Current Projects
Boston Public Schools Civics Initiative
In 2008, the Civic Ed Project was hired by the Boston Public Schools to help develop a new high school civics course for the district. From summer 2008 to Spring 2009, we worked with James Liou and Robert Chisolm of the BPS and six high school students from the Hyde Square Task Force to design a new civics course that focused heavily on youth civic engagement. The course was piloted at several high schools during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years.
Fittingly, impetus for the new civics course grew out of the Campaign for Civics, led by youth from the Hyde Square Task Force. In the spring of 2007, Youth Community Organizers ("YCOs") from HSTF brought this issue before the Boston City Council by drafting the first youth-written hearing order in the city’s history. The hearing, held in fall 2007, explored the possibility of adding civics as a required class in all public high schools in Boston.
The Civic Ed Project continues to support the BPS Civics Initiative. In Fall 2010, we developed a proposal, called Civics 2.0: A New Vision for Civic Education, which layed out a plan for expanding and rethinking the civics initiative. The proposal calls for the creation of a citywide Civic Education Rubric, which high schools could meet through a combination of course offerings and extra-curricular programs, such as student government, youth media, externships, etc. The ideas set forth in this proposal also became the basis for our new initiaitive, Civic Schools.
Click here to download Civics 2.0: A New Vision for Civic Education (.pdf).