ask at the jail or even sometimes during arrests have you served or you are currently serving in the united states armed forces? they understand that culture. in tulsa, we did a lot of education with the v.a. and the tulsa police department. something we ended up doing with our law enforcement, they would actually ask at the jail or even sometimes during an arrest, have you served or are you currently serving in the united states armed forces. we never asked if they were a veteran or not. to me i thought veterans were like my dad or grandfather. i didn't associate myself as a veteran, i thought that was my dad, granddad, who were on iwojima. what barbara said about the department of defense, they have done a lot of great work as well. >> i don't have any more questions. i want to thank my staff for putting together this panel. i want to thank you all for

joining us today at the u.s. conference of mayors. swx span's road to the white house political coverage takes you live on the campaign trail with the candidates. >> you're going to find more and more people who recognize massive opportunity for exchange trade.

if i'm president of the united states, one of the things i'll do in my first 100 days is begin an economic initiative of drawing latin american businesses and american businesses together. this is a massive opportunity, not a charity but an opportunity. it will help lift both parts of the world. >> this is about building a new grand coalition of americans who come together because they want to create a country where they unleash the spirit of the american people and rebuild the country we love. that is what 2012 is all about. [ applause ] >> mayor white, 100 years old. >> good to see you. my goodness. preef tomorrow night watch our coverage of florida's primary

results with candidate speeches, your reaction by phone, facebook and twitter. >> it would be intolerable if a handful of violent people, and that is what it is, just a handful, could harden us against needed change. i've seen an uglier violence, too, and it perverts the spirit of america. i saw it at the republican convention in 1964 when governor rockefeller was shouted down. i saw it in minneapolis when governor wallace, a man with whom i disagree was heckled into silence and it happened to me in philadelphia. we must give notice to this violent few, there are millions of decent americans who are willing to sacrifice for change but they want to do it without being threatened and they want to do it peacefully. they are the nonviolent majority, black and white, who are for change without violence. these are the people whose voice i want to be. >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to our website

c-span.org/thecontenders to see video of the contenders who had lasting impact on american politics. >> our ancestors came across the ocean in sailing ships you wouldn't go across the lake in. when they arrived there was nothing here. they built their tiny cabins and they did it with neighbors helping one another not federal grants. they came here because they wanted to be free and wanted to practice the religion of their choice. after 200 years too many of us take those privileges for granted. >> c-span.org/thecontenders. >> we're at the mayflower hotel today here in washington, d.c. it's the national association of secretaries of state winter meeting. they are holding discussions on voter participation. this symposium is supposed to start here any moment. it sounds like we're going to get some introductions here.

this the group's winter conference. a number of sessions throughout the afternoon. >> secretary of state from iowa. we hold up the american -- midwestern part of this association and it's been a pleasure for me to work with matt last year in our voter participation committee. today's program has two parts. at first we'll handle our work renewing partnership. second, we'll hear best practices. we'll have some time for discussion. we're very honored to be filmed and streamed live on c-span3. your microphones are live. keep that in mind. if you have ideas and things you want to bring forth to our committee, please make sure you're ready for that when we come to that portion of the agenda itself. also we'll be taking ideas how

we'll handle things in our summer conference as well. so as you know, you've received the renewal request and information from our three partners that are up for renewal this year. you got them on the drives. they came early. i have not heard a great deal of questions or conversations about that i would like to move first to our consideration of the renewal for nonprofit vote. is there a motion to renew our partnership with nonprofit vote. >> thank you secretary reed. second? thank you, secretary. is there any discussion on our renewal? seeing no discussion, all in favor please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed same sign. thank you very much. the second organization for our consideration renewal of their partnership would ask junior statesman foundation to have a

notion renew this partnership. thank you, secretary reed? is there a second? thank you, secretary. any discussion on this proposal? >> good program. >> good program. thank you very much, mr. secretary. seeing no further discussion all in favor, please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed same sign. thank you very much. our third renewal, people of america foundation. is there a motion to renew our partnership? >> somebody else. >> i can see su within my poor eyesight, it's perfect. thank you and thank you. any discussion on this proposed renewal of our partnership? all in favor signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed same sign. thank you. our partnerships have been a very important part of nass over the years. i feel very good bouse our procedure, the organization in

particular put excellent time in their renewal q we got a lot of good information. so if you haven't had a chance to look at the attachments from these three, please take a moment to do that and pass that along to your staff or to your partners back home. secretary reed. >> yes. secretary ritchie, i was just reminded a while ago just how many people we have. i do want to point out that the nass staff monitors them on the websites because we insist these be bipartisan or nonpartisan. we insist they not hurt the reputation of nass by doing some crazy things. so we have decertified some in the past because they have crossed those lines. i just want you to know the staff is vigilant in terms of watching how they conduct themselves. >> thank you, secretary reed. our first presenter today serves as executive director and i

would say relatively new relatively new director of the organization created by sandra day o'connor, who was recipient off of our nass award. prior he was fellow for berkman center for internet society at harvard where he investigated the impact of technology and legal education arnold studied the intersection of video games and moral development. he helped found legal aid university, provides training for professional development for poverty lawyers across the nation. he holds a b.a. in social studies from harvard university and a juris doctorate from harvard law school. we asked him to speak about the committee, a curriculum in many of our states.

a number of teachers and others are using this curriculum in their government and civics classes. secretary chapman and i serve as chairs in our own states in local committees that are working closely with our supreme court's and our judicial system and others to advance the use of justice o'connor's initiatives. we're very pleased to have him here. please join me in welcoming for his presentation. thank you very much. >> thank you secretary ritchie. what a great opportunity it is to address this group and talk to all of you about the work we're doing in icivics and a lot of folks are doing around the nation on civic education. what icivics does is provide young people with the knowledge, skills and disposition for intelligent citizenship. it's so important for us as

we're talking today about voter engagement to think about how do we prepare young people, tomorrow's voters, to be not just capable of voting but being able to do so intelligently and in an engaged way where they are participating in american democracy and really working together to advance our nation and our visit states and communities. i don't think it would be a surprise to the folks in this room who are really paying attention to politics and to the way people are engaging in politics that there are a lot of folks participating in the political system who aren't terribly well educated about how our system of government works. we have three branches of government, for example, how these relate to each other or how many supreme court justices there might be at any given moment in time. there's actual research that backs up the fact that tomorrow's voters, today's young people, are significantly lacking in information and

knowledge about the way that their government works. the most recent national assessment of educational progress in civics, which took place in 2010 showed that almost 80% of high school seniors are lacking proficiency in civic knowledge. that's a very, very high number. because these are high school seniors, we're talking about literally today's voters as of right now in 2010. we've gotten to this point, it's kind of the history goes on for a long time. if you look back at where all started with public education, really the original purpose of public education was to create citizens. and those of you who are familiar with their own state constitutions would know that 40 state constitutions actually cite the importance of literacy in the constitution itself and 13 specifically identify education as the primary purpose of public schools. so we have a very strong and

stored history of civic education as the basis of our educational system. and you could ask, well, what happened? how did they arrive at 80% of high school seniors are lacking proficiency. quite a bit has happened. probably one thing we've taken civic education for granted. so in the last 10, 20 years as other priorities have come up in terms of science, technology, math, english, as we all know they are the subjects being tested, for which funding is tied. other subjects in the social studies and arts have fallen by the wayside. i don't think it's for lack of interest or concern that civic education has fallen away, it's more that we haven't really thought about it and maybe started taking it for granted. but another thing has also been happening. that's simply providing civic education is not enough. it's really important that we provide good civic education, civic education that's keeping

up with the times, really being aware of how are kids learning today, how do we engage them. what's interesting, exciting, fun for them to be part of. a recent study out of harvard that looked, kind of surveyed the field of education and concluded that the majority of the k--12 students learn about citizenship by reading about it in a textbook, filling out worksheets and basically listening to their teacher's lecture. as you know, probably the best way to get interested and engaged in public education is to really get involved and learn about how does the national and state and local government pertain to you as a young person, as an adult, and to be very practical about it. so it's not just enough that we, for example, start testing kids on civics, although that is the kind of thing that's now starting to happen in states around the u.s., starting in florida.

to make sure civic education is relevant to our young people. they see it as something important, as exciting as all of us believe it is, that democracy is something they can participate in and believe in. so as secretary ritchie earlier stated, icivics was founded by justice sandra day o'connor. after she stepped off the bench we looked around and realized there were strong vociferous and ungrounded attacks on the court system in the u.s. the courts really don't have anybody to stand up for them. they don't do their own pr or have a lot of outreach. she realized that if this continued that it would threaten the traditional independence of our court system. so she began to ask around what can we do. people pointed to the decline of civic education as a basic fundamental reason why there was

so much ignorance about what courts do or don't do. then she decided to dig a little deeper and assembled a brain trust of folks and assembled them at the supreme court and said if we're thinking about educating young people, how can we educate them in a way that was better than exists now. overwhelmingly it came back we've got to be where the kids are today. where the kids are today aren't necessarily textbooks and worksheets. where they are today is that 97% of american teenagers play video games. as those of you with teenagers would know, they spend an average of at least 44 hours a week in front of a tv or computer screen or some other kind of digital device. that's where the kids are. so we took a big leap of faith and said this is where civic education needs to be. we did a call out for some of the leaders in the educational field of educational technology, educational video games and said this is what we need to do.

we need to make democracy, participation democracy as exciting as any of these games. and we did that. we created video games that are fun, exciting, engaging. i really wish we could do the video screen here today, because i'd share some of the games with you. i do encourage you to check it out. we're at www.icivics.org. you'll see all our games there. we now have 16 games that cover all of the different branches of government, and in particular some of the ones of specific interest to this conversation, we have one that asks students to think about what values they care about in an election and then pick candidates that match those values. these are all fictional. so we're staying away from specific candidates now. basically testing them on it. are they matching a way they

value different public policies against hypothetical candidates they would be voting for in a few years. there's another game we just released about how to run a presidential campaign that teaches how the electoral college works and campaigning works. these are two specifically about electoral engagement. icivics games are catching on. our games have been played 3.5 million time since we started. they are great in a school setting. they are playable in a single class period. they include performance results so teachers and students can review how they are doing. they are tightly woven with a broader curriculum. we don't just do video games. we offer over 50 lesson plans you can put together and teach an entire semester's worth of civics. they are fun. they are real games.

we work really hard with game developers to make sure these are actually bona fide games and not just like quizzes with pictures and lights and sound to make it seem more fun. these are games that we get feedback from kids all the time they get exposed to these games in school from their classes and then they go home and continue playing them. we actually get notes from parents saying they actually have to pull kids away from the computer to make them go to bed at night. we've hit on something that really is successful. it's also successful in our preliminary research that shows games are actually improving civic knowledge and attention by anyone from 15% on up and actually scores when you do both games and lessons are up almost 50%. so we're being affected both in terms of how many people are out there playing our games and also how much kids are learning. but all of this starts with schools and schools that are

really emphasizing civic education. that's where i hope we can work together with you make sure tha education fwets tgets the attend resources it deserves. we're doing what we can. we make sure that our resources are absolutely free. and you can go as a teacher and get to our games. you can get to all of our lesson plans. there's no charge for any of them. but we -- and they're also online to all the standards in the states, whatever standards you might have. some states have specific requirements for civic education classes. most have civics entinterwoven. i encourage you also to look at how to strengthen those requirements in your state. especially to think about doing it before high school. most of us -- at least my experience with civics education was getting in at the last semester senior year and the theory i suppose is it's right

before you're going to go it and vote but that's exactly when nobody is paying attention to anything. so it's much too late to get to young people. there's -- we specifically work with middle school kids and if we could we would work with even younger. there's kind of this prime age when, again, those of you who have teenagers would know this, but when kids are really, really concerned with justice and fairness, favorite quote is, that's just not fair, and it's a prime opportunity to really get them to connect their personal and family experiences to their communities and then from their communities to the state and beyond. at a point when they're not quite cynical at the way the world works and are open to learn about all of these different things. i encourage you also to look at how we can strengthen our states standards in zi veks especially for younger students at a point

when they're particularly open to learning about how all this works. and also, of course, as secretary mentioned, we have state leadership teams with himself and chapman. i encourage you to join our team as well and how to advance civiced kangs and specifically how to get more schools to be aware of the free resources that we're offering to help teachers teach this subject matter a more effective engaging and fun way. again, i'm sorry that i can't share with you some of the visuals of the games. i would be very, very happy to speak with any of you individually or to show you the games. i brought some with me. or to answer any questions later on. i wanted to thank you all for everything that each of you is doing to advance democracy at large but also a democratic education and how young people are learning to become citizens and become not just citizens but smart, engaged and active citizens. thank you. >> thank you, mr. koo.

>> i know there will be a few questions. i just want to say in minnesota our chief justice of our supreme court has been one of the main drivers. i think that's been true in other states, as well. and the internationaler association of the corporate counsel has also weighed in and become very active. we have teachers from third grade up to college making use of these. so we know it can be used for very wide range of our young leaders and young citizens as they're growing up. are there any questions for mr. koo? secretary congress? please speak into the microphone. thank you. >> not -- i guess a question from the standpoint -- i'm secretary condos from vermont. one of the things that we have found and as a former state senator who chaired the education committee, we struggled with this issue.

and we actually tried to put the civics curriculum back into our department of ed but a lot of their focus, because of budget cuts and whatever over the years, and the no child left behind, have basically abandoned siv vcivics and left it up to t local towns to decide whether they wanted to fund it on their own. i think there are some issues there that we need to relook at from a national level to try to get this thing reinstituted. i know my own office, we work with what we call boys and girls state, we work with high school and the doe ewe're actually goig to be promoting over the next couple of weeks, we'll be doing on their interactive learning network, which beams out to the schools themselves. we have a constitutional amendment change in 2010 that went through that allows 17-year-olds to vote in the presidential primary if they will be 18 by the general

election. and the theory is that they ought to have a say in who they're going to be voting on. since it's a primary function, which is a party issue, it's really -- it was -- we okayed that. it passed overwhelmingly 75% to 80%. we also run a poster and essay contest at three different level, grade school, middle school, and high school to talk about civics and at the grade school it's a poster contest. middle school and high school, it's an essay contest. and we're trying to partner with the american bar association, the local -- the vermont bar association, as well as vermont historical associate and league of women voters to try and find ways to promote siv vincivics e more. i think there's a lot we can do as a group but we also need help at a federal level. >> all of those are wonderful things that are happening and i

hear about similar things in other states. so thank you for sharing that. i do want to say that our primary focus at icivics is providing resources to schools for free. i would hope that it would make it at least easier to systems that are looking at addi ining civics to make it somewhat more cost effective to do so. we're not directly involved in that ourselves but we are partners and work closely with the campaign for civic missions for schools who is out there work ageing at the state level advance civic education specifical specifically. if you're not working with that organization, i would encourage that as well. >> we have had big use of these resources, also by all of our home-schoolers. so this is something that can be used basically almost anywhere. and it's available in disk form, if there's some situation where it's not really possible to access the internet directly.

they're available on disk form. other questions or comments? secretary brown? no. great. well, thank you so much for coming and being with us today and sharing that. and thank you for the work that you do in helping us do our jobs. thank you so much. >> i'm matt schultz, secretary state of iowa and i thank secretary richie being a great partner this year and working on this committee. i have the pleasure of introducing our next speaker, ms. heather smith, current president of rock the vote, a national organization with the political engagement of young people. under heather's direction and leadership over the past two election cycles rock the vote refined best practices for continued engagement of young voters. sending the highest voter registration records in both

midterm and presidential elections in the organization's 20-year history. prior to rock the vote, ms. smith founded and directed young voters strategies, a nonpartisan project and partnership with the graduate school of political management at the george washington university. in 2004 she served as national field director for the student prgs, new voters project, the largest nonpartisan grass roots effort ever undertaken to mobilize young voters. heather smith received a b.a. with honors in economics and public policy from duke university. now, we have asked heather to come speak to us today, more specifically to talk about how we can have voter outreach with rock the vote and young voters. i would like to -- before she comes up, speak more specifically about the partnership that the state of iowa has put together with rock the vote with the caucuses on january 3rd we had a great event

called rock the caucus. we brought to it a high school in des moines. we had 600 kids there. we actually went out of our way to print t-shirts to make it a more specific event for them. and i'll just show you. and so all the kids got a t-shirt. we had michele bachmann, ron paul, rick santorum, and the romney boys all come and speak. it was a great event. and i think it was a great way to show how we can work with groups like rock the vote. and out of that, we have begun a new class in iowa called rock iowa. and we're taking the democracy class from rock the vote and incorporating it with our own iowa education. and if you go to the secretary of state's website, www.sos.iowa.gov you will see on our banner the promotion where we have teachers and home-school groups who can sign up and a member of our staff