Common Sense Kids Action announced the launch of a campaign today to pass digital citizenship legislation in state capitols throughout the country. Common Sense has formed a coalition of like-minded organizations that will advocate for legislation that expands access to digital citizenship instruction in classrooms nationwide. The announcement was made at the Twitter Digital Citizenship Summit, where Common Sense Kids Action founder James. P. Steyer gave a keynote speech and unveiled model legislation.
The coalition released official model legislation language that it will use to engage policymakers in sponsoring bills in 2017. The model legislation is based on a bill that the state of Washington passed in 2016 -- the nation's first comprehensive digital citizenship and media literacy legislation. The bill calls for the office of the superintendent of public instruction to develop and distribute a list of digital citizenship and media literacy best practices and recommendations to school administrators and uses a state advisory committee that includes researchers, administrators, educators, and others to review digital citizenship and media literacy curriculum and policy.
More information about the campaign and legislation can be found in a recent Common Sense Kids Action blog post, "Model Policy for Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy in Public Schools."
