Report: Most Arizona college students are meeting or exceeding civic education standards

PHOENIX – The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) released a new report showing about 86% of students across Arizona’s three public universities meet civic education requirements.

The assessment was done because of a 2019 ABOR policy requiring Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University to evaluate students’ general education knowledge, which covers written communication, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and civic education.

This was the last area to be evaluated, with a rubric put together based on students’ archived works, local experts, and social sciences curriculum.

The assessment looked at student proficiency in principles of U.S. democracy, historical analysis and application, civic communication and action and foundational U.S. documents and laws.

ASU students tested at 90% to 95% in all four categories, Arizona students fell between 90% and 93% and NAU students were 86%-96% proficient in those areas.

According to September 2025 findings at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 30 percent of all U.S. adults cannot name the three branches of government.

Emily Manone, chair of the Tri-University general education committee, said it’s not only about displaying basic knowledge, but how students apply it.

“Students needed to demonstrate their ability to analyze principles of U.S. constitutional democracy, discuss relevant competing perspectives on those principles in both historical and contemporary contexts … to demonstrate their ability to effectively construct an argument or provide a discussion regarding civic action that incorporated multiple perspectives and other evidence,” Manone said.

All three universities began assessing students and implementing the ABOR policy in the past two years.

Andrew Comrie with ABOR said this report on civic education will enable universities to pinpoint areas to focus on going forward.

“The assessment is not designed to compare universities. It’s designed to see how well the teaching (is) going and can students master these higher-level concepts about civics as well as the content in their courses,” Comrie said. “And as therefore a management tool in a sense for the general education leaders to say what are we doing well, where can we improve.”

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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