Two of our Penn State colleagues join us this week to discuss their recent findings on the connection between state-mandated civics tests and voter turnout. Jilli Jung, a doctoral student in education policy and Maithreyi Gopalan, assistant professor of education and public policy, recently published the paper "The Stubborn Unresponsiveness of Youth Voter Turnout to Civic Education: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From State-Mandated Civics Tests" in the journal Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
In the paper, Jung and Gopalan study the Civic Education Initiative, a framework adopted by 18 states since 2015 that requires high school students to take a test very similar to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Civics test. They found that voter turnout among 18-24 year olds largely did not increase in states that adopted the Civic Education Initiative compared to states that did adopt it. The reason for this, they argue, is that the knowledge of civic facts alone is not enough to motivate someone to vote for the first time.
In this episode, we discuss how to structure civic education that could increase voter turnout and lead to more engaged democratic citizens. For more information on this work, check out the CivXNow coalition, which is made up of hundreds of organizations across the country that are working to strengthen civic education.
Jung and Gopalan also recommend the following books and papers to anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into the role of civic education in a democracy:
Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action
Refocusing Civic Education: Developing the Skills Young People Need to Engage in Democracy
I Will Register and Vote if you Teach Me How: A Field Experiment Testing Voter Registration in College Classrooms
The Impact of Democracy Prep Public Schools on Civic Participation
Suspect citizens in a democracy [revisited]
The second annual Democracy Works listener mailbag
How to end democracy’s doom loop
The clumsy journey to antiracism
Civil rights, civil unrest
Aaron Maybin on doing the hard work of democracy [rebroadcast]
Free speech from the Founding Fathers to Twitter
Bonus: Mayors and bipartisanship during COVID-19
The people vs. the experts — and those caught in the middle
China’s role in the COVID-19 infodemic
A roadmap to a more equitable democracy
Trust, facts, and democracy in a polarized world
Bonus: Civic engagement, social distancing, and democracy reform
Give me liberty or give me COVID-19?
Bonus: COVID-19 and Democracy with The Democracy Group
Federalism in uncertain times
Will COVID-19 create a one-issue campaign?
Public health depends on the Census
Free and fair elections during a pandemic
COVID-19 exposes democracy’s tensions
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
City Manager Unfiltered
Potencial Americano
The ASIC Podcast
The Chris Plante Show
Red Eye Radio