The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) just released its 2026 Civic Values Survey, which shows continuing sky-high levels of public support for civic education:
- 83% say all students should be required to study American history; and,
- 75% say high schoolers should study the Declaration of Independence this anniversary year;
This is good news, but it comes alongside some cautionary data as well. More than four in ten adults said they would need to look up the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to remember them, and 61% believe children today get a worse education than they did. And interestingly, a majority (52%) said families, not schools, should take primary responsibility for teaching what America stands for.
The findings point to the polarization and low trust in institutions that continue to bedevil our nation, but the difference today is that momentum for strengthening civic learning is real.
Following long-term advocacy from many in our community, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) moved the voluntary state-level National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Civics assessment for 8th graders up to 2028 and, for the first time, results will be disaggregated by state. Simultaneously, NAGB will develop a new framework aligned with the needs of our digital democracy for the NAEP Civics assessment, with scheduled deployment in 2032.
Civic seals, credentials affixed to a high school diploma certifying demonstrated civic knowledge and skill, have now been adopted in 19 states spanning the political spectrum, reaching nearly half of America’s schoolchildren. In recent months, civic seals legislation passed in Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, and New Hampshire.
This momentum comes at a time when emerging technology is forcing us to rethink the very foundations of educating America’s young people. On the doorstep of America’s 250th anniversary, we have an opportunity to return civics to a central place in our education system, just as the founding generation intended, by advocating for participation in NAEP Civics and adoption of civic seals across all 50 states.
One point in the survey that we did find heartening was that 62 percent of those surveyed said that democracy needs to be taught because it is not implicitly learned. This is one of the principles upon which iCivics was created, as our founder, the late Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, used as her rallying cry for civic education: “The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool. It must be taught and learned anew by each generation of citizens.”
