This article discusses a partnership with two different civic education organizations to study three different student-centered discussion designs. In one study, the authors worked with the Close Up Foundation. Close Up is a non-profit that annually brings 20,000 high school and middle school students from all 50 states and U.S. territories to Washington, D.C., for a weeklong, place-based study of the federal government. During a program week, students are put into geographically diverse groups of 20 and participate in two discussions of public policy issues. The second study was done in partnership with Street Law, Inc., using a deliberation strategy. Street Law is a non-profit that produces free law and public policy related classroom materials. Deliberations follow the format for Structured Academic Controversy (SAC), originally designed by Johnson and Johnson. In a SAC, students work in groups of four to learn about competing positions on a policy issue. Using the provided texts, one pair in the group presents the best reasons for their assigned side while the opposite team takes notes. This process is then repeated by the other team. Upon completion, pairs reverse positions and present new reasons for each side. Finally, the two teams drop their roles and discuss possible consensus positions within their group of four. For both studies, the authors were interested in how the structure of the discussion affected students' opinions about the issues being discussed and whether the students experienced the discussion as inclusive and fair to competing points of view. In this article, the authors discuss the findings as they relate to some common concerns that teachers have about bringing politics into the classroom.