Earlier this week, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show to discuss her on-going work on civics and her newest book, Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court. As we’ve noted before, after stepping down from the Supreme Court, O’Connor founded iCivics, an online learning platform that allows students to play games that focus on the three branches of government and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) recently completed a study of the iCivics computer-based teaching module called Drafting Board. iCivics is an online civic education platform founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor that seeks to prepare “young Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens” by providing educational video games and teaching materials available at its website.

In Sunday’s issue of Parade Magazine, David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has a “candid conversation” with retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Since leaving the Court, O’Connor has focused much of her attention on promoting civic education through her organization iCivics, about which she speaks with Gergen.

Writing in The Atlantic, Randall T. Shepard, a former Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, argues that the legal profession has an important role to play in strengthening the civic education and engagement of the general public.

Responding to the new study by the Educational Testing Service, “Fault Lines in Our Democracy: Civic Knowledge, Voting Behavior, and Civic Engagement in the United States” (which we covered here), the Hudson Institute’s Bruce Cole has an op-ed in the Washington Examiner that takes issue with the report’s suggested corrective measures to increase students’ civic knowledge and levels of civic engagement.

Some recent items of note:

• Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has created a sample civics curriculum for the Washington Post.
• Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter school system, has an article in The Atlantic in which he uses the KIPP system as an example of what can happen when teachers and administrators are freed to try out new ways of teaching students.
• Over at the Army’s blog, Chaplain (Maj.) Carlos C. Huerta has a moving account of dealing with PTSD upon his return home from Iraq, and he encourages other soldiers to seek help.
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“I propose to revive civics by making it squarely about the thing people are too often afraid to talk about in schools: power, and the ways it is won and wielded in a democracy.” So says former Clinton speechwriter and creator of the Guiding Lights Weekend conference on citizenship Eric Liu.

A round-up of citizenship and civic education happenings:

• The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has released a new report: “The Engaged Citizen Index: Examining the Racial and Ethnic Civic and Political Engagement of Young Adults.”
• Need an example of bad citizenship? Slate’s Joel Warner writes about his effort to use jury-selection science to get out of jury duty.
• Yesterday, the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and Labor Policy held a hearing on H.R. 2268, which proposes “to amend title 5, United States Code, to provide that Washington’s Birthday be observed on February 22 [the day of his actual birth], rather than the third Monday in February, of each year.”
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