The We the People Student Competition
Once a year, North Dakota students sit down in front of a panel of judges and testify about the Constitution.
The competition is a simulated congressional hearing. Students prepare in teams, each responsible for a different unit of constitutional history and principle. On the day, each team delivers a four-minute opening statement, and then the real work begins: six minutes of follow-up questions from judges who press on what the students actually understand. There is no script for that second part. Students have to reason from evidence, respond to a question nobody warned them about, and disagree with one another in public without losing the thread of the argument.
That unscripted stretch is the point. It is one thing to memorize what the Fourth Amendment says. It is another to be asked, live, whether it should apply to a search nobody in 1791 could have imagined, and to have to answer.
Who competes
The competition is open to [grade levels] classrooms and teams across North Dakota. Teachers register their class, and students work through the We the People curriculum during the school year in preparation. [Note whether homeschool groups, co-ops, or individual teams outside a classroom can enter.]
How teams prepare
Participating classrooms use We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, now in its fifth edition, which organizes the material into six units and thirty-nine lessons built around critical thinking and cooperative learning. The Study provides the textbooks at no cost to participating North Dakota classrooms. [Confirm this is accurate.] Teachers new to the program are encouraged to attend the Summer Teachers Institute, where they work through the curriculum and the hearing format before the school year begins.
What it costs and when it happens
Participation is free for North Dakota schools. The 2027 state competition takes place on January 6, 2027, at Bismarck State College.
Why we run it
Independent research on the We the People program has been consistent for decades. Students who complete it outperform their peers on civics assessments, demonstrate greater political tolerance, and report higher voter turnout and community involvement as adults than national averages. The U.S. Department of Education has recognized the program's educational impact.