Sure, students living in the nation’s capital don’t need to know how our government works.
The D.C. State Board of Education is proposing changes to graduation requirements from the system that would actually get rid of the current requirement that students take a U.S. government class, my colleague Emma Brown reported here. If approved, they would have to rely on the information they received in elementary and middle school.
Which is next to none.
On the last administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics, in 2010, only 24 percent of high school seniors scored on the proficient level, with knowledge deficiencies in areas including the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, immigration laws, and the court system. As for the eighth graders, less than half could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights. When those scores came out last year, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that “we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education.”
Solution: Just do away with it. Then future adults won’t know what the Constitution says or what constitutes a violation of it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member