Who’s second in the line of presidential succession? Speaker of the House, you say? Good job. You know your civics.
When President Reagan was shot in 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig said, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state in that order…I am in control here.”
Haig later insisted he was talking about the executive branch, not the presidential line of succession. Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, was not amused.
Either way, Florida wants to make sure its citizens are civics literate. So if you didn’t know your civics in high school, you’re in luck, because civics literacy is a graduation requirement at all state colleges and universities. It has been since 2017.
Civics literacy means an understanding of history and how government works.
Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted to amend the 2017 law, introducing “The Florida Civic Literacy Test,” which basically was just a version of the U.S. Immigration Services Naturalization Test.
It was a 100 multiple-choice test and you only had to get 60 right to pass, the equivalent of a “D” letter grade.
To be clear, there are 100 questions would-be citizens have to study, but the examiner randomly selects ten from the 100 and the test taker isn’t given multiple choices. They have to know the answers to six questions, in addition to passing reading, writing, and speaking tests.
The Florida Department of Education (FDE) withdrew the amendment it had proposed after parties petitioned against it at the end of May. The amendment would have added the test as one of several options by which Florida College System students could demonstrate civic literacy competency.
But a representative from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), one of the petitioners against the proposed rule change, said that the citizenship test is problematic. “The problem with the proposed rule was that it created a test that could be passed by scoring 60 percent on a memorization test instead of completing a university-level course or an existing assessment specifically designed to measure collegiate level learning,” said Jonathan Pidluzny, ACTA’s vice president of academic affairs.
An ACTA press release states that the proposed rule would have “seriously weakened” the 2017 law, which says educators must “establish course competencies and identify outcomes that include, at minimum, an understanding of the basic principles of American democracy and how they are applied in our republican form of government, an understanding of the United States Constitution, knowledge of the founding documents, and how they have shaped the nature and functions of our institutions of self-governance, and an understanding of landmark Supreme Court cases and their impact on law and society.”
The Parklander requested a copy of the multiple-choice test from the Florida Department of Education, but officials did not supply one.
Civics test
A recent survey of 41,000 Americans, conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, indicates less than four in ten Americans could pass a civics test. Some other notable facts from the survey: Those in Vermont had the highest passing rate (53 percent); the next four highest scoring states were Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Virginia. Meanwhile, Louisiana had the lowest passing rate (27 percent), followed by Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Florida’s score was 29 percent. The questions below come from 100 used in the citizenship test.
Scroll below for correct answers
- What is the supreme law of the land?
- When was the Constitution written?
- How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?
- What position is third in line of Presidential succession? (Hint, it’s still not Secretary of State.)
- Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?
- How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
- What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
- The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
- Name one right or freedom under the First Amendment.
- Who was the president during World War I?
ANSWERS:
