Graduate Capstone Projects

Before graduating, students from Oakland Unified School District complete a capstone project where they can investigate a social issue they care about. Learn more about how teachers assess students’ learning through the various components of the project by reading Young Whan Choi’s blog. You can also explore these four rubrics that Oakland teachers developed that serve as a guide for these efforts:

• Research Writing Rubric
• Field Research Rubric
• Oral Presentation Rubric
• Theory of Action Rubric

For examples of students’ final presentations check out the Investigation & Research section of the Deep Dive.

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Interested in learning more about using projects to assess student knowledge and understanding? Check out Course 5856: Project Based Learning: Create, Collaborate and Innovate.

Civic Online Reasoning

The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) has developed a series of short assessments of civic online reasoning — the ability to effectively search for and evaluate social and political information online — that can help students learn questions and strategies for evaluating online information. You can use their assessments in a range of ways including as a hook for a lesson, as content for modeling, as fodder for group practice, as an exit slip. Read their blog post “4 Tips for Assessing Digital Literacy in Your Classroom” and explore a range of assessments and lesson ideas on their Civic Online Reasoning website. For more on this topic you can also read a recent article by SHEG titled, “Why We Need a New Approach to Teaching Digital Literacy.”

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Assessing Civic Writing

The National Writing Project has developed a rubric called the Civically Engaged Writing Analysis Continuum (CEWAC) that guides teachers in their instruction and evaluation of civic writing. To learn more about supporting your students to write as a form of civic debate, dialogue, and engagement, check out the following blog post by the National Writing Project: “Engaging Youth in Civic Action Through Writing."

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Supporting Students in Developing Persuasive Policy Arguments

If you’d like to get ideas about how to assess your students’ ability to develop and present a persuasive and evidence-based policy argument at the culmination of a civic inquiry project, then read “Supporting Students in Developing Persuasive Policy Arguments” by the Measures of Youth Policy Arguments (MYPA) Research Team. You can also learn about the MYPA rubric that was designed to provide educators with formative and summative support in assessing six core civic competencies: problem identification, research methods, policy proposal, collaboration, presentation and delivery, and response to questions. You can also find more information the rubric, video examples, and curricular resources at the MYPA team’s website: studentsmakingpolicy.net.

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State Level Civic Assessments

Washington state has developed a set of civics assessments that are multi‐stepped tasks or projects aligned to specific state standards, which target skills and knowledge necessary for engaged, informed citizenship. Alongside a required civics course in high school, civic assessments are required at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. You can explore these assessments and scoring guides alongside other resources on the Office of Superintendent & Public Instruction website.

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District Level Civic Assessments

A number of school districts are also developing innovative ways to assess students’ civic learning opportunities with the goal of creating an evidence base from which to identify high-quality practices and to expand both equity and access to these opportunities. For example, the Leveraging Equity & Access in Democracy Education (LEADE) Initiative has been working with the following four school districts:

• Oakland Unified School District
• Riverside Unified School District
• Los Angeles Unified School District
• Chicago Public Schools

The LEADE Initiative provides educational decision makers with research-based tools for assessing equity and access in civic education in order to improve civic learning opportunities for all students. To learn more about their use of indicators and the project more generally, click here.

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Resources & Articles

• The Nation’s Report Card: 2014 Civics Assessment
• Can Assessment Improve Learning? Thoughts on the C3 Framework
• NCSS Social Studies Performance-Based Assessment Clearinghouse
• Why Civics is About More Than Citizenship
• Why Are We Teaching Democracy Like a Game Show?

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