Experiments in political socialization: Kids Voting USA as a model for civic education reform (original) (raw)

This report describes how an innovative curriculum promoted the civic development of high school students along with parents by stimulating news media attention and discussion in families. Evidence is based on a three-year evaluation of Kids Voting USA, an interactive, election-based curriculum. Political communication in the home increased the probability of voting for students when they reached voting age during the 2004 election. Thus, the interplay of influences from school and family magnified curriculum effects in the short term and sustained them in the long term. This bridging of the classroom with the living room suggests how Kids Voting offers a model for reforming civic education in the United States. Data are derived from a series of natural field experiments, beginning with interviews of 491 student-parent pairs in 2002. We evaluate the curriculum as it was taught in the fall of that year in El Paso County, CO, with Colorado Springs as the largest city; Maricopa, County, AZ, which includes the Phoenix region; and Broward/Palm Beach counties, FL, the epicenter for the ballot-recount saga of 2000. Students who were juniors or seniors in 2002 were interviewed in the fall/winter of 2002, 2003, and 2004. They were all of voting age by the fall of 2004, allowing us to determine whether participation in the curriculum in 2002 affected turnout in the presidential election two years later. We also interviewed one parent from each family each year. We examined the voting records in the four counties to provide a definitive assessment of whether the curriculum increased the likelihood of voting. Finally, we supplemented the panel survey data with qualitative insights obtained from focus group interviews. Findings address the following research questions. WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF IMPACT IN CIVIC DEVELOPMENT? Even as a brief school intervention, taught only during the final weeks of the 2002 campaign, Kids Voting stimulated news attention, cognition, discussion with parents and friends, deliberative dispositions, and civic identity. These results held up despite a rigorous block of demographic controls. The strongest impacts involved discussion inside and outside the family. As neophyte citizens, KVUSA students were much more responsive to the civic environment, much more attuned to political messages flowing from media and schools, and more willing to share their knowledge and opinions with parents and friends. The sheer size of their discussion networks had grown significantly. We consequently judge the breadth of Kids Voting's immediate effects as impressive in light of prior studies showing modest influence from standard civic instruction. CAN KIDS VOTING ACT AS A CATALYST FOR CIVIC INVOLVEMENT IN THE LONG RUN? Perhaps the most striking results in this study involve outcomes in 2003, after the passage of one year. Not only did Kid Voting effects persist, they increased for some measures of cognition and deliberative habits, along with partisanship and ideology. The nature of Kids Voting influence involves the induction of habits that are self-perpetuating. From this perspective, we can evaluate KVUSA as a successful catalyst for deliberative democracy. Students remained receptive to independent learning opportunities that came along later, such as new controversies or the eruption of political debate at home or with friends. Many of these effects waned when measured in 2004, but Kids Voting influence retained statistical significance for attention to Internet news, frequency of discussion with friends, testing opinions in conversations, support for unconventional activism, volunteering, and campus activism. While the curriculum did not affect voting in 2004 directly, it did animate the family as a setting for political discussion and media use, habits that eventually lead to voting. Parents got caught up in their children's enthusiasm for politics. Student-parent conversations stimulated by Kids Voting in 2002 predicted the following measures of parent civic involvement in 2004: news attention, cognition, discussion inside and outside the home, deliberative habits, support for www.civicyouth.org 3 CIRCLE Working Paper 49: August 2006 Experiments in Political Socialization: Kids Voting USA as a Model for Civic Education Reform unconventional participation, volunteering, and activism. DOES KIDS VOTING NARROW OR WIDEN GAPS IN CIVIC INVOLVEMENT? Kids Voting appears to provide an added boost for minority and low-income students. We found this to be the case with Hispanic students in Colorado in 2002 and low-SES students across the three sites in 2004. While the evidence of closing gaps is confined to just a few areas of civic development, the results replicate findings from our prior evaluation of Kids Voting as taught in San Jose, CA. WHAT COMPONENTS OF KIDS VOTING ARE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL? Of the 10 activities measured, three stood out as predictors of long-term civic development: frequent classroom discussions about election issues, teacher encouragement of opinion expression, and student participation in get-out-the-vote drives. These activities allow adolescents to practice communication skills and to build social confidence, dispositions that are easily transferred to other domains of civic engagement. RECOMMENDATIONS The single most important lesson from Kids Voting is the benefit of integrating influences from schools, families, media, elections, and peer groups. Working independently from each other, these entities are often ineffective as agents of political socialization, as many prior studies conclude. However, once they are integrated in an election-based curriculum, they create a kind of political immersion for students. Adolescents draw knowledge and opinions from multiple sources, allowing them to compare opinions and to contemplate their options for civic identity. The findings suggest the following recommendations. 1. Incorporate parents. Families represent proximal zone of learning in which students can practice the communication skills promoted in school. The inculcation of student-parent discussion about politics makes the home a powerful incubator for civic growth. 2. Deploy media in civic learning. Some Kids Voting activities directly involve media, as when students deconstruct political ads, but curriculum effects show how media use is promoted indirectly. When students realize they will be called upon to discuss or to debate a political issue in class, they turn to news media to arm themselves with knowledge. This utilitarian motivation to pay attention evolves into a genuine interest in the news, resulting in regular news consumption habits. 3. Teach to coincide with big political events. A great deal of research on civic education is based on the assumption of gradual, incremental learning. By contrast, the results here portray civic growth as occurring in spurts, in the context of the final weeks of election campaigns. Schools should take advantage of big political events such as elections, school board debates, and city council controversies. 4. Translate classroom instruction into community activism. Lesson plans should include activities such as student campaigns that mobilize adults to vote. Practicing political skills beyond walls of the classroom empowers adolescents and heightens political efficacy.