Week 8 -- Education is Everything

Hey everyone!

Last week we talked about on-campus polling sites. This week, I wanted to share an update on the next steps of my research and Week 8 featured a pivot and a new plan.

Public Comment & Petition

First, I had planned to study the age groups submitting public comments or signing petitions. Public commenting is an action citizens can take where they respond to new legislation detailed by their state governments, pointing out improvements or concerns that can lead to real action. Petition-signing was something I was looking to measure from sources like online websites like Change.org, more than official government forums.

Unfortunately, most of this data hides the writers’ ages, and in the case of location/state data, petition websites may be more hidden than public commenting sites. These two variables were my ways of measuring “interest.” Therefore, I’ll first still draw the insights I can on petition-signing per state or county to get a sense of civically-active states. Then, for public commenting, one website used often by these agencies called Public Input seems to have more readily available demographic data. In addition to my plans of measuring civics education requirements and youth advisory councils (a future blog post!), this pivot can still reveal the insights I need.

Civics Education

To generate interest early, historical and political knowledge becomes a huge factor, which can be taught at any point in the K-12 curriculum. At school, apart from home or any limits of social media and local news, students often learn the basics of their political system and where they fit. While a course is one way to teach, some states will give a civics test.

This test can be unique or the USCIS test, the citizenship test that immigrants take in order to naturalize as American citizens. When researchers raised doubts that the average American student could pass it, it became an easy benchmark for civic awareness.

But across the nation, there’s a lot of variety in state requirements. 10 states require neither a course nor test of any kind, 13 states opt for a half or full year course instead of a test, and some states offer the test but don’t require students to pass.

This week, I compiled the data on civics education requirements in different states and charted it. I compared it to the states with the highest to lowest average voter turnout from 2014 to 2024, hoping to point out a correlationary relationship.