Civics in Action
DC Students Changing the Course of Public Policy

An American Youth Policy Forum Field Trip — April 29, 2003

Overview

Civic education and community participation are essential to the development of informed and active citizens. Perhaps now more than ever, it is critical that our young people see the connection between school and community. How can schools succeed at this task? What are concrete ways to integrate citizenship into the academic curriculum and the life of the school, fostering the democratic principles of our country and hearing the voices of young people?

During this trip to Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School, participants had the opportunity to learn how one public school has addressed these and other issues related to education for active citizenship. Chavez School has been recognized as a model urban high school providing students with a rigorous curriculum that prepares them to enter college and to become active citizens in their communities. Chavez School draws upon the vast public policy resources in the nation’s capital and uses public policy themes to provide students with direct experience with organizations working in the public interest.

Participants on this trip heard a senior scholar from the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center speak about the role of the school in teaching for citizenship; the school’s founding principal spoke about the school’s education program and the challenges and opportunities associated with the day to day operation of the school, and two Chavez students discussed their experiences within the school. The author of recent report on the civic mission of schools spoke about the role of the school in achieving this mission and trip participants had opportunities to interact with the members of the panel and with teachers from Chavez School.

Cesar Chavez School

Chavez is a unique charter school that prepares high school students from the District of Columbia to become active citizens dedicated to influencing the public policies that affect their communities. Since it opened in 1998, the school has served students from all over the District; the current student population is 51percent Hispanic, 45 percent African American, 1 percent Asian, and 2 percent other. Seventy-six percent of Chavez students qualify for the free or reduced lunch program that serves students from low-income families. The school currently serves 250 students in small classroom settings. Chavez is characterized by its focus on serving a diverse population, high academic standards, its small and supportive learning environment, and its focus on public policy.

Throughout the year, a full-time public policy director at the school works with faculty and staff to weave public policy themes into the curriculum and to help students learn how public policy is shaped and how citizens can have a profound influence on the policies that affect their communities. Chavez has a School Advisory Board composed of prominent leaders of the District’s public policy community. The board helped to create a formalized public policy curriculum to support the goals of the school’s public policy program.

The public policy focus begins in the 9th grade. Teachers work with students to develop a foundation for future policy involvement and attempt to encourage a sense of empowerment, leadership, efficacy and commitment to social change. Students begin to learn about key contemporary policy issues, social justice leaders, social movements, and power relations in policy-making. The 9th grade curriculum focuses on developing students’ understandings of major policy issue areas such as education, health, housing, environment, crime/violence, poverty; defining public policy and related terms, the historical leaders and movements that have shaped public policy; and explanations of the development of public policy.

In the 10th grade, students participate in a Community Action Project. The goal of this project is to teach students the tools and skills they will need if they are to influence the policies that affect their communities. During 2001-2002, students produced a public service announcement about gun violence, held meetings and community forums with the District of Columbia Metro Board advocating improved bus service in low income areas, and worked to organize a community fair for youth on using bicycles as sustainable transportation. At this grade level, the focus is on developing students’ understanding of the role of government and policy organizations in creating and shaping policy; acquiring the tools to affect public policy; and developing research, writing and public speaking skills.

In the 11th grade, an emphasis is placed on developing students’ understanding of a particular policy issue that is of interest to them and further fostering their policy related skills. Students engage in a full-time, three-week, intensive, academic fellowship within a public policy organization. At the placement site, student fellows work on a specific public policy project, honing their research skills. In addition to further exposure to the field of public policy, students learn important professional skills including resume writing, interviewing, Power Point presentation software, dressing for success, time management and phone etiquette.

Over the past three years, 11th grade students have worked with over 60 different policy organizations including the White House Office of the Vice President, Leadership Committee on Civil Rights, Heritage Foundation, Urban Institute, Sierra Club, DC Action for Children, Washington Peace Center, United Students Against Sweatshop Labor, DC Agenda, Center for Education Reform, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

In their senior year, students write a 15-page public policy research paper and continue to develop public policy skills and leadership skills. Each student works closely with a Chavez faculty advisor and, in some cases, an outside expert to assist with the research topic. At the end of the school year, students present their thesis to a panel of public policy professionals. Recent topics have included execution of the mentally retarded, homelessness, immigrant rights, cloning technology, and secondhand smoke.

In the spring, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders participate in a special capstone program to further develop their writing, analytical thinking, and public speaking skills, as well as their understanding of specific public policy issues. Students, faculty and community leaders work collaboratively on intense, interdisciplinary projects focused on public policy. In 2001-2002, for example, tenth grade students asked the City Council to release surplus District of Columbia pubic school buildings for charter school use. Students wrote a press release and held a press conference to urge public officials to release surplus buildings. They also conducted in-depth research on issues related to food and politics, including access to food in low-income neighborhoods, marketing practices of the fast food industry, and the promotion of organic local food markets.

The school offers additional public policy activities and programs for students throughout the school year. For instance, in 2001-2002, 10th grade students lobbied Congress to support HR 2966, the Cesar Estrada Study Act to create historic sites in honor of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers Movement. Juniors spent a day shadowing university students and faculty at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. Fifteen students went on a learning laboratory boat trip with the Student Conservation Association to research the Anacostia River and its surrounding environment. Students tested water samples and explored habitats and plant life in the area.

Chavez graduates have gone on to become successful and engaged young adults. The average daily attendance rate is close to ninety percent. Chavez students are successful as measured by traditional standards; 11th graders at the school outperformed other District of Columbia students on all 16 math and reading content clusters of the 2001-2002 Stanford 9 exam. The college acceptance rate of the first graduating class was one hundred percent with students going on to attend American University, Brown University, Howard University and others. Last year, the school was selected as a finalist in a national grant awards program sponsored by the First Amendment Center and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. As a Project School, the school has made a commitment to embrace and teach First Amendment principles in its educational practices.

Panel Presentation

Charles Haynes, Senior Scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, welcomed trip participants and introduced the panelists and the school. Haynes praised Chavez school for sending a powerful message to its students: You can make a difference. The school is helping students to change the world and is an example of the charter school movement at its very best. The school and its staff have been successful in creating a learning community that coheres around a common vision and that translates civic education into civic action. Chavez school is organized around the idea that teaching about democracy is not enough to prepare young people for active citizenship. Young citizens need to acquire a set of skills and virtues to exercise rights and freedoms with responsibility. To acquire these skills and virtues and to achieve the civic mission of education, schools must be organized as laboratories of democracy: democracy takes practice.

Irasema Salcido, Founding Principal of Chavez School, described the vision she had twenty years ago: a school that would serve underprivileged youth and educate them to become effective change agents capable of improving their own communities. Now, every day, she wakes up and cannot believe that the school has actually come into existence. When she was just beginning to dream of starting a school like Chavez, she had no idea of the commitment and work involved in its realization. However, it was remarkable to find that many others did share her vision and were willing to engage in the hard work that it took to create the school.

Kate Davenport, with Community Incorporated, worked with Chavez students this past year on a community action program. She used an experiential, action-based teaching methodology to help students learn about the concept of sustainable development and to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to support sustainable development in their communities. Students worked as a group to define a community issue that they wished to address and they developed, evaluated, and implemented strategies to address this problem.

According to Peter Levine, Deputy Director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the Chavez Charter School is a successful experiment in education for democracy; it is also a good government strategy. If the District and the country are to have good government in the future, they need the skilled, committed, and ethnically diverse students that Chavez is developing.

Levine also discussed a recent report (The Civic Mission of Schools) on youth civic engagement and education. The report, released by CIRCLE and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was written by Levine with the contributions of a diverse group of individuals working in the area of youth civic engagement. It calls for renewed attention to the civic mission of education to address disturbing trends in youth civic engagement. It makes the case that schools such as Cesar Chavez can and do make a difference in youth civic engagement. The document makes specific recommendations for the improvement of civic education. For instance, it recommends that schools incorporate a variety of pedagogical experiences to prepare students for informed and active citizenship. Schools should:

• provide instruction in government, history, law and democracy;
• incorporate discussion of current local, national, and international issues and events into the classroom, particularly those that young people view as important to their lives;
• design and implement programs that provide students with the opportunity to apply what they learn through performing community service that is linked to the formal curriculum and classroom instruction;
• offer extracurricular activities that provide opportunities for young people to get involved in their schools and communities;
• encourage student participation in school governance; and
• encourage students’ participation in simulations of democratic processes and procedures.

The full report is available at www.civicyouth.org.

Two Chavez School students spoke to trip participants and attested to the positive impact of the school on them. Unique, a 9th grade student at Chavez School, said that her education at Chavez School has helped her to get a better understanding of policy issues. For instance, so far this year, she has learned about policy as it relates to environmental issues and their impact on people living in the District of Columbia, as well as the impact of various policies on the working poor. She has also learned that as a young person, she can be an effective change agent: she has seen the policymakers and others are willing to listen to the views of young people. The teachers at Chavez School have been wonderful: they are very open and receptive. The school gives students a chance to talk about anything; it is a very comfortable environment.

Cherry, a 12th grader at Chavez, also has had positive experiences at Chavez School. She struggled through her early years of schooling. Nevertheless, she was accepted by Chavez as a 9th grader. In her first three years at the school, Cherry continued to struggle. However, in the 11th grade she realized that her future would depend on how well she did in school. She and a group of students worked closely with a group of Chavez teachers, receiving extra tutoring and support. She was able to increase her grade point average dramatically. While at Chavez, she has developed an interest in child development and issues related to children’s rights; she recently wrote her senior thesis on issues related to child abuse and now plans to attend the University of Maryland next year. Cherry says she would not have made it through school without the support provided by the Chavez school community.

Discussion with Trip Participants

How has Chavez School tried to engage students and teach democracy? Salcido replied that this is the school’s first year as a First Amendment School and it is the first year that they have really stepped out on a limb to begin to model the ideals of democracy in the operation of the school. It is a scary experience to allow the students and teachers to have a say in how the school is operated. she said, one that really tests her as a leader. Two years ago, the 11th grade students and teachers wrote a school constitution as their capstone project. This year, as a First Amendment School, they have taken the first step and begun to implement it. She and the teachers are still learning what it means to teach for democracy; her hope is that the students learn firsthand what it is to participate in civic life as adults.

How does the school work to involve parents and give them a voice? Salcido replied that two parents serve on the school’s board of directors and parents have started a parent teacher association at the school. Chavez has an open door policy; parents understand that they are welcome. It is a given that they must be involved in the school and their children’s education.

How students make their voices heard? Principal Salcido explained that students must first get a group together to show support for a particular policy; they must then present their proposed policy and a rationale to support it. They must anticipate the possible consequences of the policy and their impact on the students and the school. She and the staff have been persuaded to change policies; for example, they eliminated a ban on cell phone use.

What makes Chavez School successful compared to other schools? Chavez School, as a charter school, has more freedom that traditional public schools. This freedom has helped by allowing her to recruit very high quality teachers and enabling them to experiment with different approaches to teaching. While these teachers are highly qualified, they may not all meet standard licensing requirements. Some teachers have been very attracted to the vision of the school and to her commitment to the success of the school. Professional development has been essential for the school’ success. The administration realizes that professional development needn’t always come from outside the school. Professional development also takes place when educators talk, share ideas, and work with one another. Another strength of the school is that educators are encouraged to explore and develop their other talents outside of the classroom because this enriches them as human beings and teachers. It’s also very important that teachers at Chavez feel like their views count for something in the school; they have freedom and they are valued.

Contact Information

Kate Davenport
Community Incorporated
1625 K Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
(202) 785-5980
kmdviolet@hotmail.com

Charles Haynes
Senior Scholar
First Amendment Center
1101 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22209
(703) 528-0800
chaynes@freedomforum.org

Peter Levine
CIRCLE
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy
University of Maryland
3111 Van Munching Hall
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-4767
plevine@umd.edu

Irasema Salcido
Founding Principal
The Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy
1346 Florida Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 387-6980, ext. 24
salcido@cesarchavez.cht.k12.dc.us

To contact Unique and Cherry, please contact Kate McGreevy at Chavez: (202) 387-6980 or mcgreevy@cesarchavezhs.cht.k12.dc.us.

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