If New Citizens Must Pass the Civics Test, Graduates Should Pass It Too

Here is a strange arrangement. A woman who has lived in this country for years, raised her kids here and paid her taxes here sits down in a federal office and is asked who wrote the Declaration of Independence. If she misses too many such questions, she goes home and tries again. Meanwhile, a young man born in the same town as the courthouse, who has spent thirteen years in its schools, can walk across a stage with a diploma and no one has ever checked whether he can name the three branches of government.

I'm not mad at the woman. I'm a little mad at the arrangement.

The claim, stated plainly

My thesis is simple. A high school diploma should certify that a graduate knows the basic facts of how American government works, and the simplest, cheapest, best-tested way to certify it is to require the graduate to pass the same civics test we require of new citizens. Call it the parity principle: whatever we ask of those who choose the country, we should be willing to ask of those who inherit it.

A few terms, so we argue about the same thing.

• The naturalization civics test is the oral test administered by an officer of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as part of the process of becoming a citizen. In the 2008 version, the applicant studies a published list of 100 questions. The officer asks up to ten, and the applicant must answer six correctly to pass. USCIS introduced a longer version for applications filed on or after October 20, 2025 (a 128-question list, up to twenty asked, twelve correct), so check the current rules; the Arizona law described below was built on the 2008 list. The questions cover principles of American democracy, the system of government, and rights and responsibilities, as well as American history and symbols such as the flag and the capital. The list is public, so there are no tricks.
• A graduation requirement is a condition a student must satisfy to receive a diploma, beyond credits and attendance. Many states already have them, such as exit exams in English or math.
• Civic knowledge means knowing facts and structures: what the Constitution says, how a bill becomes a law, what each branch does, what rights the First Amendment protects. It is not the same as civic participation, which is what you do with the knowledge. The first is the foundation of the second.

You can try the questions yourself on this site, at the civics test. Take it before reading on, and then ask whether a sixteen-year-old you know could do as well.

The numbered argument

Let me lay it out in the order I'd put it to a school board.

1. A self-governing people must know how it governs itself. This is not a modern complaint. The Founders built a republic whose survival depended on citizens who could judge their rulers. Madison, in his letter of 1822, wrote that a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. See Madison's 1822 Letter on Why a Republic Needs Informed Citizens. If citizens cannot name the branches, they cannot tell when one of them is doing the job of another.
2. We already believe this about the people who join us. Congress and the executive branch have required knowledge of American government for naturalization for generations. The point of that requirement is to ensure that people who take part in self-government understand what they are taking part in. No one calls the test an insult to immigrants, and most immigrants who prepare for it speak of it with pride. If knowledge is the right price of citizenship for them, it is the right expectation for everyone.
3. A diploma should mean something. A diploma is a signal to employers, colleges, and the public that the holder has reached a standard. Where the signal is weakened by grade inflation and low requirements, everyone loses, and the students who lose most are those who lean on the diploma as proof they are ready. A civics requirement adds a concrete, checkable item. See Grade Inflation and Equity Grading Mean an A No Longer Tells You Much.
4. The test is cheap, short and public. It costs almost nothing to administer. The questions are published. A student can study for it in a few weeks and sit for it more than once. It does not burden teachers with a new curriculum, because it asks for the sort of facts a basic American government course should already cover.
5. The need is documented. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests civics in eighth grade. In 2022, about 22 percent of eighth-graders reached the proficient level, and the average score fell for the first time since the assessment began in 1998. Those are NCES figures, and you can find them at the Nation's Report Card. A skeptic can argue about what proficient means, and I've written about that in What the Nation's Report Card Measures and What Proficient Really Means. It's harder to argue that the trend is a healthy one.

What Arizona did, and who followed

The idea has a short and encouraging history. In January 2015, Arizona's governor signed a law making it the first state to require high school students to pass a civics test, drawn from the same 100 questions used for naturalization, before graduating. The passing mark was 60 percent, and students could take the test as many times as they needed. The requirement began with the class of 2017. The bill was written by the Arizona-based Joe Foss Institute, which promoted the idea nationally through the Civics Education Initiative, and the model spread: in 2015 alone, several other states, among them Idaho, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin, passed laws of their own, with differences in details such as the passing mark, whether the test is a stand-alone requirement or can be folded into a course, and whether students can take it again.

I want to be straightforward about the results. Passing laws is one thing, and a requirement like this is meant to do two jobs: make sure students are exposed to the material, and to give some confirmation that they learned it. Because most students pass, critics say the tests do little work. Defenders say that the passing rate itself is not the point, and that the requirement changes what schools teach in the year or two before the test. The honest summary is that the evidence is still thin on whether a stand-alone test measurably raises long-run civic knowledge, and a reader who sees a bold claim about it, from either side, should ask for the source. What can be said with confidence is that the test is a cheap and low-risk instrument, and that its only certain effect is to make the school ask the question.

The objection: "A test is too shallow"

Now the fair hearing for the other side. The strongest form of the objection says that a list of 100 facts is a poor measure of civic understanding. A student can memorize that there are nine justices and not understand why judicial review matters. Real civics is about argument, deliberation and judgment, and a multiple-choice mindset is the enemy of all three. A test could crowd out the richer teaching it was meant to protect, and the teacher who teaches to the test will teach nothing else.

That's a serious objection, and part of it is right. A student who knows only the facts has not finished the job. Let me answer in four points.

First, nobody is proposing the test as the whole of civics education. It is the floor, not the ceiling. A student cannot interpret the Constitution without knowing what is in it, and a student cannot weigh the role of the Senate without knowing it has two members from each state. Facts are the grammar of civic argument. You do not learn to write poetry by skipping grammar.

Second, the shallow-test critique proves too much. If a test of basic facts is too shallow for a high school student, then it is too shallow for an applicant for citizenship. The critics would have to say that we should rethink the naturalization test as well. I haven't heard them say it, and I doubt they would.

Third, the real risk of a shallow test is not that it exists but that nothing deeper sits on top of it. The answer is a stronger course, not no test. Schools that adopt the requirement should pair it with the kind of reading that makes the facts mean something: the Declaration, the Constitution, Federalist 10 and 51, the great speeches and decisions. See Action Civics Gives Credit for Protest, and That Is Not Civics for what happens when schools swap the knowledge for activity.

Fourth, I'd point out the alternative on offer, and I'll take it seriously: in many places the alternative to a knowledge requirement is nothing. A shallow measure that exists beats a deep one that doesn't.

The second objection: "It's another unfunded mandate"

Some districts and teachers will say they're already buried in testing and don't need a new hurdle. I'm sympathetic, and the answer is that this test is different from most. It is short, it is public, it can be given in a single class period, and it needs no vendor. It replaces nothing, but it adds very little. If a school board wants to fold the questions into an existing government course exam, that satisfies the spirit of the idea.

What the Founding view adds

Whenever we talk about this subject, someone says the problem is that students don't care. Perhaps. But the Founders did not assume that citizens would care by instinct. They assumed citizens would be educated. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 said that schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged because religion, morality and knowledge are necessary to good government. The Preamble to the Constitution begins "We the People," and the whole structure depends on the people being able to read what it says.

Franklin, according to the account written by a delegate, answered a woman who asked what sort of government the convention had produced with "A republic, if you can keep it." The famous exchange is recorded in the notes of James McHenry, a Maryland delegate, and it is sometimes disputed in detail, so I'd treat it as a well-attested tradition more than as a transcript. The point stands either way: the keeping is a job for the governed. And a people can keep what it understands. You can read the text itself at the Constitution page, which is a short document, and one that nearly every graduate ought to have read start to finish.

Consider what the test asks. What is the supreme law of the land? What does the Constitution do? What are the first ten amendments called? Who is in charge of the executive branch? Name one branch of government. What stops one branch from becoming too powerful? Those are not trivia. They are the answers that tell a voter why the system is built the way it is. And a voter who knows the answers is much harder to fool.

What a good requirement looks like

If I were drafting the model bill, I'd want these features.

• The same question bank as naturalization. The 100 questions are published, vetted, and familiar. Using them avoids a fight over what to include.
• A reasonable passing mark. Arizona's 60 percent is a defensible choice. The immigration test uses six of ten, the same ratio.
• Unlimited retakes. A diploma should not hinge on one bad morning, and retakes make the point that the goal is knowledge, not failure.
• Accommodations for students with disabilities and for English learners, as in other graduation requirements, consistent with federal law and each student's plan.
• No new bureaucracy. Let the school administer it within an existing course.
• A transcript note or a public report. The school should report how many students passed and how many tries it took, so that parents and taxpayers can see how the school does.

What if students fail?

Then we've learned something. If a high school cannot teach its students a hundred published facts about their own government in four years, parents deserve to know it, and a board deserves to hear it. Better to learn it in the spring of senior year, when there is time to fix, than in the voting booth.

That is the beauty of a plain test. It turns a vague worry about civic ignorance into a number, and numbers get attention in budget meetings.

Parents and boards can start now

You don't need to wait for a legislature. A school board can adopt the requirement on its own authority in many places. A parent can ask the board whether the district's government course covers the 100 questions and, if so, how students are assessed. A teacher can use the published list in class. And a family can use it at home, at the dinner table, with the cheerful competitiveness of a trivia night. You would be surprised how many adults miss questions about their own government, and how much better a household feels about itself after the quiz.

I'd add a word to my fellow conservatives. We tend to defend the Constitution as a document, and we should. But a defense of the text is empty if the rising generation cannot say what is in it. The best protection for the First Amendment, the Second, the separation of powers and federalism is a citizenry that has read them. The most conservative thing a school can do is conserve knowledge.

The case in brief

1. A republic depends on citizens who know how it works, and we already require that knowledge of everyone who becomes a citizen by naturalization.
2. Parity is fair: if the test is the right standard for those who choose America, it is the right minimum for those who graduate from its schools.
3. Arizona's January 2015 law, which used the same 100-question list, showed the idea is cheap and workable, and other states followed with their own versions.
4. The objection that a test is too shallow is half right, which is why the test should be the floor under a richer course, not the ceiling.
5. The requirement makes a school report whether its graduates know their own government, and that information is owed to every parent and taxpayer.

What you can do: Take the quiz at the civics test, then ask your school board whether its graduation requirements include civics knowledge and how the district reports the results.