The Teaching for Democracy Alliance is leveraging existing, high quality materials for professional development opportunities for teachers. The alliance was established as a strong collective voice for democratic learning to better equip teachers to ring practical democracy lessons to their students, especially in a tense political year. 

The Alliance is coordinated by CIRCLE, which is part of Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life.

Core Principles of the Alliance

• An informed citizenry is important and can be cultivated early through civic learning, 
• All students need access to opportunities to learn about core democratic processes like elections and voting, 
• A variety of high quality and culturally relevant resources are needed to reach all teachers and students, and 
• It's important for student learning to acknowledge political actors to model democratic practice. 

​Yet political polarization and structural barriers in many school districts have reduced opportunities for millions of young people to learn about modern democracy. Only 38% of social studies teachers think they would get strong support from their district to teach about an election, and only 28% think parents would strongly support them (Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, 2013).
 
Let’s teach for democracy. 
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