Maryland Council for Civic and History Education (MDCCHE) Announces Support for the Educating for American Democracy Initiative

The United States stands at a crossroads of peril and possibility. After years of polarization, our country is highly divided and there has been widespread loss of confidence in, understanding of and appreciation for our form of government and civic order. We must rebuild our civic strength.

A healthy constitutional democracy requires a citizenry that has the knowledge, skills, and desire to participate in it. The founders devised a form of government that requires each new generation to learn to play its part, but because we have neglected history and civics for many decades:

• The U.S. has a citizenry and electorate that are highly polarized and poorly trained to meet the modern challenges we are facing
• At the federal level, we spend approximately $50 per student per year on STEM fields and approximately 5 cents per student per year on civics
• We have not been able to reach consensus about the substance of history and civics—what and how to teach

The time to reach consensus and invest in history and civics is now.

In response to the urgent need, the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative brought together a national network of more than 300 scholars, classroom educators from every grade level, practitioners, and students from ideologically and demographically diverse backgrounds and roles, who pooled their expertise to create a strategy for providing excellent history and civic education to all students.

The result of that work is a Roadmap and supporting documents that states, local school districts and educators can use to transform teaching of history and civics to meet the needs of a diverse 21st century K–12 student body. The EAD Roadmap includes suggested educational strategies for every grade level, a website of curated examples and implementation recommendations that each state and district can use to fit the needs of their own, unique communities. It details benchmarks for state-level accountability to support continuous improvement—as well as recommendations for investment in developing a corps of history and civics educators.

We at MDCCHE hope our support for EAD and the Roadmap will ensure that it is adopted widely. Join us in the urgent effort— there is a role for everyone in this work.

How to Support Educating for American Democracy:

The renewal of history and civic education will require the input and participation of everyone from educators and school and state administrators, to local, state, and federal lawmakers, parents, students and community members. It will require a harmonized “collaborative federalism” approach across all jurisdictions—local, tribal, state, and national. To that effect:

• We encourage you to take the time to learn more about EAD and then reach out to stakeholders in your community to help inspire them to utilize the EAD Roadmap.
• Visit educatingforamericandemocracy.org to download a copy of the Roadmap and Report.
• For more specific information about what you can do, click on “Take Action” on educatingforamericandemocracy.org and look for the stakeholder brief that best matches your role.
• For comments or questions, please contact EAD at EAD@iCivics.org.
• For questions, comments, or ideas on MDCCHE’s support of EAD, please contact Dr. Marcie Thoma at marciethoma@gmail.com