Civics & Government · 9th Grade

Active learning ideas

Congressional Staff and Support Agencies

Active learning works for this topic because students need to internalize the complex, behind-the-scenes roles of staff and agencies that shape legislation. By stepping into these roles, students transform abstract concepts into concrete understanding, recognizing how policy actually moves through Congress.

• Common Core State Standards
• C3: D2.Civ.1.9-12
• C3: D2.Civ.6.9-12

• 20–50 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 3 activities

Activity 01

• Expert Panel
• 50 min · Small Groups

Role-Play: Staff the Committee

Groups of five play a congressional committee working on a technology regulation bill. Students are assigned staff roles: legislative director (drafts language), policy analyst (reviews CBO score), constituent liaison (fields interest group calls), communications director (prepares the member's statement), and chief of staff (coordinates the team). Groups simulate one day of pre-markup preparation.

Analyze the importance of congressional staff in the legislative process.

Facilitation Tip

During Role-Play: Staff the Committee, circulate to listen for evidence that students are using materials like committee jurisdiction descriptions to justify their roles.

What to look for

Provide students with a short, hypothetical legislative proposal. Ask them to identify which support agency (CBO, GAO, CRS) would be most relevant for analyzing different aspects of the bill and explain why in one sentence for each.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Management
• Relationship Skills

Activity 02

• Gallery Walk
• 30 min · Small Groups

Gallery Walk: What Support Agencies Produce

Four stations feature real examples of a CBO cost estimate, a GAO report summary, a CRS research brief, and a Government Publishing Office document. Students annotate each example: What question was this agency answering? For whom? What decision did it inform? Debrief discusses why nonpartisan analysis matters and what would happen without it.

Explain how support agencies like the CBO provide non-partisan analysis.

Facilitation Tip

During Gallery Walk: What Support Agencies Produce, direct students to compare agency outputs side-by-side before writing their reflections so they notice overlaps and differences.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'How might the absence of non-partisan support agencies like the CBO and GAO affect the balance of power between Congress and the Executive Branch?' Facilitate a class discussion, encouraging students to cite specific functions of these agencies.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Create
• Relationship Skills
• Social Awareness

Activity 03

• Think-Pair-Share
• 20 min · Pairs

Think-Pair-Share: Is Non-Partisan Analysis Possible?

After reading brief descriptions of CBO methodology, students discuss with a partner whether any policy analysis can truly be nonpartisan, and whether legislators actually trust CBO findings when the numbers are inconvenient. Debrief surfaces the distinction between political neutrality in process and analytical objectivity in methods.

Evaluate the impact of staff expertise on the quality of legislation.

Facilitation Tip

During Think-Pair-Share: Is Non-Partisan Analysis Possible?, pause the pair discussion after two minutes to call on one pair to share their strongest argument before moving to whole-group sharing.

What to look for

Ask students to write down two distinct roles played by congressional staff and one specific way a support agency contributes to the legislative process, citing at least one agency by name.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

A few notes on teaching this unit

Experienced teachers approach this topic by starting with the human scale of congressional offices to make the bureaucracy feel tangible. Avoid getting bogged down in procedural minutiae; instead, focus on the relationships between staff, members, and agencies. Research on policy process learning suggests students grasp these dynamics best when they simulate real workflows, not just memorize agency names.

Successful learning looks like students confidently distinguishing between personal staff, committee staff, and support agencies, and explaining their distinct functions without mixing them up. They should also articulate why nonpartisan analysis matters in the legislative process and how staff expertise influences outcomes.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Role-Play: Staff the Committee, some students may assume that committee staff draft the actual language of bills.

  During the debrief, point to the committee staff roles you’ve provided and ask students to identify which ones actually draft versus analyze or coordinate. Emphasize that bill drafting is primarily handled by personal staff or the Office of Legislative Counsel, not committee staff.

• During Gallery Walk: What Support Agencies Produce, students might think the CBO works for the majority party because it issues reports during active debates.

  Use the gallery walk materials to show the CBO’s joint appointment process and career staff structure. Ask students to find the section of each agency’s display that explains its nonpartisan design and compare it to the others.

• During Think-Pair-Share: Is Non-Partisan Analysis Possible?, students may assume all congressional staff are political appointees.

  After the pair discussion, share a short profile of a senior committee staffer with a long tenure and ask students to identify which parts of the profile contradict the idea that all staff are political. Highlight the continuity these staff provide across party changes.

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Methods used in this brief

• Expert Panel
• Gallery Walk
• Think-Pair-Share