In “History, Myth Making, and Statistics,” Anderson and Fienberg purport to have debunked one of the “myths” opponents of statistically adjusting census counts repeatedly invoke. The authors strive to show that critics have misplaced blame on a computer coding error for artificially inflating the national undercount by more than one million people and producing adjusted state population totals that would have provided justifications for shifting one or two House seats inappropriately. Rather, Anderson and Fienberg argue, an ad hoc decision to collapse the number of post-strata from 1392 to 357 led analysts to produce inaccurate numbers.

Far from discrediting the criticism, however, Anderson and Fienberg provide compelling evidence that both the computer error and the adjustment model itself produced numbers that would have led to a malapportionment of House seats. The authors report the 1990 apportionment based on official census numbers in their Table 1, the apportionment based on the incorrectly adjusted census numbers in their Table 5, and the apportionment based on the “corrected” (no computer error and with 1392 poststrata) adjusted counts in their Table 6. Note that the incorrectly adjusted apportionment differs from the actual apportionment by two seats and the correctly adjusted apportionment differs from the actual by two seats.

Community service is widely advocated as a method for advancing civic awareness and citizen responsibility in both secondary schools and colleges. Use of service learning in higher education has been promoted nationwide by academic, political, professional, and business leaders through such organizations as Campus Compact, American Association for Higher Education, Commission on Civic Renewal, and Corporation for National and Community Service (Bringle, Games, and Malloy 1999). In some cases, service has been institutionalized in colleges. Tufts University, for example, has added a College of Citizenship and Public Service through which students from various departments can complete a certificate program that integrates active service and citizenship studies into their major course of study (Zernike 2000). A recent report estimates that nearly two million students participate in service learning at four-year public and private institutions of higher education, and almost half of all community colleges offer service learning courses (Shumer and Cook 1999). Service learning has been applied in college courses as diverse as freshman composition, education, sociology, anthropology, business, and public policy.

But does service learning—and community service more generally—help students learn about politics and government? And, what research is needed to determine whether service, in fact, contributes to students' civic education? Having recently completed an analysis of national survey data on secondary school students' participation in community service and its relationship to civic education (see Niemi, Hepburn, and Chapman 2000), we now turn to examining the implications of service learning for college political science teaching and research.

In his preceding article, Brunell offers some background on Census 2000, the use of sampling and adjustment in a census context, the magnitude of the differential undercount from prior censuses, and the debate over the use of sample-based adjustments to the count. Much of his description of Census 2000 is correct, as far as it goes. It is what he leaves out that is problematic. His omissions lead him to draw the wrong conclusions about the undercount and the methodology for correcting it.

The origins of the peculiar American institution of the decennial census can be traced to the Founding Fathers and the federal Constitution of 1787. When the leaders of the American Revolution met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and decided to apportion seats in the new House of Representatives among the states “according to their respective numbers,” they invented a fundamental new instrument of republican government. The infant U.S. government of the Confederation Era had trouble raising taxes and making decisions, in part because representatives in the Continental Congress voted by states and the states were of very disparate sizes and populations. The framers recognized the need for another policy-making mechanism that took account of the fact that states deserved different numbers of representatives and, hence, votes in the House and Electoral College. The answer was the census, a periodic count of the population and consequent redistribution of House seats and economic resources to reflect the relative sizes of the populations of the states.

Throughout the twentieth century, American scholars and political pundits have argued that the survival of democratic political institutions and an ethic of concern for the welfare of others in the political community depended on ensuring all citizens received a high-quality civic education. Despite repeated efforts to act on this concern, empirical evidence suggests that a substantial number of Americans continue to be ignorant of how best to express their political demands, lack essential factual knowledge about political institutions and policies, and fail to acquire more information about politics and policy (Barber and Battistoni 1993, 235; Battistoni 1985).

Recently, service learning has been put forward as a means for increasing students' limited knowledge about democratic politics and general sense of civic responsibility. Service learning is a form of experiential education that combines structured opportunities for learning academic skills, reflection on the normative dimensions of civic life, and experiential activity that addresses community needs or assists individuals, families, and communities in need (Eyler and Giles 1999, 3-5; Gray et al. 1999, 4-5, 7-8; Jacoby 1996, 5-10). Many proponents of service learning argue that it provides experiences that can change students' frame of reference for or perspective on people and their problems; leads students to see links between theory and practice; teaches students social problem-solving techniques, interpersonal skills, and critical thinking; provides students with education in citizenship; engages the school as well as the student in democratic governance; and involves schools “sympathetically and productively” with the communities they serve (Eyler and Giles 1999, 7-19, 23-163; Gray et al. 1999, 1-2).

Researcher (R): How has doing Public Achievement (PA) changed the way you think about yourself?

Casey (pseudonym for an elementary school student): I am less lonely now that I have done Public Achievement.

R: Really, that's interesting, what is it in PA makes you less lonely?

Casey: Well, people used to think that I am kinda weird here, and I am different. I like playing in the woods and stuff by myself and doing my own kind of stuff.

R: And people think of you as less weird when you do PA?

Casey: Yeah, they even give awards to kids like me in PA.

R: Wow! It sounds like you are a leader in PA.

Casey: Yeah, I really like doing PA.

R: Let me see if I am hearing you right, before PA people thought that you were weird, and now that you have done PA, people look at you differently?

Casey: Yeah.

R: How do you think they look at you differently now?

Casey: They look at me as a citizen.

R: As a citizen, what does it mean for them to look at you as a citizen?

Casey: Like I am more of an equal, they listen to what I have to say.

This dialogue, filled with civic promise, is typical of the many conversations I have had with young participants in reflecting upon their experiences in Public Achievement.

With “Partisan Politics at Work,” Anderson and Fienberg continue their spirited, if misleading, defense of the plan to statistically adjust the census count. Unfortunately, their argument in favor of making the adjustments misses the mark and they gloss over some of the most serious of the evidence presented against the methods of adjustment. Rather, they are more interested in trying to remove politics from an inherently political process, which I maintain is an unrealistic goal. I conclude my portion of this exchange by reiterating my position that statistically adjusting the census totals will, at best, provide numbers that are no better than those of a traditional headcount; at worst, doing so may provide very inaccurate data.

At the end of their second article, Anderson and Fienberg plead for “legislation to insulate the Census Bureau from efforts at political manipulation and restore to it the authority to manage the technical details of how to fulfill the constitutional mandate for a census.” I do not share these wishes. Why does the federal bureaucracy need any more protection from congressional oversight than it already enjoys? Certainly, Census Bureau officials have more technical expertise and they are more readily able to judge whether a particular sampling plan is sound than are the collective members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the Bureau remains the fiduciary for Congress. Erecting barriers between the two groups is not a solution to any identifiable problem.

Service learning is typically distinguished from both community service and traditional civic education by the integration of study with hands-on activity outside the classroom, typically through a collaborative effort to address a community problem (Ehrlich 1999, 246). As such, service learning provides opportunities and challenges for increasing the efficacy of both the teaching and practice of democratic politics. To better understand these opportunities and challenges, it is necessary to make explicit the goals of service learning and to consider how these goals intersect those of more traditional approaches to teaching about government and politics. We believe that one place these sometimes competing models could find common ground is in the learning of factual knowledge about politics.

Underlying the pedagogy of service learning are the beliefs that a central mission of civic education is to produce active, engaged citizens and that this mission is more likely to be accomplished by allowing young Americans to directly experience “politics” as part of their education. As noted by Frantzich and Mann, this view is very compatible with the stated mission of the American Political Science Association:

The founding of the [APSA] in 1903 marked the evolution of political science as a distinct academic discipline in colleges and universities. At the time, two educational objectives were claimed for the emerging discipline: citizenship and training for careers in public service…. For the student, direct experience was recommended to supplement formal instruction in government and politics. (1997, 193)

Legislators in democratic countries find it relatively easy to do certain things. For example, they typically have little problem reducing taxes or increasing benefits for a majority of citizens. However, should they attempt to raise taxes or cut benefits for the majority, they will probably encounter opposition, even if taking such measures is necessary for the public good. How members of democratically elected legislatures manage to accomplish unpopular and politically difficult tasks is worth examining. In this article, I illustrate how members of the U.S. Congress have “done the difficult”–i.e., passed laws or instituted programs, often in the public interest, that were unpopular with the voters or would have been were they known to the public–and consider why the legislators were able to take the actions they did.

Determining how members of Congress make unpopular but necessary policy decisions is difficult because members themselves will not emphasize when they deviate from the public's will and how they are able to do so. After all, most of them are more interested in getting reelected than in being perceived as courageous and resourceful statesmen. Even the most civic-minded legislator may avoid calling attention to unpopular votes after realizing cynical and skeptical voters are unlikely to reward him for making difficult choices in the public's interest. Consequently, to reduce the likelihood that the action will be highlighted, unpopular legislation is often enacted in obscure and technical ways.