Voters Fail the Test
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, November 26, 2008; 12:00 AM
The multiple-choice ISI quiz wouldn't deepen the creases in most brains, but the questions do require a basic knowledge of how the U.S. government works. Think fast: In what document do the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people" appear? More than twice as many people (56 percent) knew that Paula Abdul was a judge on "American Idol" than knew that those words come from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (21 percent).
Well, the Gettysburd Address doesn't really have anything to do with how the government operates. But the question this all raises for me is
Out of 2,500 American quiz-takers, including college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked a 33-question test on basic civics. In fact, elected officials scored slightly lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent compared to 49 percent.
Only 0.8 percent of all test-takers scored an "A."
If elected officials differ with the test about how the government runs, doesn't that mean the test is wrong? Because I don't think those officials were talking about how the government is supposed to work, you know?
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You've hit the nail on the head
The question "how the government runs" vs "how the government is supposed to run" are two different things and that highlights the lack of validity of the test. Basically it's like measuring grammar proficiency using a spelling test, which goes to show how sloppy most folks are with research design, reliability and validity. I'm not even going to get into the statistics part.