Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511020091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
The nation's students have received a dismal report card in American history: Nearly six in 10 high school seniors apparently lack even a basic understanding of the subject.
That conclusion is part of the most comprehensive federal survey ever made of how well students know American history, which was released Wednesday by the Education Department. Fourth- and eighth-graders also scored poorly, with more than a third lacking basic skills.
The test, which was given to more than 22,000 public and private school students from around the country last year, showed that many of them either did not know basic facts in American history or often struggled when asked to describe their significance.
Only 40 percent of all fourth-graders who were tested knew, for example, why the Pilgrims came to America. About 60 percent of high school seniors could not define the Monroe Doctrine, and less than half of them knew that containing communism was the chief goal of American foreign policy after World War II. Only 27 percent knew that the Camp David accords promoted peace between Egypt and Israel.
``It's clear, as the song says, students don't know much about history,'' Education Secretary Richard Riley said in a statement.
Riley and other educators offered no immediate explanation for why the student scores were so low. Some wondered whether the test was too difficult or graded too harshly; the education department said it was not. Others suggested that schools are not teaching history enough or only asking students to memorize historical names, facts and dates without explaining what role they have had in the evolution of American life.
But education officials agreed that the results were stark evidence of why schools need better standards for teaching history - which has been the subject of intense political and academic debate for months.
Last fall, a national panel of historians produced an extensive guide for how schools should teach American history, but that work was denounced in Congress and by many conservative political groups for allegedly putting too much emphasis on the negative aspects of American life and promoting minorities at the expense of other American heroes. The standards are now being reviewed and revamped.
``While the disputes go on about how to teach U.S. history, the message of today's national assessment report is clear,'' said William T. Randall, the chairman of the board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which administered the history test. ``Most American students - even high school seniors - have only a limited grasp of their country's past.''
NAEP tests are widely regarded by educators to be one of the best barometers of student achievement because they are rigorous and are administered to a nationally representative sample of students. Under a mandate from Congress, the group has been conducting periodic tests of student achievement in reading, math and science for decades. This marks the group's second attempt to gauge how much students know about American history. In the mid-1980s, students also were assessed in history and fared poorly. But officials said that those results cannot be compared to the latest scores because the framework for the two tests differ.
The history test students took last year was divided into two parts. There were multiple-choice questions about historical facts, and open-ended questions that required students to write a few sentences and apply their reasoning skills. In that part of the test, students had to analyze historical documents, maps, political cartoons or reflect on excerpts from speeches or newspapers.
Students were graded on a scale from 0 to 500 and their scores were placed into one of four achievement levels - below basic, basic, proficient or advanced.
Only one of every 100 high school seniors reached the advanced level. Only 10 percent of them were considered proficient in American history. Fifty-seven percent of them did not show basic understanding of the subject.
Among eighth-graders, 61 percent scored at or above the basic level with 14 percent showing proficiency. Among fourth-graders, 64 percent had basic knowledge or better and 17 percent were proficient.
Male and female scores were roughly the same in each grade. Private school students scored higher than public school students, and students in the Northeast and Midwest scored better than students in the West and Southeast. Among high school seniors, about half of the white and Asian students failed to show basic knowledge compared to about 80 percent of the blacks and Hispanics.
On some questions, students did quite well. Nearly 90 percent of high school seniors correctly identified the computer as the invention that has most changed American life in the past 30 years - the other choices were typewriter, radio and superconductor. Nearly 70 percent of them also knew that infections and diseases brought from European settlers were the major cause of death among American Indians in the 1600s.
But only 34 percent of high school seniors showed knowledge of Nat Turner's Rebellion. And only 7 percent of fourth-graders could identify ``an important event'' that took place in Philadelphia in 1776.
``These results are deeply disturbing,'' said Maris A. Vinovskis, a history professor at the University of Michigan who is part of a panel of educators reviewing proposed national history standards. ``Without significant improvements in how American history is taught, we will lose our past and our national identity.''
by CNB