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Current Issues Blog

Discover new resources and teaching techniques to help you discuss current issues in the classroom!

The Current Events and Social Issues Blog for teachers, updated weekly throughout the school year, helps them connect current events to their students and classrooms. We know that teaching the news can be time-consuming; by the time you find important issues and identify how to teach them, they are old news. That’s where our blog comes in: unpacking issues in the headlines by providing relevant context, links to classroom-ready news items, and suggested prompts for thoughtful discussion.

Current Issues Blog

Government & Elections

Should There Be an Age Limit on Public Officials?

September 19, 2023

Several recent incidents have caused the public, members of the media, and some elected officials to raise alarm bells about the advanced age of several government officials. President Joe Biden (age 80),1 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.; age 81),2 and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.; age 90)3 have all had moments in which they appeared […]

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Energy & Environment Executive Branch

Climate Emergency: Wildfires

September 08, 2023

The summer of 2023 saw record-breaking temperatures across the United States and a global average temperature hotter than any time in the past 120,000 years.1 Along with the heat, regions across the globe—including 33 U.S. states—are experiencing drought conditions.2 The combination of severe heat and drought creates ideal conditions for wildfires. In June and July, […]

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News

Sinema Meets Arizona High School Students Visiting Nation’s Capitol with Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute

August 16, 2023

WASHINGTON – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema met with Arizona high school students from Xavier College Preparatory and Brophy College Preparatory visiting Washington D.C. as part of the Close Up program, sponsored by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. READ FULL ARTICLE>        

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News

The National Network of Schools in Partnership Merges with the Close Up Foundation

July 12, 2023

Arlington, VA – The Close Up Foundation is pleased to announce that it has merged with the National Network of Schools in Partnership (NNSP), with NNSP becoming a division of Close Up effective July 1, 2023. The new division will be overseen by NNSP’s longtime executive director, Blake Kohn, and the entirety of Close Up will remain under […]

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Criminal Justice Education Equality

Reversing the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”? Part 3: Examining the Impact of Prison Education

July 01, 2023

In Part 1 of this series, we saw that more severe approaches to school discipline—including “zero-tolerance” policies—have been statistically linked to higher rates of incarceration, especially among Black boys. This is seen as a key contributor to mass incarceration, which Part 2 showed has grown substantially since the final decades of the 20th century. In […]

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Criminal Justice Education Equality

Reversing the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”? Part 2: The Debate Over Mass Incarceration

June 22, 2023

Should We Decarcerate? Since the start of the War on Drugs, the United States has adopted and enforced policies that have led to mass incarceration, with nearly half of all incarcerations due to drug crimes.1 According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the rate of incarceration in the United States outpaces every other nation on earth, […]

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Criminal Justice Education Equality

Reversing the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”? Part 1: Defining the School-to-Prison Pipeline

June 14, 2023

What Do People Mean When They Talk About the School-to-Prison Pipeline? For decades, many researchers who study the public education system have discussed the impact of the “school-to-prison pipeline”: escalating punishments, primarily in “high-poverty, high-minority schools,” intended to deter unwanted student behaviors leading to missed class time, a lost sense of belonging within the school, […]

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News

Cardinals Again Emphasize How Civics Matter Through D.C. Trip

June 14, 2023

Franchise teams with Close Up to send high school students on team plane…Johnson’s essay was what got him to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on Wednesday morning, one of 260 students chosen — based on their essays — to take part in the second annual Civics Matter Arizona trip to Washington D.C. Pairing with the Close […]

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Education US History

History and Civics Scores Drop in The Nation’s Report Card

June 02, 2023

At Close Up, building civic proficiency and comprehension is at the heart of everything we do. Learn more about how we support students, teachers, and civic literacy through our programs, professional development, curriculum, and classroom resources. On May 3, the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics released its civics and U.S. history data […]

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Foreign Policy

What Is Happening in Sudan?

May 25, 2023

On April 15, fighting broke out in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the country’s national army, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. The RSF is the largest paramilitary group in Africa, created in 2013 out of the Janjaweed militias that have been accused of war crimes and genocide in Darfur, […]

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