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Historically there has been a relative dearth of social science research into civic education--even in political science, a discipline that had civic education as one of its founding objectives. This is partly due to the mistaken impression that civics instruction has no effect on civic and political participation, a conclusion that was once conventional wisdom but has since been refuted. More and more evidence has accumulated that well-designed civic education--both formal and informal--has meaningful, long-lasting effects on the civic engagement of young people. Existing research finds four aspects of schooling that affect civic learning and engagement: classroom instruction, extracurricular activities, service learning, and a school's ethos. Furthermore, state-level civics exams can positively affect knowledge about politics and government. The unifying theme that arises from this burgeoning literature is that effective civic education can compensate for a dearth of civic resources in the home and community. However, the renaissance of research into civic education is only just beginning, as more needs to be done. The existing data are too limited, and randomized studies are rare. Truly advancing our understanding of civic education will require a large-scale, multi-method, interdisciplinary effort.

As America grows more secular, secularism is increasingly relevant for American political attitudes and behavior. In this article, we contend that secularism—conceptualized as the affirmative embrace of secular belief and identity—is distinct from nonreligiosity, which is simply the absence of religion. We also argue that, at present, secularism is primarily a psychological, and not a social, orientation. Secular belonging and behavior are quite rare and generally unimportant politically, but secular belief and identity are far more prevalent and politically relevant. We examine the relationships that secular belief and identity, secular behavior, and nonreligiosity have with political orientations. Secular belief and identity have a much stronger and more consistent political connection than do secular behavior or nonreligiosity. Then, operationalizing secularism simply as secular belief and identity, we assess its connection to contemporary conspiracy beliefs and to support for democratic values. We find that secularists disavow most conspiracy theories and support the core democratic values of participatory democracy, freedom of expression, and political tolerance. Secularism's connection to political tolerance and support for freedom of expression is quite interesting because it is very different from those of liberal ideology and Democratic partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1997, the New York School Choice Scholarships Foundation Program (SCSF) randomly offered three-year scholarships to attend private schools to approximately 1,000 low-income families in New York City. In this paper we leverage exogenous variation generated by the SCSF to estimate the causal effect of the private school voucher offer--and the private school attendance it induced--on later-life voter registration and turnout outcomes. Our results demonstrate that the voucher intervention had no effect on registering to vote or voting in any of several elections for either the full sample or any of several demographic subgroups. Although unique aspects of the SCSF context impose limits on the scope of our results, they have clear implications for assessing the relative effectiveness of public and private schools in preparing democratic citizens. We close the paper by discussing the implications of the results for research and policy.

God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion's Surprising Impact on Academic Success by llana M. Horwitz Oxford University Press, 2022, $26.44; 254 pages. As reviewed by David E. Campbell WHY DO SOME [...]

Does political polarization decline as relational bridges are built between people from different social and economic backgrounds? Circumstantial evidence supports the existence of a relationship: social capital has declined during the same period that affective polarization has risen. To date, though, we have lacked data to test whether the two are, in fact, dynamically related. In this article, I measure the extent of bridging social capital among people within zip codes, generated from 21 billion Facebook friendships of 72.2 million Americans. Using two measures of affective polarization—feeling thermometers and partisan traits—the analysis shows that people who live in communities with more economic bridging are less affectively polarized and that conversations among people who have different political views is a possible causal mechanism. These effects are more pronounced for the affluent and for Republicans—and for affluent Republicans most of all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social presence (represented by salience of instructor and fellow students) in an online teaching environment has been shown to influence perceptions of course activity and self-estimates of learning. An experiment is described here in which teacher presence is manipulated via personalized messages from the teaching assistant throughout the course. High presence was not associated with activity in class discussion, homework performance, or tests over the assigned readings. It is suggested that these results have clear implications for the interpretation of research using perceived as opposed to objectively measured course outcomes to evaluate social presence and teacher immediacy concepts.

In this study, the long-term academic effects of mentoring relationships in higher education are explored, with particular emphasis on students in ethnic categories with a low first-year retention rate. A sample of 339 undergraduate students in a student-faculty mentor program was statistically paired with 339 nonmentored controls on gender, ethnicity, class level, and entering grade point average (GPA). At the end of the one-year mentoring experience, mentored students had a higher GPA, completed more units, and had a higher retention rate. Eleven years after the onset of this study, records revealed that by graduation the GPAs of the mentored students did not differ significantly from those of their controls and there were no differences in graduation rate. However, the mentored students remained on campus to pursue graduate study and teaching credentials at a higher rate. There was no apparent advantage associated with matching students with mentors based on gender, but students matched with mentors of the same ethnicity showed a higher cumulative GPA and graduation rate and also entered graduate study at a higher rate. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study aims to find a link between strong civic norms at school and engagement in the political process. Although adolescent civic engagement has been a topic of concern for many years, it has not been put to a careful empirical test, in part because few surveys of students contain detailed contextual information about their school community and track the students into adulthood. Fortunately, the University of Michigan's pioneering Youth Studies Series (YSS) does both. The YSS began in 1965, when a representative sample of the nation's high-school seniors and their parents were interviewed. These students were surveyed again in later years--1973 and 1982. Information was also gathered in 1965 from roughly 125 students from each sample member's high-school class. The author's analysis of these data proceeds in three stages. First, he examines whether the civic norms in a high school in 1965 affected whether adolescents anticipated being politically engaged as adults. Second, he tests whether the civic norms in the schools individuals attended in 1965 affected their likelihood of voting in the 1980 presidential election. He turns finally to exploring conditions that facilitate the development of civic engagement. The bottom line of this analysis is that the civic climate in high school has a great impact on voter turnout at least 15 years following graduation. What matters is that an adolescent's community, defined in this case as the high school, is populated with a high percentage of peers who express their belief that voting is an indicator of good citizenship. In fact, after accounting for the civic climate of an individual's high school, an individual's own belief that voting is a civic duty does not have an impact on voting as an adult. Any school-based reform aiming to enhance voter turnout among the rising generation should focus on ways to foster a strong civic climate. (Contains 3 figures.)

We use data from a sample of applicants to a national means-tested school voucher program and a national sample of the population eligible for the program to evaluate the factors leading families to use school vouchers. Our analysis divides the process of voucher usage into two distinct stages: initial application and subsequent take-up. Using a nested logit model, we find that some factors, like religious affiliation and religious service attendance, affect both stages. Others, like mother's education, affect only one (application). Still others, like ethnicity, have opposite effects at the two stages. Compared to Whites, minorities are more likely to apply for vouchers, but less likely to take them when given the opportunity.

We present a summary of the volume's main insights and recommendations for a robust form of civic education that will prepare young people to become civic actors who can take responsibility for upholding and advancing democracy. This volume establishes the need to expand civic education across curricula, beyond a one-shot course. We argue that the challenges of democracy and civic problems we face are multifaceted, requiring reasoned judgment and democratic decision-making, and involving discourse around rights and responsibilities. To meet these challenges, the stature of civic education must be elevated, its content expanded, and its delivery improved upon to ensure that civic learning is meaningful and relevant to students' diverse lives. Students also need to develop a civic and problem-solving toolkit: this work should start at an early age, involve opportunities to explore their own questions about democracy and civic involvement, and model democratic engagement in their own schools and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume features frontiers of scholarship in the political, social, and behavioral sciences that are advancing civic education. The volume begins with an analysis of recent efforts to create a shared agenda for civic learning against a backdrop of politicization in education. Additional articles provide theoretical and empirical support for the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for students to become engaged civic actors and problem solvers; other contributions offer illustrations of civic learning in action. A cross-cutting theme is the role that cultural contexts and environments play in helping to ensure meaningful student learning in the United States' multiethnic democracy. The volume concludes with recommendations for research, policy, and practice that can further advance a type of civic education that invigorates and preserves our democratic traditions and prepares students to address the political, socioeconomic, and ecological challenges that loom ever larger on the horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examined the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in three U.S. cities. Data from randomized field trials indicated that after 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private schools improved academically relative to their public school peers in all three cities. These effects were not significant for other ethnic groups. (Contains 39 references.) (SM)