SUBJECT: Government
GRADE: High School
TECHNOLOGY: Internet
BY: Laura Podesta

How Do Interest Groups Affect Legislation?

Target Grade/Subject: This lesson is designed for a 12th grade government class. Seniors should be able to look critically at data and evaluate information for biases. In addition, this lesson allows students the chance to research a topic that interests them, and learn more about the activities of interest groups and the ways in which they affect public policy.

Objectives: ("The student will explain [how] interest groups... influence the policy agenda and decision making of government institutions." -- SOL 12.10) The students will be given several weeks to research a piece of legislation, an interest group in favor of the bill, and one against it. The teacher will take the students to the school library to introduce them to the internet (particularly http://www.legislate.com, and http://www.vote-smart.org), as well as some of the various books and journals available. The students will write a short research paper (5-8 pps.) on their findings.

Materials: Internet, Congressional Quarterly, Congressional Record, Committee Hearings, American Spectator, pamphlets and other information distributed by interest groups.

Lesson Description: The lesson will begin with an introduction to the resources available to the student. The teacher should dedicate a class period to showing the students some useful resources. (On the internet, http://www.legislate.com/, http://www.vote-smart.org/, and http://thomas.loc are all good sites.) Because many students are not familiar with the internet, the teacher should begin by helping the students to sign-on to whatever server the school is connected to (i.e. America Online, Netscape, etc...) and then teaching them where to type in the url address (http://...) of one of the sites mentioned above. Once the students become more comfortable with the internet, the teacher can show students how to effectively use a search engine. The teacher should ask students to brainstorm issues that they are interested in and would like to further investigate using a variety of sources (i.e. the internet, journals, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, etc.) Next, the students should look in journals and on the internet for bills that deal with their topic of interest. It is not necessary for the students to do in-depth research of the bill and all its amendments. The main focus of this project is to understand how interest groups affect legislation, so the majority of the students' research should be about the two interest groups (one for the bill, the other against it) and how they attempted to pass or "kill" the bill. The teacher should warn the students to check the validity of their sources. For example, if a student finds an interest group's home page on the web or a publication printed by the interest group, they should not treat that informatin as fact until they have looked at other sources. The teacher should remind the students that interest groups have an agenda and try to frame issues and information in ways that will help achieve their goals. Once the students have found out what the legislation is about, identified a key interest group on either side of the issue, researched those groups, and come to a conclusion about how the interest groups affected the legislation, they will demonstrate their understanding of their bill in particular, and the lobbying process in general, in a 5-8 page paper.

Evaluation Procedure: The student will be assessed on the basis of whether he or she has adequately described what the legislation was about, identified two interest groups that oppose each other on the issue, and explained each group's role in the passage or rejection of the bill. The paper must be between 5-8 pages, and points will be deducted for bad grammar and incorrect spelling