Calling all Bostonians: This afternoon, March 7, the Civic & Moral Education Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will be hosting a discussion about our recent volume of essays on civic education: Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation.

The American School Board Journal has an article in its current issue about the importance of civics education, even at a time when social studies and civics classes are facing challenges in the era of “college and career” readiness. As Ted McConnell, executive director for the Civic Missions of Schools, reminds, education should be “about preparing students for college, career — and citizenship.”

In this morning’s edition of “Rick Hess Straight Up” over at Education Week, AEI scholar Rick Hess hopes that the momentum from the election will focus much needed attention on civic education in our nation. “Students,” Hess notes, “are remarkably unprepared for citizenship.”

Over at his blog, CIRCLE’s Peter Levine raises some good questions about the role and purpose of civic education, and how it can be used to strengthen democracy and civil society. Before we can judge which civic education initiatives work, Levine writes, “more fundamentally, we must decide what our democracy and civil society need from citizens. Should we be most concerned about information and knowledge? Skills? Civility? Devotion and duty? Independence?”

At Education Week, Nora Fleming explores the results of CIRCLE’s recent report examining the civics-related standards, assessments, and course requirements of all 50 states. (We covered the release of the report here.) After noting that the report found that very few states test civics in a meaningful way, Fleming considers what the next steps are for educators.

Last October, we hosted a day-long conference to discuss “Civics 2.0: Citizenship Education for a New Generation.” Leading scholars in the civic education field such as Peter Levine (CIRCLE), Meira Levinson (Harvard Graduate School of Education), David E. Campbell (Notre Dame University), and Joseph Kahne (Mills College), among others, came together to discuss research they had conducted on the issues of citizenship and schooling.