A panel of education experts at the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Liberty Conference recently warned that North Carolina lacks state-level data on K-12 student civic literacy, a fact that could be contributing to bias in the classrooms.
The speakers argued that this absence of assessment, combined with vague social studies standards, paves the way for ideological agendas in public schools.
“If I were to ask you how much do North Carolina students know about civics and their government, we would have no idea because we don’t test it,” said Dr. Terry Stoops, director of state affairs at Defending Education, a national nonprofit dedicated to achieving academic excellence and political neutrality in public schools. “And when you couple that with bank standards that are propagated from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, it means that anything goes in our social studies classrooms.”
Stoops added that this environment gives a “license” for some teachers to advance personal ideologies. “When you give some teachers — not all — license, they’re going to use that to advance their ideologies. And their ideologies often run counter to the type of civic education, civic engagement, we want to cultivate in our students,” Stoops said.
North Carolina statute currently requires a civics literacy class during high school that covers topics like the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. But the limited guidance on content from the state government can lead to varied implementation at the local level.
That, in turn, can promote “anti-American sentiment,” like critical race theory or gender ideology, rather than foundational civic knowledge, according to Paul Runko, senior director of strategic initiatives for K-12 programs at Defending Education, who was another member of the panel.
“In addition to an academic decline, we also know that students have a very poor view of America, and so at Defending Education, we are trying to fix that and trying to get students back to academic excellence and being taught how to think, not what to think,” Runko said.
Another panelist — Dr. Michael Shires, vice chair of education opportunity at the America First Policy Institute, a national organization focused on traditional American values — underscored the broader problem by pointing to national statistics: Only 23% of eighth grade students are proficient in civics, according to the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress. This national trend likely mirrors what happens in North Carolina, Shires said, since “the teachers in North Carolina are taught in those same education programs as the teachers of California.”
Without clear metrics and oversight, the experts warned that parents and policymakers in the state are unaware of the hidden agendas.
The consequences extend beyond academic scores. Shires pointed to a “crisis” in civic engagement, noting surveys indicating that “only one-in-four [18 to 24 year olds] expect to vote. Something like 40% of them are registered to vote, but roughly half of those don’t plan to vote. They don’t see any reason to engage civically.”
Stoops pointed to specific examples, including an instance where the Wake County Public School System paid over $3,000 for a two-hour training session focused on implicit bias and DEI hiring. He also pointed to his own experience in the Florida Department of Education under Gov. Ron DeSantis, where they found a middle-school textbook that defined socialism as keeping “things nice and even.”
“This is just one of the many challenges you find in trying to make sure that students have a solid grounding in history and civics and government,” Stoops said.
While acknowledging the challenges, the experts offered potential pathways forward for North Carolina. Stoops suggested that local school boards hold significant power.
“I think it starts with the school board giving clear direction to the superintendent on what the expectations are for what happens in classroom activity,” he said. Stoops also proposed that school boards consider administering the US citizenship test to high school students as a diagnostic tool.
“I think you would be shocked at just how terrible those results would be,” he said.