About the Paper

A team of 20 researchers, educators and civic education practitioners has released a white paper that outlines the challenges civic education has faced reaching youth of color. And it makes suggestions for how to make civic education more equitable and relevant for today’s increasingly diverse student population.

The paper is just one early step in the journey civic education organizations must make to elevate equity as a priority in their work. The Equity in Civic Education paper, which is available below, was based on a year and a half-long effort to center equity in the civic education field.

The project, which was led by iCivics and Generation Citizen and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, included forming a steering committee made up of a majority of people of color, conducting a listening tour across the country, investigating biases that the organizations themselves held, and led to this white paper. The project was designed to generate a movement that agrees on equity as its primary goal and develop concrete solutions and structures in education that will advance equity-related goals and young people’s roles.