Civic Education in the NCLB Era: The Contested Mission of Schools

This paper examines the philosophic and historic foundations of educating for citizenship. Despite these foundations, like all of social studies, civic education at the elementary and middle levels has been curtailed due to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. Implications of the reduction of elementary social studies instruction are examined. In addition, characteristics of civic education programs are described along with standards devised by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS, 1994) and the National Standards for Civics and Government (Center for Civic Education, 1994/2003). Civic education programs that teachers can utilize in elementary and middle school settings are also discussed.