What's In High School Civics Standards? A New Analysis Offers Clues

Do states' high school civics programs explicitly teach the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights? What about the democratic system compared to other systems of government? What about avenues for public participation in A democracy? How about state and local voting rules? 

The Center for American Progress has waded into these very deep curricular weeds in a new report issued Monday—an update of sorts to its 2018 report on civics education. In it, analysts looked to see whether states included those four above-named topics, plus a fifth area: Media literacy and the role and influence of media on public debate.

The CAP analysis comes right as another national initiative aiming to specify core content that should be included in states' history and civics standards gets underway.

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education awarded $650,000 to iCivics and several universities to undertake the project.