By Rick Rojas and Motoko Rich
Like high school civics students around the country, the juniors and seniors in Darcy White’s government class will have to take a final exam.
But these students — and all others in Arizona — will soon face an extra hurdle:
To graduate, they will have to pass the test that is given to immigrants who want to become United States citizens, a multiple-choice exam that includes such questions as “What do we call the first 10 amendments to the Constitution?” and “What did Susan B. Anthony do?”
White, for one, has reservations about the test.
She already loses several days of instruction time to standardized testing, she said, and this new requirement is another intrusion.
“Every teacher will tell you a test is not a measure of what a kid knows,” said White, who has taught for 17 years, adding, “Just because I think it’s easy and I think my kids will do well is no guarantee.”
Last month, Arizona became the first state to pass a law requiring its high school students to pass the citizenship exam, stipulating that they must answer at least 60 of 100 questions correctly to receive a diploma.
(Immigrants are given 10 of the 100 questions and must correctly answer six to pass.)
Other states may follow suit: North Dakota’s House of Representatives has passed a comparable bill, and its Senate approved it Tuesday; legislators in Indiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and seven other states have recently introduced similar initiatives.
[Washington state is not among them.]
“I would argue that our secondary schools have no greater mission than to prepare our young people to be informed, engaged citizens,” said Frank Riggs, a former congressman who is president of the Joe Foss Institute, a nonprofit group that drafted a model bill and is urging state legislators across the country to pass it.
“So it seemed a simple, common-sense yet important idea that our high school graduates across the country be able to demonstrate a rudimentary knowledge of civics education as they are graduating high school.”
The move to require students to pass the citizenship test has created controversy, however, and not because of any issues related to immigration.
Rather, at a time when resistance to standardized testing is growing, some educators worry that the new requirement will rob teachers of instructional time and will encourage rote memorization rather than a more robust discussion of civic involvement.
“I don’t think the test measures what is most important for students to learn,” said Diana Hess, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, which gives grants in support of education causes.
“If all we’re asking students to do is answer very simple questions, we’re not going to be working on the complex understanding that I think students need in order to participate well.”
In Phoenix, White has concerns about the cost of fulfilling the requirement, especially as Arizona faces financial cutbacks.
And she and other teachers lament the loss of teaching time to testing time.
“That’s always going to be our complaint,” said White, who works at Arizona Conservatory for Arts and Academics, a small charter school.
Advocates of the citizenship test say it should be a launchpad rather than a destination, likening the facts on the test to multiplication tables in math or the periodic table of elements in chemistry.
“Rote memorization is the foundation to lots of things that we learn,” said Steve Yarbrough, the Arizona Senate majority leader who sponsored the legislation.
With voter turnout at historic lows and surveys indicating that a majority of Americans do not know the basics of how their government works, proponents say the citizenship test would give students essential building blocks for participating in the democratic process.
And some teachers have expressed hope that the requirement could bring more attention to the social studies curriculum and increase accountability for social studies teachers in schools where pay has been linked to how students score on standardized tests for math, reading and writing.
“This is my chance to shine and show what my students can do,” said Justin Price, who teaches history, government and economics at Sequoia Pathway Academy, a charter school in Maricopa, Ariz.
All but 10 states require students to take an American government course before graduating from high school.
A handful, including Maryland and Florida, also administer statewide civics tests to students at some point during their school career.
Yet surveys of basic civics information among adults routinely expose a lack of knowledge.
A survey last year by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that more than a third of respondents could not name a single branch of the United States government, while fewer than a quarter knew that a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate is required to override a presidential veto.
Such facts are the prerequisite of deeper knowledge, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
“One has to understand there are three branches of government before you can understand balance of power,” Jamieson said.
She added: “It’s not as if we’re overwhelmed by high-quality civics education right now.”
Proponents of laws requiring the citizenship test say that they could help make civics more of a priority in schools and that teaching the material on the test is unlikely to detract from teachers’ efforts to include more sophisticated lessons, such as a model Congress or debates about historic or current events.
“The impulse to say you can only do one or the other is wrong,” said Seth Andrew, the founder of Democracy Prep Public Schools, a network of charter schools that requires its students to pass the United States citizenship test before graduation.
“What about the civics exam do you think students should not learn?” he asked.
Some Arizona students said they would welcome a test that covered substantive questions about topics like the Electoral College rather than trivia questions about dates or battles.
“I think people are more focused on the test and passing, and not the meaning of it,” said Noah Bond, 16, who is one of Price’s students at Sequoia Pathway Academy.
“It boils down to the fact that we need to start teaching to make a change, not just taking a test.”
Price said he thought the test represented more than a simple regurgitation of facts.
“The concepts in this are just more of an understanding of America and our culture, showing that understanding of who we are and our past,” he said.
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Rick Rojas and Motoko Rich write for The New York Times out of the Phoenix bureau and New York office, respectively.
