Dianne Ravitch: What Do Students Know About History?

Full article from the Huffington Post here:

American students do worse on national tests of American history than any other subject. No one knows why. But it is a fact that more than half of our high school seniors are rated "below basic" in their understanding of American history.

Since the early 1970s, the federal government has been regularly testing national samples of students to find out what they know in various school subjects.

The program is called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP, pronounced "nape"), and it issues reports on reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, civics, and geography. (Reading and math are reported on a state-by-state basis, as well as nationally, but not history.)