What to expect in 2025 … Seminquincentennial celebrations … legislation and model legislation … All this and more in the latest Resolute!
What To Expect in 2025
Rumor and gossip swirl down the corridors … and one doesn’t want to say too much before any public announcement. I judge there are pretty good chances of serious education reform initiatives in at least five states in 2025. Civics reformers should support initiatives in their own states—and push for reform, in states where they haven’t happened yet. We are in a good moment for education reformers: let’s make the most of it!
Semiquincentennial Celebrations
Everyone should celebrate America’s 250th anniversary! This will be fun. But preparing for the celebration is also a civic duty. Civics reformers should take the initiative to see what is being done in their hometowns and states, and see what they can do to make sure the celebrations give proper honor to our great, our glorious, our wonderful country.
By way of example, the National Museum of American Religion is running a podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, as part of the lead-up to the 2026 Semiquincentennial. The National Association of Scholars is publishing a series of articles on the American Revolution over at Minding the Campus. Everyone should contribute what’s in their wheelhouse. Everything we do, after all, we owe to our forefathers who made us free; we can and should dedicate anything we do to their memory.
Legislation and Model Legislation
In Washington, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota has introduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education. Another bill, supporting education about the true nature of Communism, has passed the House. In North Carolina, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal published new model legislation, the College Financial-Aid Transparency and Accessibility Act, aimed at ensuring that students and families receive clear, consistent, and accurate financial-aid information from public colleges and universities. (The Martin Center has a whole catalogue of model legislation and policy blueprints that civics reformers should look at.) Slightly removed from the Civics Alliance’s focus, but still worth noting, the Pioneer Institute offers a blueprint for federal administrative reform.
These bills are hints for the future—especially the federal bills, which have to get the assent of 60 Senators to pass into law. Each of them helps—to inspire Americans, to lay down markers toward what policy goals we wish to achieve, to provide inspiration for bills in states which well may pass into law. Reformers should be aware that bills and model legislation are some distance from statute law—but they should take heart from each of these and use them to inform their efforts for reform.
Lawsuits, Reports, and Journalism
- American Experiment sues Minnesota Department of Education: American Experiment’s complaint against MDE alleges violations of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and also alleges that MDE earlier this year spent months ignoring multiple requests by American Experiment for other information on the Ethnic Studies Working Group until UMLC threatened legal action. The lawsuit seeks an immediate release of the draft framework—which was completed more than two months ago—and other requested data, and includes an injunction to end MDE’s alleged pattern of “stonewalling” or “slow-walking” responses to public data requests. Civics reformers should keep in mind that lawsuits can be a necessary and useful part of their work.
- Oregon Association of Scholars (OAS) publishes K-12 DEI Report. OAS details how Oregon has woven DEI into K-12 education and provides suggested policy remedies. OAS’s report demonstrates how state groups can forward civics reform.
- Goldwater Institute publishes Advanced Partiality: The Unwarranted Favoritism Toward the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program in State Law. Goldwater’s research sets the stage for state policy to reduce the College Board’s power to impose mediocre and politicized curriculum on school districts. It also provides a model for how policy institutes can work to bring up new education reform issues.
- John Murawski, Real Clear Investigations, These Upstart Classes Hold a Woeful Lack of Civics Education to Be Self-Evident. The article provides a survey of the state-of-play of the new civics institutes in public universities.
Testimony
Would you like to be on a list of people prepared to give testimony in favor of a state bill to reform civics education? If so, please get in touch with me: randall@nas.org. We need people ready to testify in all 50 states—ideally, with some personal tie to the education system, but testimony from any citizen would be good.
State Social Studies Standards: What’s Coming Up
- Alaska: Alaska’s Department of Education contracted with the American Institutes for Research to provide draft social studies standards. These draft standards were scheduled to be submitted to the State Board of Education and posted for public comment in March of 2024.
If you have news we don’t please write in and say! But as far as we can tell, that is the state of play for the present moment.
Civics Alliance Now Has Eleven State Affiliates
The Civics Alliance is building a network of state affiliates—groups dedicated to removing action civics in their states, whom we will list on our website. We now have eleven affiliates, in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. If you would like to form such an organization, or suggest an existing organization, please get in touch with David Randall (randall@nas.org).
Monthly American Birthright Zoom Meeting
The Civics Alliance will have its monthly Zoom session devoted to social studies standards reform on Tuesday, January 14, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. Please email randall@nas.org if you would like to join these monthly Zoom meetings.
Social Studies Standards Revision Schedule
2024/Current: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky (partial), Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
2025: Kentucky, Nebraska, Texas
2026: Colorado, Maryland, North Dakota, South Carolina
2027: Hawaii, Kansas
2029: Louisiana
2030: Minnesota
2031: Illinois
No Revision Currently Scheduled: California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.
Please email David Randall (randall@nas.org) if you are interested in further information about your state’s social studies revision process, and what you can do to participate.
Continuing Priorities: Federal Legislation
At the federal level, the Civics Secures Democracy Act threatens to impose action civics nationwide.
The Civics Bill Tracker
Civics Alliance supporters may now use the Civics Bill Tracker to track all proposed federal and state legislation related to civics.
Public Action
We encourage Civics Alliance supporters to inform the public and policymakers about the stakes and consequences of action civics bills.
David Randall is the Executive Director of the Civics Alliance and Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars
Photo by Caroline McFarland on Unsplash
