Exam Shows 9th Graders Understand Their Basic Civics

By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

By the time they enter high school, most American students have acquired the basic knowledge and skills experts have identified as important for democratic citizenship, but formal civic education is far from universal, and too many students are ill-prepared to participate actively in civic life, concludes a report released last week.

American 14-year-olds performed well in the International Civic Education Study, which was administered to 90,000 students in 28 democratic countries. Overall, the U.S. 9th graders were among the most knowledgeable in the world about civic principles and pivotal ideas, and they scored above the international average in the skills necessary to interpret civic-related information from political leaflets to newspaper articles. No other country outperformed the United States by a significant margin.

"This is a good-news story," said Judith Torney-Purta, a professor of human development at the University of Maryland College Park and a lead author of the report. "Students really have an understanding of the basic principles and narrative of democracy, though they may not have gotten the details, such as the content of specific documents or being able to put wars on a timeline. Whether this is enough or not is a question we have to...