Does civics education actually work?

Does civics education increase political knowledge among 14-year-olds? If not, what does? As it is widely held that competent democratic citizenship requires at minimum a basic level of political knowledge, civic education for American youth has long been considered an important mission of America’s schools (Dewey, 1916; Merriam, 1934; Nie et al., 1996; Niemi & Junn, 1998; Galston, 2001). Despite increases in the twentieth century in overall education levels, political knowledge of Americans, particularly young adults, remains low (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). For decades, conventional wisdom among political scientists, driven by the research of Langton & Jennings (1968), was that civics education has little effect on political knowledge (Campbell 2006). In recent years, however, researchers have begun challenging this consensus, publishing studies that suggest civics education has some positive, if modest, effect on political knowledge (Niemi & Junn, 1998; Torney-Purta, 2002; Hartry & Porter (2004); Pasek et al., 2008).