Carter Smith

30 December 2024

With the 2024 Presidential election in the rear-view mirror, pundits from all across the political spectrum are hastily analyzing the successes and failures of both campaigns in an attempt to make sense of the results. Such pundits are unlikely to pay much attention to the Vice-Presidential Debate, as political scientists suggest that VP debates seldom exert a statistically significant influence on the electorate beyond that of their home state [1], rendering little more than a formality. Nevertheless, it is worth revisiting the October spectacle, even if only for the reactions online. Following the debate, MSNBC interviewed Marcus Johnson, a college student in the historical swing state of Michigan, who captivated the nation with an incisive civics lesson that quickly went viral [2]. 

During the debate, now Vice President-Elect JD Vance attempted to portray Vice President Kamala Harris as ineffectual, insinuating she could have already implemented her proposed policy plans while acting as vice president [3]. Johnson, unfazed and armed with a clear understanding of government, dismantled this argument with calm precision: “If anybody took a high school civics class, they’d know what the vice president can do and what the vice president can’t do.” His response exploded on social media, exposing Vance’s rhetoric as indicative of either ignorance or deliberate misdirection. It was a striking moment, underscoring an uncomfortable reality—what should be household civic knowledge has become a prodigal outlier, an aberration of ignorance. Marcus’s virality underscores the necessity for a comprehensive approach to improving civic literacy in America, as doing so is crucial to maintaining a healthy and informed democracy [4].

We are living through a civic literacy crisis, where even the most elementary principles of American governance are misinterpreted and misrepresented in public discourse. Johnson’s clarity was a timely reminder of the value of young people who are knowledgeable of the basic apparatus of our republic, and it is young people who we must turn our attention to in support of this effort. In July of this year, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released the results of a 35-question survey that assessed the state of civic literacy among college students in 2024, the results of which are cause for serious concern.

Troublingly, the ACTA found that 60% of students could not correctly identify the term lengths for members of both houses of Congress, only 37% know that John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and only 32% know that an impeachment trial occurs before the Senate [5]. Given that this is only a survey of young Americans actively pursuing an undergraduate degree, we can reasonably assume that the general degree of civic competence would be even lower among all high school graduates, of which 39.6% did not attend college [6]. 

This isn’t merely an oversight of our academic institutions, it’s a critical liability that puts the world’s sole superpower at risk of democratic backsliding—an affair that would have grave consequences not only for the rights of Americans but for citizens of liberal democratic societies across the globe [7]. An uninformed electorate is vulnerable to manipulation from actors both foreign and domestic [8] [9], and the only protection against the complete obfuscation of collective reality is a common understanding of the rules of the game.

Misinformation impacts Americans of all political affiliations, yet the incoming Trump Administration and its republican majority in Congress have been vocal in their opposition to perceived “wokeness” in education [10]—an ambiguous enemy whose delineation molds toward the ends of those in power. In light of the Republicans’ impending control of both the White House and Congress, it is unlikely that the federal government will take any action to promote civic literacy at the institutional level. In these uncertain times, Pennsylvania’s divided government has a unique opportunity to confront this issue on its own by passing legislation that would institute a standardized civics assessment as a high school graduation requirement. 

The Commonwealth already requires nearly all students to demonstrate proficiency or above on three standardized ‘Keystone’ exams in Algebra I, Literature, and Biology [11]—the commission of a fourth exam in Civics would be well within the state’s precedent. The Keystone Exams were a unilateral graduation requirement until 2018, when then-Governor Tom Wolf signed legislation that opened up alternative pathways to graduation, such as “an industry certification” or “a full-time job offer” to increase the accessibility of a high school diploma [12]. 

Crucially, the institution of a Civics Keystone exam as a graduation requirement would not seek to reverse the amendments of the previous decade, as such an exam would not serve the same function as the aforementioned. The three existing Keystone exams—then referred to as PSSAs—were initially implemented to satisfy the federal education standards outlined by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, and only became a graduation requirement upon the adoption of Chapter 4 regulations. In contrast, the commissioning of a standardized civics exam would be independent of federal influence, as Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015—the active Obama-era reform to the NCLB—neither mandates nor incentivizes standardized testing for civics [13]. 

The localization of this initiative at the state level would absolve teachers and administrators of the bureaucratic labyrinth concomitant to federal standards, as common stressors like Title 1 Funding and Yearly Adequate Progress would be an afterthought. The test would strictly exist as an assurance of civic literacy, not a measure of district accountability. Should a district consistently have a notable portion of students not graduating as a result of below-proficient scores, the district itself would not be penalized but rather be allocated additional funding specifically for the augmentation of high school civics departments. The goal is not to churn out constitutional scholars but to ensure that voters can recognize, for instance, when a beguiling orator like JD Vance is attempting to deal from the bottom of the deck.

There is also an equity imperative at play. According to a comprehensive report by Research for Action (RFA), a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, Pennsylvania ranks 15^th in the nation for overall access to opportunity, yet the state’s achievement gaps between White students and Black and Hispanic students rank among the very worst in the country [14]. Furthermore, the RFA found that “few states provide so much less to their poor students compared to their non-poor students,” indicating that the Commonwealth’s educational dereliction intersects with class in addition to race. Of course, this is a pressing issue on its own—one that necessarily implicates our discussion of civic literacy. Despite this, a sweeping overhaul of the state’s public education system is unlikely to be in the cards any time soon, as progress often occurs in increments. Implementing a standardized assessment would nevertheless yield an indirect blow to the class stratification on which the existing system is predicated, as a statewide increase in civically competent youth is more apt to elect leaders who will work to dismantle socioeconomic barriers to quality public education. 

In our hyper-sensationalized world, political action tends to be portrayed as invigorating, even revolutionary. In reality, politics is unglamorous and often a game of calculation and prioritization that forces one to set aside an immediate pursuit of their idealized world and focus on the incremental progress that constitutes much of history. Our moment is one of unprecedented democratic precarity, thus a commitment to fortifying the very infrastructure of informed citizenship must prefigure the enduring project of building a more perfect union. 

The stakes are simply too high to remain passive. We exist in an age where conspiracy travels at lightning speed and political opportunists capitalize on confusion in an ever-complex world. A standardized civics assessment is by no means a cure-all, but it is an essential step toward engendering a more informed, resilient, and engaged electorate. Pennsylvania has a storied past as a patron of the American experiment—housing the birthplace of the nation and the soil where our Union’s fate was tested, its promise rekindled. Our great Commonwealth can once again lead by example and declare that self-determination is nothing if not a collective endeavor, predicated on the autonomy of each of us that can only be realized when information is disambiguated such that knowledge becomes the locus of power.

The message Johnson delivered was simple, yet powerful: civic literacy matters. The ability to cut through the noise and recognize when someone is framing information to their benefit shouldn’t be rare—it must be ubiquitous. Though Governor Shapiro heads a divided government, it is well in his capacity to work across the aisle so that Pennsylvanians, regardless of their political leanings, can be united in an understanding of and reverence for our brilliant republic as it approaches 250 years of existence. To ensure that America perseveres through this internecine period, we must pick up the fragments of social reality by returning to the stewardship of our shared destiny.

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Works Cited

[1] Boris Heersink and Brenton D. Peterson. “Measuring the Vice-Presidential Home State Advantage With Synthetic Controls.” American Politics Research, 44 (2016): 734 – 763. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X16642567.

[2] “College Student Delivers Masterful Post-Vice Presidential Debate Fact-Check of JD Vance Using Basic Civics Knowledge.” MSNBC, October 3, 2024. https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/college-student-delivers-masterful-post-vice-presidential-debate-fact-check-of-jd-vance-using-basic-civics-knowledge-220739141990.

[3] “Read the Full VP Debate Transcript from the Walz-Vance Showdown.” CBS News, October 2, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-vp-debate-transcript-walz-vance-2024/.

[4] S. Finkel and J. Horowitz. “Civic Education and Democratic Backsliding in the Wake of Kenya’s Post-2007 Election Violence.” Law (2010). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1659381.

[5] “Losing America’s Memory 2.0: A Civic Literacy Assessment of College Students.” Washington, DC: American Council of Trustees and Alumni, July 2024. https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/pdf-acta_civiceducation_07_01_2024_collegepulse.pdf

[6] “61.4 Percent of Recent High School Graduates Enrolled in College in October 2023.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 10, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/61-4-percent-of-recent-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2023.htm#:~:text=Of%20the%203.1%20million%20people,in%20October%20of%20that%20year.

[7] Aziz Z Huq and Tom Ginsburg. “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy.” (2019). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2901776.

[8] C. Tenove, Jordan Buffie, Spencer McKay and David Moscrop. “Digital Threats to Democratic Elections: How Foreign Actors Use Digital Techniques to Undermine Democracy.” (2018). https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3235819.

[9] Emilio Ferrara, Herbert Chang, Emily Chen, Goran Murić and Jaimin Patel. “Characterizing social media manipulation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.” First Monday, 25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i11.11431.

[10] Binkley, Collin. “Trump Wants to End ‘wokeness’ in Education. He Has Vowed to Use Federal Money as Leverage.” AP News, November 15, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/trump-woke-education-24f864d83e2f5745d12a79ebac0d7cc4.

[11] “Statewide High School Graduation Requirements.” Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2024. https://www.pa.gov/en/agencies/education/programs-and-services/instruction/elementary-and-secondary-education/assessment-and-accountability/graduation-requirements.html.

[12] Wolfman-Arent, Avi. “After Decade of Debate, Pa. Passes New Graduation Requirements.” WHYY, October 17, 2018. https://whyy.org/articles/after-decade-of-debate-pa-passes-new-graduation-requirements/.

[13] “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).” Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2024. https://www.pa.gov/en/agencies/education/programs-and-services/schools/every-student-succeeds-act-essa.html.

[14] Shaw-Amoah, Anna, and David Lapp. “Unequal Access to Educational Opportunity Among Pennsylvania’s High School Students.” Philadelphia, PA: Research for Action, January 2020. https://www.researchforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CRDC-Penn-Jan2020.pdf.