College of Ed, partner receive $1.2M DOE funding to improve civic literacy in multiple states

A new College of Education Civic Literacy Leadership Initiative (CLLI) partnership received $1.2M funding through the U.S. Department of Education’s American History and Civics Education – National Activities program. It extends collaboration between the College’s and the Literacy Design Collaborative’s (LDC) Dialogue 250 (D250) project.

CLLI began on October 1, 2026, and will run for three years, totaling about $1.2 million with $456,400 coming to Purdue. It builds on Chrystal S. Johnson’s D250 project to strengthen civic literacy instruction and teacher leadership in K–12 classrooms, with the University of California, Los Angeles’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) serving as evaluator.

Led by Johnson, professor of social studies education and the Purdue manager of D250, a one-year professional learning fellowship that brings together secondary educators to sharpen their civic inquiry instructional skills, CLLI will spend its first year designing and pilot testing the program. In the second and third years, two groups of schools will take part, one in the 2027–28 school year and one in 2028–29.

“My role is to lead Purdue’s side of the work. Together with LDC, I’ll design and run the civic literacy professional learning for school leadership teams”,” Johnson said. “That starts each summer with a two-day launch here at Purdue and continues with monthly virtual sessions during the school year. As evaluation data comes in, we’ll keep improving the professional learning.”

Purdue education alumnus Godwin Gyimah (PhD Curriculum & Instruction ’24), assistant professor of education at the University of North Georgia, will serve as a consultant on the project.

LDC partners include Rob Kasher, chief program officer and CLLI project director, and Kami Lewis Levin, chief learning officer. Johnson will also work closely with Sabrina Alicea, senior director of curriculum development, and Jamie Keith, associate director of professional learning.

“A lot of our earlier work, including Dialogue 250, focused on individual teachers,” Johnson said. “CLLI lets us think bigger. Instead of one teacher at a time, we’re working with whole schools by building up their leadership teams. Over two years, we expect to reach about 60 middle and high schools in North Carolina and Indiana. That’s roughly 240 school leaders, 360 teachers and 15,000 students. We’ll also study whether this whole-school approach actually improves civic literacy at scale.”

The project will enhance the national standing of Purdue’s College of Education in research-based civic education and bring school leadership teams from two states to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus each summer. It will also strengthen the College’s ongoing partnership with LDC, and the independent evaluation will produce research and publications that come out of the College.

“Right now, whether a student gets real practice thinking through civic questions often comes down to which teacher they happen to have,” she said. “I hope CLLI changes that. When close reading of primary sources, respectful discussion across disagreement, and evidence-based writing are part of how a whole school teaches, civic opportunity stops being a matter of luck. It becomes something every student can count on. Beyond the schools we work with directly, I hope we leave behind a tested model that’s free for other states and districts to adapt for their own students long after the grant ends.”

Ultimately, Johnson and her collaborators want the finished materials available for any educator in the country to use.

“Both opportunities [D250 and CCLI] will allow teachers to receive professional development that supports civic learning and encourages civic literacy in their classrooms and schools,” Johnson said. “What we learn from Dialogue 250 will go a long way toward helping the CLLI program further enhance how teachers and schools support civic learning and encourage civic literacy.”

About Dialogue 250

Dialogue 250 (D250) is a one-year cohort-based professional learning fellowship that brings together secondary educators to sharpen their civic inquiry instructional skills through a partnership between LDC, Purdue University’s College of Education, and Purdue’s James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship.

Source: Chrystal Johnson

More: Crafting civic dialogue: College of Ed kicks off ‘Dialogue 250’ to build educator capacity (Sept. 2026)