Author(s): The Brookings Institution – Brown Center on Education Policy
- Michael Hansen
- Elizabeth Mann Levesque
- Jon Valant
- Diane Quintero
Published: June 27, 2018
Report Intro/Brief:
“This year’s Brown Center Report (BCR) on American Education is the 17th issue overall since its beginning in 2000. The 2018 edition focuses on the state of social studies and civics education in U.S. schools. Like previous editions, which were authored by Tom Loveless, the report comprises three studies: The first chapter examines student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress; the second examines state policy related to civics education; and the third provides a look at the nation’s social studies teachers.
- Chapter 1 assesses trends in students’ scores on the NAEP, colloquially known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” The 2017 NAEP has drawn particular interest for demarcating the end of the No Child Left Behind era and the beginning of the Every Student Succeeds Act era. This chapter describes trends in standardized scores on the mathematics (1996 through 2017), reading (1998 through 2017), and civics (1998 through 2014) assessments. It examines both overall trends and gaps by race, ethnicity, and family income.
- Chapter 2 examines state policy related to civics education. It describes findings from a 50-state inventory of high school course requirements, K-12 social studies standards, and curriculum frameworks. The analysis is motivated by questions about the alignment between current state requirements for civics education and the practices believed by experts to constitute a high-quality civics education.
- Chapter 3 provides a look at the nation’s social studies teachers. It presents statistics on the demographics, qualifications, responsibilities, compensation, and satisfaction of social studies teachers in secondary grades. Through comparisons with math, English language arts, and science teachers, this section shows the ways in which social studies teachers are—and are not—notably different from teachers of other subjects.”
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