What America's High School Students Think About Their Freedoms

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s High School Initiative seeks to encourage students to use the news media, including student journalism, and to better understand and appreciate the First Amendment. 

As part of the initiative, the foundation funded this “Future of the First Amendment’’ research project, focusing on the knowledge and attitudes of high school students, teachers and administrators. Specifically, the study seeks to determine whether relationships exist – and, if so, the nature of those relationships – between what teachers and administrators think, and what students do in their classrooms and with news media, and what they know about the First Amendment.

Ultimately, the initial 2005 project surveyed more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators and principals at 544 high schools across the United States. Subsequent surveys have been conducted since then, and information on those results can be found at firstamendmentfuture.org