In 1985, several influential university presidents founded Campus Compact to support student volunteerism and community service. Service-learning advocates took over Campus Compact’s campaign, and from that vantage point inserted service-learning into virtually every college in the nation. They then gave service-learning a new name—“civic engagement”—and used this new label as a way to replace the old civics curriculum with service-learning classes.
In 1993, the reauthorization of the National and Community Service Act codified fiscal support for service-learning into federal law.
In 2015, Illinois passed a law to require students to take a stand-alone civics course including service-learning; the Illinois law, and a follow-up law in 2019, have become models for action civics proponents around the nation.
In 2018, iCivics founded CivXNow to push for policy change to promote action civics.
In 2018, Massachusetts passed a law to require students to take part in “civic engagement.”
In 2020, federal legislators introduced the Educating for Democracy Act, which would provide a flood of federal money for action civics.
