Teachers as Street Level Bureaucrats for Youth Political Knowledge

• In Event: Fostering Durable Civic Skills in Undergraduates

Abstract

State Departments of Education across the U.S. have passed new or updated policy standards related to civic education in response to Americans’ alarmingly low levels of political knowledge and concerns about democratic backsliding. Many of these policies require students to take a formal knowledge test, the results of which reflect variables beyond the mere facts learned in civics. As street level bureaucrats at the forefront of education policy, teachers play a key policy role through discretionary decisions about classroom climate, pedagogical strategies, and curricular content that can influence student interest in and retention of political information. This paper analyzes whether teacher democratic decisions in the classroom and their political, epistemic, and ontological beliefs impact political knowledge. Merging administrative data on student civics test scores from a large urban school district with a series of interviews and classroom observations of teachers, I show a strong relationship exists between democratic teacher beliefs and practices with outcomes of student civic scores, while holding constant a variety of student demographic indicators and measures related to the content and diverse pedagogies used within classrooms. This work underscores a need to rethink the role of teachers as street level bureaucrats who implement education policy and how developing political knowledge requires more than an opportunity to memorize facts in formal civics classrooms.

Author

• Abigail Dym, Providence College