This paper provides the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) community with information that may help maintain the validity and utility of the NAEP assessments for civics and U.S. history as revisions are planned to the NAEP…

Educational quality is a way to influence the future of the American economy (Hanushek, 1986). Large-scale assessments are designed to determine quality in education by measuring student achievement. A connection exists between the standards, teachers, and assessments that form a system of accountability within education. State and national…

The rise of state-mandated standards in public education have allowed legislators to answer the question of what constitutes a proper civic education, a debate that has existed in the United States since the turn of the twentieth century. Through the content they employ in their standards, states may indirectly influence the type of citizenship…

The nation's recent preoccupation with reshaping academics and raising academic performance has all but overpowered a task of vital importance--educating our young people to become engaged citizens of their communities. Traditionally, students are taught citizenship skills in either a civics education class or through citizenship courses in the…

This mastery test is designed to accompany the introductory unit to the second-semester 12th-grade "Comparing Political Experiences" course. The 27-item multiple-choice test was developed by the National Evaluation Systems, Inc. in conjunction with the project directors to determine whether the unit objectives have been achieved. Since…

This book offers a groundbreaking examination of citizenship education programs that serve contemporary youth in schools and communities across the United States. These programs include social studies classes and curricula, school governance, and community-based education efforts. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the…

A major aim of education in the state of New York is to prepare its students for a productive and meaningful life as citizens in local, state, national, and international settings. The "Participation in Government" core curriculum is designed to be a culminating course of study that focuses on Social Studies Learning Standard 5--Civics,…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1998 Civics Assessment measured students' knowledge, their intellectual and participatory skills, and their civic dispositions at the 12th-grade level. This publication describes 12th graders performance on 38 questions from the 12th-grade assessment. Thirty-one of the thirty-eight questions…

Twenty-five years ago "history and civics" was the term generally applied to the efforts of the schools to explain man in society. The amount of civics in the combination is indicated by the fact that the committee of seven of the American Historical Association, reporting in 1898 on the study of history in the schools, recommended that…

This guide illustrates a way to organize the 12th grade social studies course according to the "1981 California History/Social Science Framework." The guide is introduced with a listing of the model curriculum standards for teaching United States government, civics, and economics. Also provided are the basic concepts from the…

This mastery test is designed to accompany unit 1 of the first-semester 12th-grade "Comparing Political Experiences" course. The 21-item multiple-choice test was developed by the National Evaluation Systems, Inc. in conjunction with the project directors to determine whether the unit objectives have been achieved. The test measures…

This mastery test is designed to accompany unit 2 of the first-semester "Comparing Political Experiences" course. The 27-item multiple-choice test was developed by the National Evaluation Systems, Inc. in conjunction with the project directors to determine whether the unit objectives have been achieved. The test measures student…

This mastery test is designed to accompany unit 3 of the first-semester 12th-grade course, "Comparing Political Experiences." The 26-item multiple-choice test was developed by the National Evaluation Systems, Inc. in conjunction with the project directors to determine whether the unit objectives have been achieved. The test measures…

This second of three units to the 12th-grade first-semester "Comparing Political Experiences" course provides 20 student activities that examine political resources such as wealth, skills, status, information, and ideas. The activities and readings are divided into six sections which stress the alternative patterns of political resources…

During 1990, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported findings about elementary and secondary school students' knowledge of U.S. history, geography, and civics. In 1988, the Joint Council on Economic Education reported findings from its national study of high school students' knowledge of economics. The designers and…