Separating students in a variety of ways from one another in school systems based on either their perceived abilities or the part they may play in the future world is a codified component of systemic public educational systems. Much pontificating and research has been devoted to reflecting on these stratifying and segregating practices, especially their contribution to inequity for particular populations, but a dearth of research has been devoted to how they might be impacting students' civic attitudes or democratic principles. I designed this quantitative study to explore how stratification and segregation in school organizational practices connected to academic ability or career and technical programming may be correlated with diminished attitudes connected with community, democracy, and civic-mindedness. I surveyed students in one southern Maine public secondary school and analyzed the results according to how they are grouped by the school, revealing statistically significant results pointing to diminished attitudes for students in low-ability groups, but not for those in Career and Technical Education (CTE) programming. In fact, the results of some individual questions pointed to statistically strong civic attitudes for students exposed to the project-based, interdisciplinary learning associated with CTE curriculum. One may glean from the results perspective on the need for contemporary American education to change in the twenty-first century to eliminate low-rigor student grouping in favor of learning experiences that blend real-world, career-oriented skills with those embedded in traditional academics. Further study to discover the nature and nuance of diminished civic or democratic attitudes in students would be necessary for clarifying these recommendations, but I conclude that further investigation into the potential benefits of the kind of rigorous curriculum and assessment design imagined by deeper and more liberatory learning may help create a foundation for schools' contribution to the preservation of the American democratic ethos. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]