Toward a Cohesive Union? Currents and Cleavages in State Civic Education Policy Discourses

Purpose: Civic education in the United States has received renewed attention in state-level policy making. Yet defining what citizenship education entails has been long-contested terrain. This study explores the extent to which recently adopted civic education state policies are consistent in policy messaging around desired civic outcomes and civic debt. Research Methods/Approach: This study utilized political discourse analysis to analyze all civic education state policies enacted between 2017 and 2020, which included 45 laws from 29 states, through an iterative process of open and focused coding. Findings: The vast majority of policies espoused civic republican goals, with varying degrees to which they addressed civic debt. Liberal citizenship discourses were found in less than one-fourth of policies, and critical discourses were entirely absent. Patterns emerged in civic discourses by state political identity, geographic location, and whether civic debt was addressed. Implications: Findings suggest congruence across state law in stating that the rising generation of citizens should learn about the foundations and function of government, yet a continued disconnect between marginalized youths’ lived experiences of disenfranchisement and exclusion from the dominant narrative. The flood of state bills in 2021 seeking to limit the teaching of structural racism and the roots of inequalities seems to push back against “critical” policies that these findings show are not widespread. This calls for future research that examines whether these state-level trends continue amid ongoing battles over the teaching of civics and history in K–12 schools and how state-level civic discourses manifest in civics education policy classroom implementation.