Some Great Democracy News to Ring in the New Year:

Congress is Stepping Up Support for Civics!

Friends,

I write to share some great democracy news. For the last four years, a nationwide community of educators has been working to create the infrastructure for excellence in history and civics learning for all learners K-12.

In the year-end omnibus bill, Congress legislated a significant increase in funding for K-12 civic education, from the current $7.75M to $23M to move us closer to ensuring equitable access to high-quality civic learning opportunities for all learners.

The allocation includes $20M for a competitive grant program, “Civics National Activities.” Eligible recipients for this program include institutions of higher education and nonprofits that use evidence-based practices “...to improv[e] teaching and learning about the history and principles of the Constitution of the United States.”

This work builds on a foundation our community laid with the March 2021 release of the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap (EAD), sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and U.S. Dept. of Education. EAD is led by iCivics, the Democratic Knowledge Project at Harvard's Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, CIRCLE at Tufts, SCETL at ASU, and others. In the wake of the release of the Roadmap, many of us also worked in parallel, through the CivXNow coalition, on an important piece of bipartisan federal legislation, the Civics Secures Democracy Act. It's been introduced in two sessions of Congress now by Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Tom Cole (R-OK), and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and John Cornyn (R-TX), along with the bipartisan support of 18 additional House cosponsors and 4 Senate cosponsors. While we didn't get Civics Secures Democracy over the threshold this session, we are very excited about the down payment in the year-end omnibus! 

My colleagues and I all look forward to building in 2023 from this cornerstone to the full investment we need in the infrastructure of civic learning!

Wishing you all the best for 2023!

-- Danielle