A charter school in Washington, D.C., with a Hispanic and African American student population. A public high school in rural Ohio with a predominantly white and low-income student body. An elementary school in California with a large English-as-a-second-language population.

Although these schools differ in many respects, they are united around a common goal: to uphold the democratic and public mission of schooling in America and to provide their students with an apprenticeship in freedom and responsibility. As recipients of grants from the First Amendment Schools project, a joint initiative of ASCD and the First Amendment Center, these schools have affirmed their willingness to take on the difficult yet essential task of engaging their students in the public life of their schools and communities, and, by extension, of American democracy.

Over the next three years, these project schools have committed to giving their students and all members of their school communities substantial opportunities to practice democracy. Project schools believe that knowledge of our framing documents and the structure and functions of government is an important element of informed and active citizenship, but they also believe that preparation for citizenship requires attitudes and skills acquired through participation in decision making. By practicing democracy, students confront the challenges of self-government, including the difficult task of balancing a commitment to individual rights with a concern for the common good.

At ASCD, we believe that this effort is particularly timely. Research shows that fewer Americans are participating in civic activities. According to Every Student a Citizen: Creating the Democratic Self, a recent report by the Education Commission of the States, this lack of engagement is even more pronounced in our young people. By almost every measure, the young adults of today's generation are less engaged in the public life of our democracy than those of previous generations.

For the past two decades, policymakers and the public have focused on the role of public schools in preparing children for the world of work. Certainly, schools should play a role in preparing children for their vocations. However, in our focus on the economic purpose of education, we must not lose sight of the fundamental purpose of schools in a democracy: the development of engaged, informed, and reflective individuals who are capable of sustaining and extending American democracy.

At ASCD, we believe that the civic health of our nation is at risk. Many Americans seem to have forgotten that education must serve a public good and that the existence of our democracy requires that schools, supported by the American public, prepare our young people for the demands of democratic citizenship. We have forgotten that schools in a democracy should not be merely the training grounds for the workers of tomorrow; they should be laboratories of democracy that give students numerous opportunities to work out what it means to be a democratic citizen. Given our loss of collective memory, is it any wonder that our children are not adequately prepared to engage in the public life of our democracy?

Over the coming years, the First Amendment project schools will work to renew the civic mission of American education by engaging their students in the complex process of becoming democratic citizens. As laboratories of democracy, these schools will provide our young citizens with opportunities to exercise leadership, negotiate differences, propose solutions to shared problems, and practice other skills essential to thoughtful and effective participation in civic life. It is our hope that these schools will serve, by their example, not only to educate their students for citizenship, but also to remind the American public of the necessity of our shared commitment to the democratic mission of our nation's schools.

For more information about the First Amendment Schools project, see http://www.firstamendmentschools.org .

To learn more about Every Student a Citizen, see http://www.ecs.org.