Grassroots activists should consider drafting a Letter to a Policymaker in favor of American Birthright. A Letter to a Policymaker can help persuade a policymaker to take action in favor of American Birthright.
Our modern Letter to a Policymaker differs from our Letter to an Editor most importantly by including room for Personal Information such as: I am a constituent; I live in X; my children attend school at X; their current social studies instruction is not sufficient because X. Policymakers (rightly) care more when you can link a request to your own personal experience. Grassroots activists should be sure to connect the call to support American Birthright with their own experience about the problems with social studies education in their local schools.
A Policymaker can include a governor, an education commissioner, a state senator, a state representative, a principal, a school board member, and more. Grassroots activists should tailor this letter to the particular policymaker they’re writing to, and make sure that what they’re asking for is something that lies within their correspondent’s power.
Letter to a Policymaker
Dear {Title} {Name},
I urge you to publicly support American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards, and to tell the {State Education Department} that they should adopt new social studies standards based American Birthright. American Birthright is rigorous, clearly written, and appeals to a broad majority of Americans, because it does not pursue a partisan agenda. American Birthright already has been endorsed by large number of organizations and individuals from around the country.
American Birthright teaches students to identify the ideals, institutions, and individual examples of human liberty, individualism, religious freedom, and republican self-government; assess the extent to which civilizations have fulfilled these ideals; and describe how the evolution of these ideals in different times and places has contributed to the formation of modern American ideals.
American Birthright will prepare our children for college and career because it provides comprehensive content knowledge in History, Geography, Civics, and Economics, as well as sustained coverage of Western Civilization, World History, United States History, and Civics. American Birthright integrates its standards with a series of primary source documents, so students can learn the actual materials of history. American Birthright’s straightforward structure makes it easy for teachers to use and easy for parents to hold teachers accountable for how well they teach social studies. American Birthright’s intensive content standards also facilitate reliable assessment, whether by state-level testing or tests by school districts and individual teachers.
American Birthright will especially benefit the most disadvantaged students. Disadvantaged students benefit from intensive content instruction even more than better-off students, who receive large amounts of content knowledge from their families and peers. Content standards that abbreviate content foster an unequal society because they especially harm the education of disadvantaged children. American Birthright’s intensive content standards fulfill America’s promise of equal educational opportunities for everyone.
{Personal Information: I am a constituent; I live in X; my children attend school at X; their current social studies instruction is not sufficient because X.}
Please publicly support American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards, and urge the {State Education Department} to work immediately to adopt new social studies standards, based American Birthright.
Best wishes,
{Name}