Although theorists have emphasized the necessity of educating for democracy since ancient times, few studies question whether efforts to teach civic virtue translate into increased political participation. Using longitudinal surveys, student transcripts and newly collected data on graduation requirements, this dissertation demonstrates that high school civic education courses transform adolescents into citizens.

While interventions such as removing barriers to registration and mobilizing partisans have received frequent scholarly attention, formal civic education has been largely ignored. The first empirical chapter addresses this gap in the literature by quantifying the effect of high school civic education on voter turnout. Using both traditional and cutting-edge statistical methods, I show that an additional year of American government coursework increases turnout during the decade following graduation.

The subsequent empirical chapters give special consideration to factors that moderate the relationship between civic education and participation. In the chapter that examines the role of parents, I show that students whose parents are not politicized derive a larger benefit from civic education than their peers. Further, these students are disproportionately members of social and racial groups that are underrepresented at the polls, which suggests that civic education increases participatory equality.

The remaining empirical chapters examine the influence of student age and political events. I find that completing civic education as an older student and during a presidential campaign enhance the effectiveness of the course. Taken together, the dissertation's findings are evidence of a strong interactive effect between civic education and other agents of political socialization.