There was a very insightful article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal regarding the latest achievement test scores for the nation’s elementary and high school students and that there has been no improvement since the tests were last given in ’06. The Journal writer was making the case that "No Child Left Behind" is an utterly failed policy. Specifically, the article referenced the miserable scores on the history section of the exam, in which some 65% did not know what the Declaration of Independence was. This all brought back memories of another achievement test made up and given by brother John to high school honors students in South Florida in 1997 and published exactly 14 years ago yesterday. I say forget about 2006 and No Child Left Behind. They’re irrelevant. One need only revisit the "John Pop Quiz of 1997" to understand that the problem goes much deeper than even the Journal would have us believe.
In this latest iteration, 88% of all high school seniors scored so poorly as to be considered seriously deficient and well over half of those failed altogether. Besides the Declaration of Independence, fewer than one in four students knew that the Bill of Rights was the document that spelled out and guaranteed our basic liberties.
Soooo ... time warp! 1997. John may take issue with some of the details of what I’m about to say but they are my recollections of what happened at the time. Then a columnist for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, he conducted a little experiment to demonstrate what a disaster Florida schools had become. Without any credentials in teaching, he nonetheless put together what he considered to be a bare-bones quiz of what at the absolute minimum a high school graduate should be expected to know. To make the test absolutely fair, he consulted with high school teachers before the test was administered and then gave it to both regular track students and separately to honors students. In other words, he offered every advantage, something any statistician would dismiss out of hand, but there was a point. Even given every benefit of the doubt, would even Florida’s best and brightest graduates pass muster?
When he first shared the exam with the teachers, they dismissed it as ridiculously simple. These were honors students after all and some of the questions were as basic as what country attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and on which side of the Civil War did General Grant fight? The teachers almost laughed this exam off and assured him their students would all easily ace it.
Which is why the results were so shocking. These honors students failed the test miserably and with not much better scores as the new study the Journal reported about on Wednesday, marginally better yes but, again, these were honors students. The following is the quiz as it appeared in the Sun-Sentinel on Monday, June 16, 1997. (In reviewing John’s first column from that Sunday, I’m no longer clear whether these results represent the regular track or the honors students. But I do recollect that the honors students did not fare much better.)
The John Pop Quiz
The correct answers are followed in parenthesis by percent of students answering INCORRECTLY.
In the Revolutionary War, the American colonists fought for independence from what country?
England or Great Britain (46.8%)
Who was the first president of the United States?
George Washington (9%)
How many stars are on the American Flag?
50 (14.4%)
Name the vice president of the United States?
Al Gore (42.3%)
Name the governor of Florida?
Lawton Chiles (54.9%)
How many feet in a yard?
Three (53.1%)
How many ounces in a pound?
16 (56.7%)
332-119= 213 (16.2%)
Which famous American general was killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn?
A) Gen. George Patton
B) Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
C) Gen. George Custer (50.4%)
D) Gen. Robert E. Lee
Circle one: Nevada is (north, south, east, west) of the Mississippi River?
(42.3%)
Who said: ''I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.''
A) Jesse Jackson
B) Martin Luther King Jr. (8.1%)
C) Malcolm X
D) John F. Kennedy
Name the radio shock jock who stars in the movie ''Private Parts.''
Howard Stern (28.8%)
The South Pole is on what continent?
Antarctica (31.5%)
There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. How many seconds are there in a 24-hour day?
86,400 (72.9%)
How many days in a year?
365 (24.3%)
In the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant fought for:
A) the Union (57.6%)
B) the Confederacy
C) the Prairie Alliance
D) the right to own slaves
What country dropped bombs on the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?
Japan (40.5%)
Name the capital of Florida.
Tallahassee (18.9%)
Name the 50th state in the union.
Hawaii (59.4%)
Photosynthesis is a process:
A) In which plants turn sunlight into energy (17.1%)
B) For photographing high-speed movements
C) That synchronizes a movie's sounds and images
D) In which solar energy is converted to electricity
The Statue of Liberty is located in this city:
A) Philadelphia
B) Boston
C) Washington, D.C.
D) New York (8.1%)
The three branches of American government are:
A) Federal, state and local
B) Executive, legislative and judicial (19.8%)
C) Presidential, gubernatorial and mayoral
D) Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
This famous American discovered electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm:
A) Thomas Edison
B) Benjamin Franklin (24.3%)
C) Thomas Jefferson
D) Orville Wright
Rome is in what country?
Italy (38.7%)
Name the three most recent presidents of the United States.
Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton (33.3%)
How many legs does a spider have?
Eight (23.4%)
After sharing the results with teachers and administrators, he received a wide range of reaction from outright embarrassment to accusations that the quiz was culturally biased and not relevant to the typical Florida high schooler. You heard that right. The same education professionals who had at first given the quiz an unqualified green light and even thought it too simple, after seeing the results changed their position and dismissed the exam as unfair and irrelevant.
So it seems that the state of K-12 education has been in rather dire straits for quite some time and that nothing of any real substance changed between the time of my brother’s admittedly very unscientific survey in 1997 and the much more thorough and professional assessments done nationwide in 2006. And as Wednesday’s report confirms, nothing has changed since 2006 either.
As voters we are concerned about many problems – healthcare, the economy, immigration – to name just a few. I think we’re missing the core issue. How do we solve any problems if we cannot intelligently discuss the issues? And how do we discuss anything, intelligently or otherwise, when we are going on producing now two generations of citizens who do not understand even the most basic things about the society and world we live in?
It is a problem that defies any kind of simple solution. I do not pretend to propose one here. But I will be so bold as to say that this problem has been around since well before No Child Left Behind. I don’t think it’s nearly as simple as blaming it on that nor, as so many teachers would say (and DID say when they protested this quiz), blaming it on parents who don’t care. The problem runs much deeper and may be the most serious issue our nation faces. But since this new study so conveniently coincided with the 14th anniversary of John’s column, I thought it was appropriate to devote a posting to it.
(Note: I know a few of you are teachers. I would love your perspective on this.)
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