Civics PlaybookRendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement
- Mission: Help to restore the civic mission of K-12 schools – grades K-8, in particular – and ensure that the next generation has the knowledge, skills and disposition of effective citizens.
- Geographic Focus: Pennsylvania, national
- Audience: K-12 students and teachers
- Budget: $400,000
- Focus Areas and Core Competencies:
- Hands-on civics participation
- Mock trial program
- K-12 teacher civics education
Invest in Teachers to Build Effective Citizens
Impact: Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement
Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement has had over 2,000 students participate in their experiential learning exercises, over 7,000 students participate in their literature and history-based mock trial program and 530 teachers have studied at their Summer Teacher Institutes.
A Conversation with Honorable Marjorie Rendell, President of the Rendell Center Board, and Beth Specker, Executive Director of the Rendell Center
Q: What is the mission of the Rendell Center? What problem(s) in civics education is your nonprofit working to solve?
Our main mission is to re-energize the civics mission of schools. That’s what schools were supposed to do – educate citizens. And they’ve stopped doing that. We want the next generation to have the knowledge, skills and dispositions of effective citizens. It’s not just teaching them about the three branches of government. Citizenship involves active engagement and participation.
Q: How do you describe the big goals the Rendell Center is working to achieve? How do you measure impact?
We’d like to be known as a resource to teachers through our professional development programs and experiential learning activities for students. The professional development programs expand teachers’ content knowledge and skills and provides pedagogical training on civics literacy and experiential learning.
Our experiential learning programs for students, including our read aloud series, our literature-based mock trial and our moot Supreme Court programs, build basic civic knowledge and understanding and provide practice in democratic deliberation that promotes sustained civic engagement. For example, in our elementary school programs civics is brought to life through active participation.
We do a read-aloud series where we bring in a judge, a lawyer or even a staff member to read to the students and ask civics discussion questions. We have really found that teachers and students get excited about it. In our annual Citizenship Challenge, students are given an essay prompt on a constitutional issue. The top 10 essays then do a live presentation of their essay. The energy and enthusiasm around the event is equal to a sports competition.
In our mock trial program, Rendell Center staff, judges and lawyers go into the classroom and teach students about trials – what the judge, jury, prosecutor and defense do. The kids will write a trial based on a book they’ve read with help from Rendell Center staff and volunteer attorneys and then act out the trial at courthouse in front of a judge.
We evaluate how it fits into the curriculum and always get very positive feedback from teachers. I think that goes to our goal of getting students civically engaged, giving them content knowledge and getting them motivated about the importance of our judicial system.
Every summer, we run a Summer Teacher Institute (three have been sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities). We evaluate the effectiveness of that institute with the participants at the conclusion and then six months after the summer institute. In our mock trial, we hold pre- and post-tests on content knowledge with elementary school students, and we see a 33% increase on average from pre- to post-test.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges the Rendell Center has experienced in working to accomplish its mission? How did your organization overcome those challenges?
The biggest challenge is getting teachers interested in doing this when civics isn’t taught or tested. Sometimes, they never come up for air until the end of March when testing is done. Principals and superintendents love what we do, but they say there’s no time. But we have repeat teachers who do our programs again and again, because they love it and they’ve seen what it does for their kids.
Civics education is an add-on. We’ve tied civics education to literacy. If you look at the mission statements of schools, they’re here to build good citizens. I think we have to get our schools re-focused on their mission and to measure the success of that change.
Q: What is the Rendell Center’s biggest need where philanthropists can help your organization achieve its goals?
Through funding, we’re a lean organization with a relatively small budget that limits what we can do. If we had a million dollar grant or endowment and knew we could hire more people and multiply our best efforts, that would be great.
I believe we need a national, targeted campaign focused on the civic mission of schools to make sure that in every school, in every state and in Congress, we have initiatives to fund nonprofits that engage in teacher training for civic education. There are loads of people willing to provide expertise –we just need the demand for it. There needs to be a targeted effort if we’re going to think big.
Q: Beyond the Rendell Center, where should philanthropists who care about advancing civic knowledge invest their charitable dollars?
The National Constitution Center does a great job. They’ve gone out with their interactive Constitution where you can see debates. If you go to their Freedom Rising one-person show, you come away inspired. Inspiration makes you say, wow, we have a gift.
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