Still Stupid in America

by John Stossel

For my TV show on the effect of a government monopoly on K-12 education, we gave kids in Belgium the same international test we gave to kids at a top New Jersey high school. The Belgian kids cleaned the NJ kids’ clocks. Pockets of charter competition have begun to compete with the monopoly, but we clearly have a long way to go.

Immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens have to pass a test. It’s not that hard a test. 92.4% of new immigrants pass on first try. The test includes simple questions like “Who was the first President?” and “How many justices are on the Supreme Court?”

But a new Goldwater Institute study finds that only 3.5% of surveyed public high school students could answer enough questions correctly to pass the citizenship test.

USA Today profiled the Goldwater study and suggested:

Why not make the 100-question citizenship test part of the high school curriculum, and passage a graduation requirement?

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