Citizens and public officials earned an F, on average, in the most recent annual report on Civic Literacy, released by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute last week. More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took the test on Civic Literacy, and more than 1,700 of them failed. The average score was a 49%. More shocking, the average score of elected officials was 44%, meaning that our public officials performed worse than citizens selected at random. Less than 1% of those surveyed (21 of 2,508) earned an A on the test (90% or higher). This report builds …
September 17 is Constitution Day. On this date in 1787, 39 of the original 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document that would eventually be ratified and enshrined as our fundamental law. Recently, many have observed the relative decline of civic knowledge among American citizens, and have taken steps to improve our understanding of our fundamental law, the limited government which it creates, and the basic liberties which it is designed to protect. In 2004, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) sponsored language in an appropriations bill, which passed in …
