Related Links

• HNN Hot Topic:  Low History iQs
• Sam Wineburg: We Need to Develop New Ways to Teach Students History (2005)

HNN Roundtable: Why Don't Students Know Anything About U.S. History?

• Paul Burke: Wrong "Correct" Answers the Scourge of the NAEP
• Linda K. Salvucci: We Need a STEM-Like Initiative for History
• Sam Wineburg: Can Educators Even Answer These Lame Questions?
• Rick Shenkman: How Can We Ever Hope to Govern Ourselves If We Know Nothing of Our Past?
• James Grossman: Let He Who Knows Who Won the Korean War Cast the First Stone
• Jim Cullen: Let the Teachers Teach

News Stories

• NYT
• US News & World Report
• NBC News
• Reuters
• WSJ
• WaPo

 

Opinion

• WaPo Editorial Board: Making History and Civics a Priority
• Tony Woodlief: What Would the Founders Teach?
• David McCullough: Textbooks "so politically correct as to be comic"
• Harvey J. Kaye: Republicans Remain Poor at History – But So Do American Citizens

 

Sources

• NAEP website
• Sample questions
• Nation’s Report Card:  US History
• Background on the report
• Commissioner’s remarks
• Statistics showing the scores (see appendix)

 

Highlights:  General Findings

• Scores fall into 3 categories: basic, proficient, advanced
• Questions fall into 4 basic themes: Democracy, Role in the World, Culture, Technology
• 3 grades were tested: 4th, 8th, and 12th
• No student in any grade level was asked to answer all questions
• Students in both public and private schools were tested, but no breakout is provided of scores
• The test employed a mixture of open-ended and multiple choice questions
• Fewer than 25% of students perform at or above "proficient" level
• Poor score lower on tests
• Students with parents who went on to college score higher
• Whites score 26 points higher than black and hispanic students
• On some tests males scored slightly higher than females
• The biggest improvements since the last test in 2005 is with 8th graders.
• 84% of 8th graders say they are taking a US history class

 

Highlights:  Scores

 

4th Graders

• Percent who could say when Columbus sailed, Jamestown was founded, the Constitution was written, and the Emancipation Proclamation was issued: 19
• Percent who got at least 2 of the previous events correctly: 27
• Percent who got one answer right: 23
• Percent who could look at a picture of the Sioux and say how they used natural resources: 23
• Percent who correctly identified the purpose of canals in the 19th century: 44
• Percent who understand a passage indicating that Burma's leading rights activist wants the rights Americans enjoy under the Bill of Rights: 56
• Percent who could identify the author of this statement: "The house divided against itself cannot stand": 39
• Percent who knew which war broke out after this statement was made: 54
• Percent who associate the Statue of Liberty with immigration: 68

 

8th Graders

• Percent who could supply 2 facts about a picture showing slaves in a plantation field: 6
• Percent who could cite a single advantage Americans had over the British in the American Revolution: 32
• Percent who could correctly answer that higher taxes were one of the fateful consequences of the Seven Years' War: 47
• Percent of people who opposed ratification of the Constituion because they "feared that the new national government would deny people their rights": 54
• Percent who said that the most significant factor in the formation of the first Continental Congress was "Colonial frustration with laws passed by the British Parliament": 39
• Percent who correctly identified Edison as the inventor of the phonograph: 48
• Percent who correctly identified the main goal of US foreign policy between 1945 and 1990 was fighting communism: 26
• Percent who associatyed Lend-Lease with WW II: 41
• Percent who could explain the system of checks and balances: 22
• Percent who could identify the primary author of the Declaration of Independence: 71

 

12th Graders

• Percent who understood purpose of mercantilism: 40
• Percent who could identify two of the advantages the South had in the Civil War: 26
• Percent who knew The Jungle concerned abuses in the meat packing industry: 41
• Percent who could associate a cartoon showing TR with a bick stick with TR: 45
• Percent who could provide an example of big stick diplomacy: 14
• Percent who understood William Jennings Bryan's attack on the gold standard in the Cross of Gold speech: 52
• Percent who understood that F. Scott Fitzgerald criticized shallow materialism: 42
• Percent who could identify a single reform movement in which religion played a central role after 1945: 5
• Percent who could identify the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution: 9
• Percent who understood what the Progressive Movement was all about: 36
• Percent who understood a quote from Harry Truman about containment: 26
• Percent who could provide two examples of containment: 13
• Percent who understand the impact of Sputnik on the US: 74

 

Relative Achievement Levels of the Three Tested Groups

 

	4th Graders	8th Graders	12th Graders
Basic	73%	69%	45%
Proficient	20%	17%	12%
Advanced	2%	1%	1%