Who is Paying Attention to the State Legislature?

Who is Pay Attention to the State Legislature?


Yesterday, not me. Today, me. Apologies. It’s my first time diving into the details of the Utah State Legislative education policy. I am realizing that this matters to my children in the public schools. A lot.


Senate Bill 56 (2026) Citizenship Education Amendments is going into effect in a few months. It mandates that every 10th grader in the state will now receive instruction in legal information such as voting rights, jury duty, military service, legal contracts, legal representation, credit and debt obligations, employment rights, discrimination protections, healthcare consent, criminal justice, educational privacy rights, and so on and so forth. This instruction can be offered however the education provider sees fit, and no specific assessment is required.


This sounds great in principle. Life is complicated, and even more so as a child becomes an adult. Voting rights? Credit debt obligations? Legal contracts? Definitely these things matter. Understanding this information is critical to that child’s future well-being. However, implementation eats curriculum for lunch. 


I am a parent to a teenager in high school. I can picture her response if everything on that list were presented in an assembly presentation at school. Signal eye rolls or cat naps. The school fulfilled their obligation. Check. Done from their perspective. And totally useless to my child.


Perhaps there are other schools that choose to integrate this important information within the existing curriculum. Perhaps this information becomes the subject of robust debates. Perhaps reading the legease that comes along with contracts is translated and dissected in English class and kids gain a valuable skill, which would be much more useful to my child.


The Bill does not specify how these changes in instruction are implemented, and that implementation is critical. It can change a useless box-checking exercise into valuable practice for budding adults. Should the Legislature mandate how these things are taught though? Is that their place? Would that introduce more needless bureaucracy and red tape? What would the implementation look like once it hits my child’s school?


I do not know. I guess I have more work to do to understand education policy. And probably, so do you. 

Comments

  1. CJJanuary 22, 2026 at 6:32 PM

    Please no to the legislature telling schools how to teach these concepts. A typical structure that, if done well, can work is the state's department of ed (which I'm not always a fan of) providing guidance, resources, approved curriculum, etc., and support for a path of how this can be accomplished, with a requirement to explain how that is happening. More reporting, more oversight, but preferable to someone distant from education dictating how that happens.

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