Our system of public education was founded with two equally important missions, to prepare our young citizens for the workplace and to equip each student with the knowledge, skills and disposition for life long, informed and engaged citizenship. The latter mission is known as the civic mission of our schools. In recent years the civic mission of our schools has been increasingly marginalized in favor of preparation for the workplace through an emphasis on a few important subjects over all others. This narrowing of the curriculum is not healthy for our democracy. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says, "This is not something that is passed along in the gene pool, our students must be taught their rights and responsibilities as citizens." In this era of standards and assessments based education, it is a sad fact that only 21 states include civic learning (civics & government, history, economics and geography) in their state assessment systems. Contributing to this problem is the fact that the "No Child Left Behind" requirements of Federal assessments ignore civic learning. The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools advocates inclusion of civic learning in all state assessment systems and the inclusion of civic learning in a reauthorized NCLB Act, testing once in each grade span (elementary, middle and secondary) with no net increase in overall testing on our already over tested students and overburdened teachers.
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