This is a report by different contributors funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the US Department of Education.
Executive Summary: The United States stands at a crossroads of peril and
possibility. A healthy constitutional democracy always
demands reflective patriotism. In times of crisis, it is especially
important that “We the People” unite love of country with clear
eyed wisdom about our successes and failures in order to chart
our forward path.
controversy about content or pedagogy. In turn, neglecting civics
means that new generations of Americans are not learning how to
adequately address contentious and challenging issues well.
In recent decades, we as a nation have failed to prepare young
Americans for self-government, leaving the world’s oldest
constitutional democracy in grave danger, afflicted by both
cynicism and nostalgia, as it approaches its 250th anniversary.
The time has come to recommit to the education of our young
people for informed, authentic, and engaged citizenship. Our
civic strength requires excellent civic and history education to
repair the foundations of our democratic republic. Not only social
studies but all academic disciplines, cocurricular activities,
and many organizations outside schools play important roles
in educating young people for constitutional democracy and
therefore contribute to historical and civic education, broadly
conceived. All hands are needed at this challenging time to build
a new foundation for excellence in civic and history education.
This Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy (EAD)
sets out goals for a 21st–century history and civic education,
in support of civic strength. With an emphasis on inquiry, the
EAD Roadmap offers general guidance to be used by national,
state, tribal, and local leaders to assess the adequacy of current
practices, standards, and resources, and to guide innovation.
A lack of consensus about the substance of history and civic
education—what and how to teach—has been a major obstacle
to maintaining excellence in history and civic education in recent
decades. The EAD Roadmap answers these questions and seeks
to strengthen civic and history education for all young Americans
in service of a healthier constitutional democracy.
Adults are deeply polarized, often demonstrate unsatisfactory
knowledge and skills for civic engagement, and experience
weak civic institutions. All this can leave them disaffected and
alienated. These problems are linked. Partisan polarization
has hampered civic and history education because Americans
deeply disagree about some of the fundamental issues that
arise in those disciplines, and adults have not managed such
disagreements productively and constructively. Often it has
seemed easier to neglect civics and history than to court
Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the U.S. Department of Education, the EAD Roadmap
reflects the work of hundreds of ideologically, philosophically,
and demographically diverse historians, political scientists,
and educators. We made the project of arguing well together
an overarching aspiration and, because of that focus, achieved
more consensus than might have been anticipated at the outset.
That purpose—inculcating skills and virtues for productive,
civil disagreement—also takes pride of place within the EAD
Roadmap’s guidance.
What do we expect to happen if the EAD Roadmap is fully
implemented? Because of the deep challenges facing
constitutional democracy in the United States—and the need
to set high expectations for the knowledge, skills, and civic
virtues of Americans—the EAD Roadmap presents an ambitious
agenda. Realizing it fully, so that every student in the country
truly experiences excellent history and civic education from
kindergarten through 12th grade, will require significant renewal
and innovation in our educational system.
TO ACHIEVE THIS COMPREHENSIVE IMPLEMENTATION AND WITH
THE ASPIRATION TO LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND, WE PROPOSE THE
FOLLOWING AMBITIOUS GOALS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHIN
ONE DECADE, BY 2030:
✰ 60 MILLION STUDENTS will have access to high -quality
civic learning opportunities, where high-quality is defined
as excellence in teaching of civic knowledge, skills, and
dispositions; also, a diverse supermajority will be actively
engaged in earning civic learning credentials;
✰ 100,000 SCHOOLS will be “civic ready” (have a Civic
Learning Plan and resources to support it in place),
prioritizing excellence in teaching of civic knowledge, skills,
and dispositions; and
✰ 1 MILLION TEACHERS will be EAD-ready (having received
excellent pre- and in-service professional development).
Implementation of the EAD Roadmap can exhibit the best of
collaborative federalism, a policy approach that makes the most of
our layered federal system—encompassing district and state-level
leadership, civil society engagement, and federal investment in
research and development, along with federal support for data and
metrics and for an expanded and diversified social studies educator
corps that is equipped with disciplinary mastery not only in history
but also in disciplines like political science and economics.
The EAD Roadmap is advisory, but we include a call to civic duty.
Standards, curricula, and materials will reflect variation across
states, tribal governments, and localities as befits our diverse
federal republic. But all are called to participate in a shared
project of achieving excellence in history and civic education in support of civic strength.
Read more here.