U.S. 8th graders flunk middle-school civics: report

U.S. 8th graders flunk middle-school civics: report

About half of them believed the U.S. government should guarantee them a job when they grow up.

U.S. eighth graders are flunking civics and don’t appear to understand that the United States is a democracy, a new federal test has shown.

The test found that half of eighth graders believe the U.S. government should guarantee them a job once they grow up, and only 32 percent knew that the U.S. is a democracy. Also, 11 percent of them said there should be a single party and 6 percent an official religion, which would fly in the face of the U.S. Constitution, according to a Bloomberg report.

The findings are from the results of the 2014 National Assessment of Education Progress test, which is being released today as the federal testing law No Child Left Behind comes under scrutiny from Congress. President Barack Obama opposes the law as focusing too much on math and reading and ignoring other subjects.

The test found that only a quarter of children were proficient in history, geography, and civics, and that hasn’t changed much since 2010, compared to a third of children who were proficient in math and reading.

The test involved 29,000 eighth graders from around the nation, but it did not involve fourth and twelfth graders as it did in 2010 due to budget cuts.

In addition to questioning their knowledge on subjects, students were asked about the tools they used while in class, and less than two-thirds of them said they read textbooks at least once a week, a 73 percent reduction from 2010. They were using computers 25 percent of the time in social studies or history classes, an 18 percent increase from 2010.

However, there was a silver lining: the lowest-performing children were doing better in all three subjects compared to 2010, which closed the gap a little bit with the top students, and Hispanic students were also catching up.

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