State Legislatures Magazine: January 1999

Editor's Note: These articles appear in the January 1999 issue of NCSL's magazine, State Legislatures. To order copies or to subscribe, contact the marketing department at (303) 364-7700.

We the Young People
A Look at Project Citizen
What Can Legislators Do?

We, the Young People...

Lawmakers can take note of the way that eight budding policymakers and future voters made a difference in their small community.

By Dianna Gordon

You don't have to be big to be mighty! Nor do you have to be aged and wise. A small band of concerned citizens, no matter how young, can move mountains.

As the eight eighth-graders of Taylor, Neb., found out last year with their Project Citizen civics lesson.

The small class not only proposed a "minors in possession of tobacco" ordinance, which their village council passed, but won a national award for their efforts.

Spurred by the success of addressing a public policy problem and helping resolve it, those bright-eyed middle-school students will probably be the voters and legislators of tomorrow. And, as adults, when they do tackle a public issue, it is a safe bet they will do so in an informed manner that provides constructive solutions within the system of government. They've learned early how the process works. It's a valuable lesson for the students as well as future citizens and policymakers.

Younger or even smaller (as in the case of the tiny Nebraska school) doesn't seem to make a lot of difference when it comes to solving public policy problems. Karl Kurtz, National Conference of Legislatures (NCSL), says that students involved in Project Citizen, ranging from grades six through nine, have the "knowledge, energy and enthusiasm necessary to develop innovative public policy solutions to problems in their communities." NCSL is a co-sponsor of Project Citizen, which encourages hands-on government experience for young people.

There's a growing sense that America's traditional volunteerism and civic involvement in local communities are deteriorating. Kurtz says NCSL believes that the "best long-term solution to these problems is education-not just book learning but hands-on, experiential education-about state and local government and how to get involved in solving community problems. Project Citizen is the ideal tool."

Project Citizen teaches middle-school students how to identify and deal with a public policy problem in their community. Students gather information, conduct interviews with key players, develop an action plan and encourage elected officials-from the school board to the state legislature-to adopt their proposed solutions.

In Nebraska, the two boys and six girls in the eighth grade class took a look around their small farming community of 186 and selected an area they felt they could improve-curtailing tobacco use by teens. After considerable study and discussion, they decided one answer to the problem would be passage of the "minor in possession of tobacco" ordinance by their village council.

Then they got to work.

Megan McNeil says that after her classmates discovered statistics that showed that 3,000 youngsters a day try cigarettes, they identified it as a real problem for people their age and began to research the issue in depth and got "all sorts of information."

The kids not only gathered information on the problem, but focused on the local aspects by conducting a survey of the 75 students in their high school. They found that "23 males had tried chewing tobacco, 22 had tried cigarettes; nine females had tried chewing tobacco and 30 females had tried cigarettes," noted student Jamie Foster.

They also wrote to other communities that had ordinances and asked for drafts, talked to the local sheriff and state patrol about enforcement, and had the county attorney help draft a model regulation.

Armed with good information and what they believed was a just cause, the students gave a presentation to the village board. Board members agreed it was a good idea. But ...

That's when the students "kind of learned that government is very slow," Megan said, and that there is a specified process, no matter how good the idea. The council tabled the motion to allow 30 days for public comment. But members then passed it unanimously at the next council meeting a month later.

The kids' civic mindededness doesn't stop there, however. They've already contacted their legislators about a statewide law. The students report that some of the legislators seemed enthusiastic about the project while others warned of the time it might take to pass legislation.

Assistant Clerk of the Legislature Richard Brown says that not too much is known about Project Citizen in Nebraska-a situation he is trying to rectify.

"I was not acquainted with the work of Project Citizen until the NCSL meeting in Las Vegas," he admits. After learning about the program, however, he adds, "I was really impressed with the involvement these kids showed.

"I think the project should be widely supported because it's a tremendous opportunity for students at that level to become involved-an involvement that should continue through adulthood when they become active and informed citizens," he says.

On the local level, however, not only had eight students made a difference in their community, but they went on to win the national Project Citizen competition, which drew 38 middle-school teams from across the nation-"like big schools in California." Other winners included schools from Iowa, Arizona, California, Kentucky and Minnesota. Project portfolios were submitted and judged by selected state legislative staff and members of the NCSL executive committee during the organization's Annual Meeting in August. For the tiny team from a small town on the Nebraska prairie, the win was beyond their wildest dreams. They went to Lincoln in October to give a presentation for the governor's education symposium.

And there was a bonus: They are now students who have an in-depth knowledge of how to participate constructively in changing their community. "This project really helped us learn how the legal system works," said student Errin VanDiest.

Dianna Gordon is an assistant editor of State Legislatures.

A Look at Project Citizen

Project Citizen, co-sponsored by NCSL and the Center for Civic Education, started five years ago in California with a large-scale pilot program, American Youth Citizenship Competition. Middle schools were targeted for the program because high school courses usually concentrate on the federal government.

Despite the relative youth of the students, they don't back down from tough public issues. Besides the Nebraska students, Iowa's Southern Cal Middle School placed second with a study on overcrowding of juvenile detention centers.

Last year, 610 teachers and 15,000-plus students in 47 states and the District of Columbia were involved. And NCSL and the Center for Civic Education are pushing more legislatures to get involved with the project.

Basically, a class looks around its community and identifies a problem that can be solved through good public policy. The students gather and evaluate information, brainstorm solutions, and develop a proposed public policy and action plan. This all goes into a portfolio that is judged to determine state and national winners.

It can stop right there, but it seems students take the matters to heart and have, through the history of the project, actually interacted with their government, making presentations to town councils and even the state legislature.

What Can Legislators Do?

Legislators can get involved in Project Citizen by:

Ensuring that the legislature endorses Project Citizen through a formal resolution or a written commitment by legislative leaders.
Appropriating or raising funds to support Project Citizen.
Assisting in the selection of schools and teachers to participate.
Assisting classes in conducting the necessary research to accomplish their tasks.
Serving as judges for statewide competition.
Presenting certificates of achievement to students, teachers and schools.

Project Citizen can be conducted on a small budget. Its costs will vary from state to state, depending on the level of activity. The Center for Civic Education will provide free curriculum materials for up to 10 classrooms in each state. The primary costs that might be incurred relate to competition among different schools if transportation to a central location is required. The Arizona Bar Foundation's program costs for its 1996 statewide competition were approximately $9,000 for 10 classrooms.

The Center for Civic Education has established state coordinators for Project Citizen. To find out who the coordinator is for your state, contact Karl Kurtz at NCSL, (303) 364-7700 or karl.kurtz@ncsl.org.