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Educating for Democracy: Lessons from Chicago
August 2007.  Susan E. Sporte and Joseph E. Kahne

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In a culture where a school’s performance is defined by students’ standardized test scores, civic education has been overshadowed. Yet new empirical research by CCSR shows that what happens in the classroom is vitally important in developing civically committed young people—far more important than the backgrounds or extracurricular activities of students.

This new Research Brief, written specifically for a general audience, summarizes a Working Paper entitled “Developing Citizens: A Longitudinal Study of School, Family, and Community Influences on Students’ Commitments to Civic Participation” by Joseph E. Kahne and Susan E. Sporte. In this brief, co-authors Susan Sporte, a CCSR director, and Joseph Kahne, Dean of the College of Education at Mills College in Oakland CA, explore the relationship between various kinds of civic learning opportunities in classrooms and students' commitments to civic participation. The brief also includes some “best practices” from classrooms and service learning projects—examples that demonstrate how to get students involved in their own learning across myriad subjects.