Drafter
Clerk 02/04/2014
Title
A MOTION in support of the Civics for All Initiative.
Body
WHEREAS, a basic understanding of the rights and duties of citizenship are essential to sustaining democracy and civic life, both nationally and in King County, and
WHEREAS, a national and local "civics gap" has formed and is disenfranchising minority and at-risk students, especially in low-income elementary schools where math and literacy test-prep pressures have made civics scarce, and
WHEREAS, the civics gap follows students from K-12 school into voting age adulthood so that only twenty-one percent of eighteen-through-twenty-nine-year-olds voted in federal elections in 2010 and far, far fewer vote in local elections, and
WHEREAS, the Civics for All Initiative is an independent effort, originated with a group of high school students, their teacher and broad community support, that proposes a specific K-12 curriculum for Seattle Public Schools, comprised of six elements:
1. Voting and elections: hold mock elections in all schools every November, with the assistance of the King County department of elections and the Secretary of State, and encourage students to register family members to vote;
2. Social studies: require three civics classroom based assessments for each grade level in order to spark civics education revitalization;
3. Media-literacy: promote and embed media literacy in curriculum lessons, primarily in social-studies and language arts classrooms that include electoral politics and current events;
4. Civics across the curriculum/civics across the core: promote and infuse interdisciplinary civics awareness lessons and civics texts that support common core literacy standards into all academic disciplines and grades when possible;
5. Civics website: establish and maintain a central website containing civics across the curriculum where teachers can share methods and lessons that incorporate civics lessons into curricula; and
6. ...

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