The Challenges Facing Civic Education in the 21st Century

This essay explores the value and state of civics education in the United States and identify five challenges facing those seeking to improve its quality and accessibility: 1) ensuring that the quality of civics education is high is not a state or federal priority; 2) social studies textbooks do not facilitate the development of needed civic skills; 3) upper-income students are better served by our schools than are lower-income individuals; 4) cutbacks in funds available to schools make implementing changes in civics education difficulty and 5) reform efforts are complicated by the fact that civics education has become a pawn in a polarized debate among partisans.