive effect or that it is even counterproductive. And equality is crucial because it is very easy to design policies or programs that actually exacerbate political inequality by enhancing the civic and political skills of students who are already advantaged. Kahne and Middaugh’s recent paper for CIRCLE basically found that civic opportunities in
67 California are reasonably common, have good effects, but are reserved for the most advantaged students. Thus California’s schools meet the test of quantity and quality but fail on equality to a profoundly troubling degree. Similarly, student governments are most common in affluent and successful schools and draw successful students within those schools. They probably decrease the equality of civic agency in the United States even as they benefit those who participate.