School Award and Recognition Program
Schools of Merit Application Guidelines

Instructions: To apply for the School of Merit award, your school will need to go through three steps: 1) setting up a civic education leadership team; 2) discussing the six promising approaches to civic education with key groups, and 3) “bringing it back to the table” so as to assess your schools’ current implementation of the promising approaches and to develop a plan to strengthen those practices. We encourage you to use the Civic Mission of Schools Awards & Recognition Toolkit as you go through this process. The toolkit provides suggestions and resources for each step.

To be considered for recognition as a School of Merit, please complete the following:

1. Application Cover Sheet
   
2. Use the questions below to write a narrative about your work in civic education or use the fill-in the blank style application form.
   
3. Attach any documentation, news articles, or other samples to demonstrate your schools commitment to and/or successes in providing high quality civic education programming.

Guiding Questions for Narrative

1. Who are the members of your planning team? Please list names, titles, and organizations.
   
   
2. Please provide a one-paragraph description of your planning process.
   
   
3. Describe the outcomes of your school’s assessment of current civic education practices in terms of implementing the promising approaches.
   
   
4. Describe your plans for strengthening and expanding each of the promising approaches at your school both in and outside of the classroom.
   
   
5. Provide a basic timeline for your plan.