Assessing Civic Learning

How assessment can support civic learning and engagement

Promoting K-12 Learning and Civic Engagement Through Assessment is new from Routledge, and available for free as part of the National Council on Measurement in Education’s Applications of Educational Measurement and Assessment series. The book’s three co-editors—Laura Hamilton, a senior associate at the Center; Samuel Rikoon, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research; and David Comer Kidd, chief assessment scientist at the Design Studio at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University—discussed the book recently with the Center’s editorial director, Catherine Gewertz.

What led you to write a book about assessing civic learning?

Hamilton:

When you hear the word “civics,” I think a lot of us picture that high school government class, learning about the three branches of government, and whether you can name your two senators. And that stuff is important and is part of civic learning. But we’ve adopted a broader definition that a lot of educators and scholars have been using in recent years. It really tries to encompass the full set of skills, and the knowledge and the attitudes, that folks need to engage effectively in civic life.

Think about skills like media literacy. When you’re reading that news story on TikTok, are you able to distinguish what’s authentic and credible from what’s not? That’s obviously gotten more challenging as artificial intelligence and social media have become more prevalent, so that’s an important civic-related skill.

Another example is the ability to have a conversation with someone who holds views different than yours. Can you engage effectively and understand someone else’s perspective? These things are related to engaging civically. Schools have tended to address them to varying degrees. But I think there’s a lot of data out there—and our book describes some of it—that suggests that schools could be doing better when it comes to civics.

The good news is there have been a lot of initiatives lately: Educating for American Democracy, for example, that have really reinvigorated this conversation about civic education. There are folks creating curriculum materials, professional development materials for teachers.

But what we keep hearing is a need for better assessment. We also happen to know lots of people doing good work on assessment, so we thought, why not put a book together and try to bring this work together?

What are some promising developments in civics assessment?

Kidd:

I’ll build on something Laura said: There’s increased interest in civic education broadly, and that’s a movement that has been really decades in the making, with scholars really pushing, for more research on civic education and improved curricula. At the same time, lagging behind that is increased call for assessment in civic education, so the fact that civic education is even being assessed is a new development, and a good one.

There have been spotty efforts around the country, but a lot of those have picked up in recent years. Florida has a state assessment. Massachusetts now has a state assessment. And those are just two examples. There’s a lot of movement in this space, and it really comes from a broader commitment to improving civic education.

As Laura said, educators and researchers are coming to agree that civics education is more than just facts and content knowledge. So the assessments are starting to look different than a multiple-choice style test. Those methods are still going to be useful, but there’s also a lot of innovation in performance-based assessments, the use of new technologies to get at more authentic performances of civic engagement.

These sorts of things will not only help us get a better read on what’s happening with civic education, but hopefully will also provide some way of opening up people’s eyes to new forms of assessment. This is a place where there are not established regimens of assessment, so there might be space for some more creativity, to get more authentic and engaging assessments from students.

There is also increasing consensus from large philanthropic organizations and other funders to support the development of good assessment tools for civic education. I’m collaborating on a project led by Professor Joe Kahne at U.C. Riverside that’s trying to pull together people—many of them contributors to this volume—to review existing assessment tools and try to come up with some practical toolkits that build on the work that was done for this volume. It’s funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Stewart Foundation. That’s in its early stages; we’ll see where it goes. It’s exciting.

What purposes can civics assessments serve?

Hamilton:

At the Center for Assessment, we’re always talking about the purposes of assessment, so one of the things that we really appreciated about the authors’ contributions to this book is that they describe work that addressed a variety of purposes, but in all cases, were super clear about the intended purpose of the assessment.

I would say the work falls into two broad buckets of purposes. One of those buckets is classroom assessment, informing instruction, helping teachers see whether students are learning the material, who needs help. And David mentioned some of these exciting developments in performance assessment, and we’re really seeing those applications, particularly in the classroom assessment area. Our Center colleague Caroline Wylie contributed to one of the chapters that looks at a fun way to assess civics in the classroom.

The other big bucket is large-scale monitoring. We’ve got folks who wrote about NAEP, about the ICCS [International Civic and Citizenship Education Study], which is the big international study about school-level monitoring. But these look at broad trends, not so much at individual students’ performance. Both of those are important. We’re excited to have that work represented in the book.

Why is it important to assess both learning outcomes and learning opportunities?

Rikoon:

Looking at outcomes in isolation—studying students’ civic knowledge or skills, for example—doesn’t explain why performance might differ across areas, nor does it help us understand if schools are providing meaningful opportunities for civic development. Adding systematic, well-designed measures of learning opportunities—i.e., student resources, experiences, instructional quality, school climate, and even community context—provides a clearer picture that we can use to assess whether schools are taking effective steps to build civics-related competencies.

We have identified three primary reasons for measuring these learning opportunities. The first is to provide targeted support. When we gather evidence about where high-quality learning conditions exist—or shed light on where challenges may arise—we can empower leaders to address gaps and tailor related interventions. Tailored, data-informed interventions may include different curricula or professional learning, or interventions designed to help improve school climate. Data can also highlight disparities across different opportunities students receive, varied instructional approaches, or the extent to which students have opportunities to voice their perspectives with school leadership.

The second reason to measure learning opportunities is to support better decision-making and accountability. Combining civic learning opportunity data with outcome measures over time can help us conduct longitudinal analyses and explore how changes in opportunities appear to drive (or unintentionally hinder) improvements. This approach supports continuous improvement efforts while avoiding potential unintended consequences of relying solely on outcomes data.

Thirdly, measuring learning opportunities can help us improve measurement quality. Greater access to high-quality data sources—input on learning opportunities from students, teachers, and school leadership, for example—strengthens our ability to interpret that data holistically. Say we have one piece of information from a school, such as a standardized assessment, and we pair that with other information from teachers or students about their interactions or how they felt as the school year progressed. That additional information provides more context and more data-driven insight. High-quality, multi-informant data improves civic learning measurement overall, which in turn leads to more informed decision making.

The bottom line is that assessing both outcomes and opportunities is essential for designing and evaluating policies and programs designed to enhance civic learning.

Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages