Over at the Britannica Blog, Karin Chenoweth argues that high school kids should be able to pass manadatory basic assessments – not for the sake of graduating, but because they should actually know some stuff when they head out into the world.
Because, let’s face it—those HSAs just aren’t all that hard. They ask questions that high school graduates should be able to answer. Questions about the role of the Supreme Court, the meaning of the First Amendment, the role of sunlight in plant growth, the process of evolution, the conclusions that can be drawn from a set of data or a piece of literature. This is not rocket science. Nor is there anything that is antithetical to a good education.
If students don’t know enough to pass the HSAs, they and their schools need to buckle down and make sure they do—not so that they can pass a test but so that they know things that are important for every citizen to know.
You can judge for yourself by going here and choosing a practice exam to take. The exams might have a few questions that require a lot of knowledge, but they are few and far between. And, although Maryland is secretive about exactly how many questions students have to answer correctly in order to pass, I have it on pretty good authority that you can pass by answering somewhere around half the questions correctly.
That doesn’t seem too much to expect of a high school graduate.