In September, this blog passed on the results of a survey of Oklahoma high school students whose lack of knowledge of basic civics strained credulity. But not far enough, apparently. Via Public School Insights comes word that the results of the survey were “likely fabricated.” The survey by a firm called Strategic Vision LLC for the Goldwater Institute showed, for example, that only 43% of Oklahoma students could correctly identify the nation’s two major political parties, while only 26% could identify the first ten amendments to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights. However the raw numbers, revealed by the website FiveThirtyEight, show not one of the 1,000 students surveyed got more than 7 out of ten questions correct–a figure that definitely doesn’t pass the smell test.
An Oklahoma state representative arranged to survey students in his district and found results sharply at odds — and much better — than the survey seemed to show. Rep. Ed Cannady’s survey showed 95% of Oklahoma students could name the two parties, while 91% knew the Bill of Rights. Cannady’s results strain my credulity as much as the Goldwater survey should have, but didn’t. The day over 90% of high school students can answer basic civics questions is the day I go back to my fields a happy man. At The Quick and The Ed, Chad Alderman says “it’s rather remarkable, in retrospect, that so many people were willing to take these amazingly poor findings as solid evidence of the failings of American public schools.”
Guilty as charged. Excuse me while I wipe the egg off my face.
That said, the survey results didn’t ring any alarms not because I’m prepared to think the worst of U.S. schoolkids, but rather because I spent several years teaching in a school where my 5th graders had no knowledge of government or civics and no attempt had been made to give it to them.
