Missouri high school students may soon be required to pass a civics test, similar to a citizenship test, in order to graduate.
House Bill 1646 would establish the Missouri Civics Initiative. The bill needs one more read-through and a vote before going to the Missouri Senate. The state already requires a course in government to graduate. However, Representative Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, said the purpose of the bill is consistency in testing by school districts across the state.
“We do not know for sure if all of those questions are being included,” Swan said. “The only way that we can be sure if they will be included is to have this bill.”
Phil Lewis is the Executive Director of the Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals. He said the civics test needs to be based around understanding and instead of memorization. He also said it would be an unnecessary addition.
“When they make a decision like that, they haven’t done all of their homework,” Lewis said. “They haven’t done a crosswalk between what’s already in place, and what they think is going to be the model to make it better, and what we already have in place.”
His main worry was individual districts would have to adopt this new test and abandon the current version. According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, high school students already need to pass a government course before they are allowed to graduate. Todd Fuller, spokesperson for the Missouri State Teacher’s Association, echoed Lewis on behalf of teachers.
“The bottom line is the importance of local control,” Fuller said. “The only concern we would have, and I think it’s addressed in the way the bill is structured, at least by what I read, is that school districts have some latitude to determine how to structure that to best fit the needs of the district because the districts need to decide what works best for them.”
Swan said there shouldn’t be any concerns.
“We are not requiring a separate test,” she said. “We are simply indicating that it’s important to us, as a state, that we do cover this information as well for our students. And, include that information under current testing that we already do in the state of Missouri.”
Swan said that if the test was good enough to test naturalized citizens, it would be good enough to test Missouri high school students. Missouri ranks 39th in the nation for voter turnout, according to FairVote.org. Lewis said that at the end of the day, he doesn’t think the bill will do much to improve that.
“I don’t think it will have any impact,” Lewis said. “I think it will be just another school test. The number one teacher, outside of school, are their parents. If their parents are involved with politics, their experience with politics is going to be much better. So if their parents go to vote, and make voting a priority in their house, then kids are going to vote. They’re going to be involved.”
The bill is part of the Civics Education Initiative. It is a part of an institution designed to get similar civic education legislation passed across the nation.