10/10 - what is our country coming to if 75% of students could not even pass this test.
MichaelEmouse 10:08AM: Also, it can create outrage because: “Look how easy it is and students can’t even do that! What’s the world coming to?!”
That test is made up of samples taken from history tests. This does not mean that 75% of students failed this particular test.
It’s weasely of CNN to post that statistics and then build a very test that will give nearly everyone a good score and need not be representative of the actual difficulty level of the flunked tests even if it includes some of their questions. It gives readers the impression that the test 75% of students failed is the test they’re taking now but CNN doesn’t actually say that, it only superimposes the statistics with an easy test and lets readers confound the two.
10/10. But it was from the gut–over thinking the questions almost cause me to miss a couple of them. One wonders if the questions could have been the “easy” ones; I remember far more difficult ones in high school. So I’m skeptical of the difficulty presented here.
10/10, but I have a Masters in History (albeit European rather than American). Turner is a major figure in historiography–I would not expect a person from outside the field to be familiar with him, though the passage was suggestive.
10/10
Salted meat is not disgusting (for one thing, many preparation methods involve taking much of the salt back out) and the development of the knowledge for doing this was one of the major discoveries in human history, with access to salt a consequently significant force in shaping many periods in history.
Brit now living in Australia, 9/10.
Got the last one wrong.
9/10
I missed the George Washington question.
I chose the answer about supporting democracies
It’s been 25 years since I’ve taken an American history class. I guess I did Ok.
I only missed number nine but I think it was more a matter of misreading. I am a high school drop-out who hasn’t formally studied history in 25 years. I do read a lot though.
Same on all counts except the 25 years part. It’s been 20 years for me.
10/10. Of course, I spent about 80 hours over the last month copy-editing a high school US history class.
10/10, I teach the stuff on occasion as a substitute.
Although I have to confess that the “closing of the frontier” question gave me lots of grief.
But I made an educated guess by eliminating the unlikely answers.
8/10–attended elementary and high school outside the U.S.
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I thought the early part of the 1800s was too early for the factory system. I realized later the question wasn’t referring to powered factories, such as were developed in the Industrial Revolution.
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And I protest that the slaves were not freed after the American Civil War, but while it was still in progress. Did not Pres. Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation? And did not the war end after Pres. Lincoln was assassinated? I realize that many slaves were not told they were free, but from a legal stand point, they were freed during the war. If I’m wrong, please correct me.
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As for the question about trade, I agree that the map was not clear, but the line between the West Indies and the northeastern US was in red and the question indicated it was asking about “the route marked I”.
Some slaves were freed during the American Civil War, but the last slaves weren’t freed until the passage of the 13th amendment on December 6, 1865, after the war was over.
I only missed the second one. :rolleyes: I didn’t read carefully, and thought they were still talking about the Revolutionary War.
But it makes up for a couple I wasn’t sure about.
I got 9/10.
At first glance, a closed frontier to me means that people can’t move there anymore. I didn’t think any of the answers sounded correct, buy that sounded the most ridiculous so I chose one of the other two. I really don’t understand the term. Does “closing the frontier” basically mean the frontier no longer exists? Then why such a confusing phrase that throws of a whole lot of otherwise reasonably intelligent people? Was this phrase coined by someone famous?
Exactly. Additionally, it is extremely important to bear in mind that this sample is an amalgamation of three different exams: given to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders. For instance, the 3/5ths compromise question was given to the 8th graders.
Some of the question results were fairly impressive too. An example of this for the 4th grade test, where students were given an irrelevant map: "The map shows canals in the United States in the 1800’s. An important result of the building of canals in the United States was that
A slavery spread to the western states
B people stopped building railroads
C more people traveled to California to farm
D trade increased among the states"
44% of 4th graders correctly answered D.
Mixing the exams gives the false impression that 12th grade students did poorly on questions which were actually designed for 4th graders.
Secondly, it’s probably worth taking into account that it has been several years since some of the 12th graders took history. In my high school, history was last required in 10th grade. That was also the last time students took US history. Students who took additional history classes were given choices more dealing with European history.
Lastly, the study considered three levels of passing: “basic”, “proficient”, and “advanced”. The article only really looks at the middle of these, while making it look like it was examining the minimal standards for competency.
Am I disappointed in the performance? Yes. But I’m even more disappointed in the incredible intellectual dishonesty that CNN has shown in this report.
The person who is mentioned in the problem (Turner) coined the phrase in the paper that his speech was based on. The first paragraph in the paper doesn’t use the phrase verbatim, but it’s a short jump from there.
[QUOTE=Frederick Jackson Turner]
In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports.” This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.
[/QUOTE]
“Closing of the frontier” is similar to “Manifest destiny” in that it is a 19th century phrase about Westward expansion that is still used in discussion today.
Same score, same missed question. With modern foreign policy we’ve failed Washington’s idea, clearly.
This test was sort of odd. More than half of the questions were stupefying obvious, and others took some thought. Since we didn’t cover anything post-WWII, I’d be surprised if a lot of kids knew much about the Korean war. The frontier question was more reading comprehension of the letter than anything else. And trade with the Indies? Anyone else decide “since I know something about rum runners, I’m going to pick that one”?
The article kind of sucks because it lacks any definition of “proficient.” Seventy percent right? Eighty percent? One hundred percent? It’s got to be higher than fifty, but how much higher?
I knew about sugar and rum, and thought that the third side of that triangle was slaves. I knew nothing about meat going to Europe, but since only the one (correct) answer included sugar and rum, that was the one I picked. So I inadvertently got it correct, even if I was wrong.
I love standardized tests!
10/10. The only difficulty was the triangle trade question because I couldn’t decide at first if they were asking about that one red line, but none of the options made sense if they were.