Kansas lawmaker wants high school students to pass U.S. citizenship test. Can you?
A Kansas lawmaker wants to make high school students in the state pass a citizenship test, much like the ones that are given to immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship.
Rep. Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center, has introduced House Bill 2039, which would require students to pass the exam to get their high school diploma.
“There’s basic information (in the citizenship test) that we want new citizens to know and we should want our high school graduates to know that information too,” he said.
Huebert, chairman of the House Education Committee, served on the Valley Center school board before he was elected to the Legislature.
“Over the years I’ve talked to a lot of high school groups and students and I’ve asked questions,” he said. “Let’s just say we have room to do better.”
The requirement would apply to students enrolling after June of this year in any public, private or parochial school.
“The examination shall consist of 100 questions that are substantially similar to the questions administered by the United States citizenship and immigration services to applicants for United States citizenship through naturalization,” the proposed law says.
It was not clear what the passing score would be. It would be left up to the state Board of Education to craft a model exam and set the passing grade.
The proposed law’s requirement that students answer 100 questions is higher than the bar for naturalization.
To attain citizenship, immigrants must correctly answer 12 of 20 questions selected by an examiner from a list of 128 possible questions. That test is administered orally.
The questions on the federal citizenship exam range from the technical — example: “How many justices are on the Supreme Court?” to historical “What did Martin Luther King do?” to geographic “Where is the Statue of Liberty?” to current affairs “What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now?”
To see if you could pass, you can take a sample test on the website of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Kansas law already requires students to pass a course in U.S. government and it institutions, with an emphasis on the Constitution.
The test Huebert proposes would be in addition to that requirement, although it could be administered during the students’ government class.
Students could request to take the test any time from grade seven to graduation and could take it as many times as necessary to pass it.
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 4:31 AM.
