by Britt Wilkenfeld

 June 2009

CIRCLE releases a new working paper (#64) “Does Context Matter? How the Family, Peer, School, and Neighborhood  Contexts Relate to Adolescents’ Civic Engagement”

Report Summary: A new CIRCLE Working Paper (#64) by Britt Wilkenfeld examines the effects of several systems of influence (schools, families, neighborhoods, etc) on civic outcomes.  The author finds that there are processes inherent in each context that can account for the ways in which environments influence adolescents’ development. The most important processes seem to involve aspects of interpersonal relationships with parents (especially the level of discourse), patterns of activity within schools, institutional resources within neighborhoods, and the collective socialization that occurs in neighborhoods.  Schools, among other settings, matter. The author finds that receiving a civics curriculum “appears to be more beneficial to youth attending schools in high poverty neighborhoods than to those attending schools in low-poverty neighborhoods.” For instance, this graph shows that receiving better civics instruction makes by far the most difference to students’ plans to vote if they live in poor neighborhoods:

Thus the paper indicates that the civic engagement gap can be narrowed when the learning opportunity gap is reduced. Schools, although implicated in the existence of a civic engagement gap, also have the potential to narrow the gaps between different groups of students.

* Download CIRCLE Working Paper #64 “Does Context Matter? How the Family, Peer, School, and Neighborhood  Contexts Relate to Adolescents’ Civic Engagement”

Youth Voter Turnout Rate Rose to 51.1 Percent, Third Highest Rate Ever: 2 Million More Young People Voted Than in 2004

The fact sheet on youth voter turnout and trends in 2008 and a 50-state breakdown can be downloaded here (PDF). The press release is here.

Tisch College, Tufts University – Nearly two million more young Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 presidential elections as compared to the 2004 elections, according to new Census data analyzed and released by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College.

The increase is a continuation of the trend observed in the 2004 and 2006 elections. Youth turnout was 11 percentage points higher than in 1996, which was the low point after decades of decline. While young people increased their turnout significantly in 2008, older adults voted at lower rates than in 2004 and only slightly above their 2000 level.

Although overall youth turnout was high in the 2008 presidential election, there were important differences in turnout rates. Young African Americans posted the highest turnout rate ever observed for any racial or ethnic group of young Americans since 1972.

The gap in turnout by educational attainment remained large; voter turnout of young people without college experience was 36%, compared to a 62% rate among young people with college experience. (About half of the young adult population has some college experience.) There was also a significant gender gap in turnout: young women voted at a rate eight points above young men.

“We have now seen three consecutive presidential elections with substantial increases in youth turnout,” said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine. “We appear to have entered a new era of stronger youth engagement—also shown by high rates of volunteering and community service. But there are persistent gaps in engagement, with less advantaged youth still mostly left out. We must find ways to engage and expand civic opportunities for this cohort of young people.”

CIRCLE’s new fact sheet provides a 50-state breakdown of volunteering rates for teenagers, young adults, and the population over 25. Vermont, Utah & North Dakota show the highest rates; New York and Nevada among the lowest

The fact sheet as a PDF

The press release as a PDF

Tisch College, Tufts University. – Fewer high school age (16-18) Americans stepped up to volunteer their time over the past two years, new research reveals. Traditionally, teenagers have volunteered at slightly higher rates than other age groups, but in 2007 people 25 or older were more likely to volunteer than were those 16 to 18.

These are some of the findings from a study examining youth volunteering trends from 2002 to 2007 released by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College. The research presents volunteer rates by state and age groups calculated using the Current Population Survey (CPS), a joint product of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

Overall trends showed a 6 percentage point decline in volunteering among 16-to-18 year-olds since the rate peaked in 2005 at 33 percent. Meanwhile, volunteer rates for the population aged 19-to-25 (18 percent) and 25 years and older (28 percent) both changed very little (2 percentage points or less) since 2002.

Volunteer rates were found to vary tremendously across states and age groups, and to change from year to year. The state rates for 16-to-18 year-olds ranged from a high of 48 percent to a low of 14 percent in 2007, while in 2002 the high was 52 percent and the low 16 percent. The states with highest and lowest rates also differed for this age group. In 2007 the highest were Oregon (48 percent), Vermont (47%), Alaska and Utah (44% each). The top states in 2002 were Montana (52%), Iowa (48%) and Maryland (47%). The states with the lowest rates in 2007 were Nevada (14%),;West Virginia (15%); and New Mexico and Kentucky (18%). In 2002, Mississippi and the District of Columbia (16% each) and Tennessee (17%) were the lowest.

The state rates for college-age adults (19-to-24 year-olds) were generally lower, and again with different states leading the pack and bringing up the rear in 2002 and 2007. In 2007 the highest rates were in Utah (30%), North Dakota (29%), Maine and Washington State (28% each) and the District of Columbia (27%). While in 2002, the top states were Utah (36%) and Missouri (34%). The states with the lowest rates in 2007 were New Jersey (8%), Tennessee and Delaware (9% each). The bottom in 2002 were Massachusetts (11%), and Nevada, Tennessee and Indiana (13% each).

For the 25 and older cohort, the state volunteer rates and those with the highest and lowest rates remained relatively unchanged from 2002 to 2007. Rates in 2007 ranged from a high of 43 percent in Utah to a low of 19 percent in Nevada, Florida, New York and New Jersey. In 2002, Utah again led the pack at 49 percent and New York, Florida and Nevada had the lowest rates at 22 percent.

The study also examined the state policies impacting youth volunteering, which many researchers believe have an impact on the levels of volunteering for 16-to-18 year-olds. A Corporation for National and Community Service study found the public schools that make community service available has grown from 64 percent in 1999 to 68 percent in 2008, but those that meet the criteria for “service-learning” has declined from 32 percent in 1999 to 24 percent. Furthermore only two states, Maryland and the District of Columbia, have made volunteering a mandatory requirement to graduate from high school. Eight other states (AR, CT, DE, IA, MN, OK, RI and WI) allow service-learning activities to be counted towards high school graduation credit.

April 2009

This slideshow summarizes CIRCLE’s research to date on non-college youth. (Scroll over to reveal navigation buttons, or use right arrow to advance.)

March 2009

University of Wisconsin Professor Diana Hess has published Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion (Routledge, 2009). The longitudinal study of high school students that is a major source of data for this book was partly funded by CIRCLE. Hess argues that planned, moderated discussions of controversial issues teach essential democratic skills. She provides research-based advice about how to define “controversial issues” and handle them in classrooms.

February 18, 2009

CIRCLE Director Peter Levine, along with Constance Flanagan and Les Gallay of Penn State University, authored a new report “The Millennial Pendulum: A New Generation of Voters and the Prospects for a Political Realignment.”  The report was funded by the New American Foundation and was officially announced at an event on February 18, 2009 in Washington DC.  The report finds that the Millennials (born after 1982) are starting their adult lives much more progressive on economic issues than any generation from the early 1960s to today. The historical analysis shows that each generation has held a fairly stable attitude toward economic issues that has remained durable even as major economic and political events have occurred. Each generation has grown somewhat more conservative as its members have moved through life. But the Millennials are starting to the left of previous generations and are therefore likely to move the country leftward for decades to come.  To download the report, please visit The New America Foundation Web site. C-SPAN II broadcast the release event. You can watch the video.

An important study of the Millennials’ political shift is by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, Millennial Makeover (paperback edition March 2009).

January 2009

CIRCLE releases a new paper by Constance Flanagan, Peter Levine, and Richard Settersten entitled “Civic Engagement and the Changing Transition to Adulthood” (PDF). This study, funded by the Spencer Foundation, argues that life has changed dramatically for people in their 20s. Marriage, childbearing, financial independence, and other aspects of the “transition to adulthoood” have been transformed since the 1970s, and are now very different for people with and without college educations. These changes and differences powerfully affect civic engagement. For example, it appears that younger generations have delayed voting, in much the same way that they have delayed marriage and childbearing. But young adults without college experience are permanently missing some aspects of civic engagement–such as group membership–that were common thirty years ago.

As this sample graph shows, non-college youth are less engaged than they were in the 1970s in nine out of ten forms of civic engagement.

Another graph in the report shows that they are now less engaged than their college-educated peers in all ten of these ways (including union membership). The full report contains much more data, analysis, and policy recommendations.

For more information on non-college youth,  please see CIRCLE’s latest fact sheet “Youth Demographics - Youth with No College Experience.”  The fact sheet contains information on demographic trends of young people in the United States who have no college experience, for the years between 1968 and 2007.   To download the fact sheet click here.

January 2009

The Winter edition of CIRCLE’s quarterly newsletter, Around the CIRCLE, can be downloaded from here.  The newsletter includes a variety of articles including:

-  Has “No Child Left Behind” Narrowed School Curricula?
-  CIRCLE Designs and Analyzes the 2008 Civic Health Index
-  A Closer Look at the 2008 Youth Vote

If you would like to receive a hard copy of CIRCLE’s quarterly newsletter, please send an email to Emily Hoban Kirby at Emily.Kirby@Tufts.edu with your address.

December 2008

CIRCLE releases two new working papers on underrepresented groups in volunteer service. The papers were commissioned by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Click on the paper titles below to download. A summary of the research follows.

* CIRCLE Working Paper 62 “Do Race, Ethnicity, Citizenship and Socio-economic Status Determine Civic-Engagement?”
* CIRCLE Working Paper 63 “Civic Engagement and the Disadvantaged: Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations”
* Engaging the Poor and People of Color in Organized Service: Challenges and Opportunities: A Report of Proceedings from an Immersion Learning Session of the NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON VOLUNTEERING AND SERVICE

Working Paper Summaries: In order to support efforts to reach groups that are underrepresented in its volunteer and service programs, we present two background papers that examine rates of voluntary service and other forms of civic engagement among various subgroups of Americans. These papers were commissioned by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Read the rest of this entry »

December 2008

Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Medford, MA: Despite public belief to the contrary, schools are not shifting away from teaching social studies, liberal arts, and sciences directly because of the pressures of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), according to a new study released by Tisch College’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. In fact, at the middle and high school levels, curricula have remained constant and in some cases expanded since the federal law was passed in 2001.

CIRCLE analyzed five major federal datasets looking at the how curricula and relevant extracurricular activities have changed at the elementary, middle and high school levels from 1987 to 2005. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the full report is entitled Narrower at the Base: The American Curriculum After NCLB. Click to read the full study in PDF format.

In grades one through five, the curriculum has narrowed over the last ten years, with more time devoted to reading and math and less to science, arts, and social studies. These declines, however, began in the 1990s before the passage of NCLB. The trends are the same in private and public schools and in schools with majorities of white and minority students.

It would also be expected that new teachers would be influenced by current expectations and pressures to emphasize English and math, whereas veteran teachers would more likely maintain teaching priorities from their early days in education. The study found the reverse is true, with newer teachers providing a broader curriculum.

Even though the k-12 curriculum has not narrowed consistently, and even though NCLB is not mainly responsible for the narrowing that has occurred, the curricula may still be too narrow to prepare young people for citizenship. Extracurricular activities such as music, drama, student journalism, and student government, are also too rare.

Download the press release.