Can you pass a U.S. citizenship test? Kentucky students will soon have to
Beginning in the 2018-19 school year, all high school seniors in Kentucky must pass a U.S. citizenship test to graduate high school.
The Senate bill, filed in 2017 by Sen. Jared Carpenter, a Richmond Republican, directed the Kentucky Department of Education to prepare or approve an exam with questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test. Students will be required to score at least 60 percent on the 100-question test, and they may retake it as many times as deemed necessary.
“A lot of students I spoke with thought we needed a bill like this,” Carpenter told The Richmond Register. “They thought people needed to be more engaged. They wanted their fellow classmates to have an understanding of our history and how our government works.”
If a student has passed a similar test within the previous five years they will not be required to take the test.
Students will have the opportunity to learn the content of the test before it's administered to them. Questions will cover such topics as government, U.S. history, economics and geography.
So what type of questions could be expected on the test? The civics test and administration manual gave these examples:
▪ Where is the Statue of Liberty
▪ What is the name of the national anthem?
▪ What does the Constitution do?
▪ What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?
▪ Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
▪ Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s
▪ What did Susan B. Anthony do?
▪ We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
▪ Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States
▪ How many amendments does the Constitution have?
A sample version of the test can be found on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website. The state's Department of Education has also provided a civics test manual.
This story was originally published May 8, 2018 at 9:39 AM with the headline "Can you pass a U.S. citizenship test? Kentucky students will soon have to."