Public comments for the Civics Assessment Framework would be great! And there’s a whole bunch of bills and model bills to keep track of …

Civics Assessment Framework

The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) has asked for public comment prior to updating the Civics Assessment Framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It has asked specifically for comments to address three questions: 

  • Does the NAEP Civics Assessment Framework need to be updated? 
  • If the framework needs to be updated, why is a revision needed? 
  • What should a revision to the framework include? 

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance do believe that the NAEP Civics Assessment Framework (NAEP-CAF) needs to be updated, above all to refocus upon essential civics knowledge and to remove alignments with politicized material, including “action civics.” We’ve sent in a public comment to urge the NAGB to undertake a series of reforms to improve the NAEP-CAF. Resolute readers, please send in your own comments!

Model Bills and Good Bills in the States

  • Reading Whole Books, Model Bill: The Ethics & Public Policy Center (Stanley Kurtz and Mark Bauerlein) has published the model The BOOKS (Books Optimize Our Kids’ Schools) Act, which would require K-12 English classes to assign whole books to their students to read. It is, of course, a measure of how desperately rotted public K-12 education has become that such a bill is necessary. Resolute readers, please support such bills around the nation! If our kids can’t read books, having good social studies instruction won’t matter.
  • University Governance Reform, Model Bill: The Manhattan Institute has a model bill to reform university governance; a similar bill, Senate Bill 37, is law in Texas. A core part of these reform bills: make sure Boards of Trustees have sole ultimate responsibility for selecting university presidents, provosts, and deans, and that they are not constrained by faculty shared governance—or faculty-selected longlists and shortlists for administrative posts! You can’t have real reform of universities until you have new administrative leaders.
  • Western Civ Reform in Idaho: Idaho Senate Bill 1336 calls for good social studies reform in Idaho—including, pioneeringly, requiring Western Civilization instruction rather than World History. This is an essential reform—and Idaho has proposed it first. Resolute readers, imitate!
  • Tennessee History of Communism Bill: Senate Bill 1890 would do for Tennessee what’s just been accomplished in Florida—get the real history of Communism back in our public K-12 schools. Very much worth supporting.
  • Iowa Developments: The bill to get Iowa’s Department of Education to redo its social studies standards has advanced; the bill to simply replace Iowa’s social studies standards with South Dakota’s has not. Both were good—and we hope that the former bill will become law, ideally with good material from the latter bill incorporated.

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.

Civics Alliance Now Has Twelve 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 twelve affiliates, in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, 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 Monday, March 30, 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

2026/Current: Colorado, Maryland, North Dakota, South Carolina; continuing: Arizona, Kentucky, Montana, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming


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.

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 the Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars

Photo by Khaleelah Ajibola on Unsplash