These Kansas Students Have Aced A Civics Test Much Harder Than The One Lawmakers Envisioned

By C.J. Janovy, Kansas Reflector

April 23, 2021

No matter what happens this weekend, Ken Thomas’ students will have succeeded.

This weekend is the finals for We the People: The Citizen and Constitution, a national civics competition. Ten students from Blue Valley Northwest High School in Overland Park, where Thomas teaches government, have regularly represented Kansas on this national stage for the past 17 years.

We’re talking a lot about high school civics in this space because the Kansas Legislature has been very concerned about it. So every lawmaker now considering whether to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill requiring seniors to pass a civics test for graduation should at least be cheering for the Blue Valley Northwest team this weekend.

“I think the knowledge and the skills they learn from this is far more important than the outcome,” Thomas says, sounding like any coach tempering expectations ahead of a high-stakes match.

His students will be among a thousand others from around the country, participating in 648 half-hour Zoom hearings (events won’t be live-streamed but should all be on YouTube in a couple of weeks).

Normally they would have flown to Washington, toured as many D.C. sites as they could squeeze in between rounds on Saturday and Sunday, then go to a big dance on Sunday night where they’d learn who was moving on to Monday’s finals. For many years, those final “hearings” took place in Senate or House congressional hearing rooms.

The largest team Thomas took to Washington was 41 students; the smallest, until this year, was 17.

A couple of years ago the competition moved to the National Convention Center in Leesburg, Virginia. Here’s one session in 2018:

Thomas has been teaching at Blue Valley Northwest since the high school opened in 1993, having arrived in the district two years earlier to teach at Overland Trail Middle School. The state civics competition cranked up in Kansas in 2000 as part of a national effort spearheaded by the Center for Civic Education.

Blue Valley Northwest won its first statewide competition in 2004, and went to nationals again in 2009, 2010, and from 2012 up through 2019. They were set to go last year, too, but dropped out when they didn’t have time to prepare after Gov. Laura Kelly closed schools to slow the pandemic.
“I’m proud of these students because they’ve done what no other group of my students have ever done,” Thomas says of this year’s team.

“One of the things that I think education is lacking is teaching the ability to overcome obstacles,” he adds, “and this year these students have been able to overcome, obviously, more than past students.”

Over the years, Thomas says, the Blue Valley district became more engaged in civic education and developed a yearlong class in which students take a U.S. government class first semester and then honors advanced studies in U.S. government during the second semester, which is more than the semester required by the state.

The statewide We the People competitions took a hit, meanwhile, after Congress eliminated earmarks that funded other aspects of the Center for Civic Education’s programs in 2011, Thomas says.

“We would have 10-15 teams at state every year from all over the state,” he remembers. “We were really thriving and then the budgets dried up. One year, there were only two teams at state. Many of the small towns that had been in the program dropped out because they couldn’t afford to have buses.”

Eventually Kansas State University stepped in to host the competition and provide other help. Without K-State’s involvement, Thomas says, Kansas would have lost the program. Also over the past few years, he says, the state Department of Education elevated civics and civic engagement as part of STEM education.

Now, he notes, “people are decrying the lack of civic knowledge, yet the emphasis is not necessarily on civic knowledge. That’s a problem that we have to figure out.”

If they really cared about civics that much, lawmakers could focus less on making kids take tests and more on funding public education.

It’s the classics and the humanities that teach us who we are, Thomas says.

“We can learn those things that will help us get a job, but it’s who we are that is critical to our lives and to what Thomas Jefferson said about the pursuit of happiness,” he says. “Aristotle basically talks about happiness being the fulfilled engaged citizen and being willing to sacrifice for the common good. And if we lose that we lose ourselves.”

Time to revisit your Aristotle, Kansas legislators.

Meanwhile, Thomas’ alums revisit his program. At a recent Zoom event, he says, students going back 20 years showed up to talk with this year’s team ahead of nationals. These are attorneys, people who ran for public office and sometimes got elected, people who “have gone on to lofty, lofty heights in their successful careers that aren’t necessarily related to civics, but they still remain active,” he says.

This year holds special significance for Thomas. It’s his last time going to nationals. He’s retiring.

“The one thing I know for sure that these students will do is they will go out and they will be active participants in our democracy,” he says. “They’re going to go out and know that their voice matters. I think that’s what we’re supposed to do in education.”

This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector For more stories from the Kansas Reflector visit Kansas Reflector.