CHARLES N. QUIGLEY

Charles N. Quigley is the Executive Director and founder of the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit corporation established in 1969 and affiliated with the State Bar of California. Prior to that time he was the Executive Director of the Committee on Civic Education, established at the University of California in 1965 and the predecessor of the present Center. Mr. Quigley has experience in teaching at the elementary through university levels.

Under Mr. Quigley’s direction the Center has developed programs that promote students’ knowledge of the principles and institutions of American constitutional democracy and foster the skills necessary for them to participate as responsible citizens. The primary curricular programs created under his leadership include We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, We the People: Project Citizen, Foundations of Democracy (Law in a Free Society Series), and Exercises in Participation.

With support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, Mr. Quigley directed the development and publication in 1991 of CIVITAS: A Framework for Civic Education, a comprehensive model for teaching civics in grades K–12. Building on CIVITAS, the Center was awarded grants from the U.S. Department of Education and The Pew Charitable Trusts to develop the National Standards for Civics and Government. Designed to define what students should know and be able to do in civics and government, the National Standards were published in November 1994 and distributed throughout the country and abroad.

Mr. Quigley has also developed the Civitas International Programs linking leading civic education programs in twenty-eight U.S. states with educational leaders in more that seventy developing democracies throughout the world.