What Texans Think About Civics Education
By Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center · · 4 min read
If you ask Texans whether public schools should teach civics, the answer is not close. In a statewide survey conducted this spring by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University, 91 percent of registered voters said a civics class should be required in public schools. Support that high is rare on any question of public policy, and it holds across party, region, and age.
The agreement goes further than a general preference for the subject. Eighty-one percent said students should have to pass a civics test in order to graduate — 89 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats. Seventy-nine percent said it is very important that students understand the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the responsibilities of citizenship before they leave high school. Seventy-eight percent said teaching the founding ideas of liberty and equality is very important for the country's future.
Where the confidence drops
The same voters were much less sure that this is actually happening. Only 25 percent of parents rated their own child's school's civics instruction as excellent. Fifty-nine percent said Texas should be spending more on civics education in its K-12 schools.
Texans overwhelmingly want strong civics education. Only about a quarter of parents believe their schools are delivering it. That gap is the work in front of this program.
That distance between what the public wants and what the public sees is the reason The American Civic Tradition at 250 exists. The initiative is a three-year, $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, shared by Texas Southern University in Houston and West Texas A&M University in Canyon. Over the life of the grant it will work directly with 150 Texas teachers — half in urban schools, half in rural ones — and 100 undergraduate Civic Fellows.
What we do with a finding like this
Polling is useful when it changes what you build. These numbers shaped three decisions. First, the teacher seminars begin with primary texts rather than summaries, because the public's stated priority is the founding documents themselves. Second, every teacher in the cohort leaves the year with a redesigned unit ready to teach, not just a certificate. Third, the program serves both an urban HBCU's community and a rural-serving university's region at the same time, because the confidence gap is widest exactly where school resources are thinnest.
Source: Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center, The State of Public Opinion on K-12 Civics Education in Texas, May 2026. A YouGov survey of 1,706 Texas registered voters conducted April 22–May 6, 2026, margin of error ±2.37 percent. Authored by Michael O. Adams and Mark P. Jones.