President-elect Donald Trump has signaled his intention to try to abolish the Education Department, long considered wasteful in a nation where public education is provided locally. If he were to succeed — a long shot, to be sure — state and local education overseers would have to step up to ensure quality education. On this front, the news is not promising.
The commonsense goal of ensuring that high school graduates have mastered key subjects has fallen out of fashion. This month’s results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study are the latest bad news on that front. U.S. scores fell steeply in math. One possible explanation is our increasing reluctance to test students at all. The New York State Board of Regents, which historically administered tests in English, math, and social studies, for the coveted “regents” diploma, has signaled that it will drop the requirements for getting a high school diploma. Instead, beginning in the 2027-28 school year, the far more subjective “portrait of a graduate,” including internships and community service, will be good enough.
New York will join an unfortunate trend away from such core knowledge. Massachusetts voted last month to abolish a similar graduation requirement, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, whose adoption in 1994 coincided with that state consistently becoming the nation’s top National Assessment of Education Progress performer, on par with high-performing countries such as South Korea and Singapore. But the misplaced drive for equity over achievement, notwithstanding the fact that minority student achievement rose in the Bay State, combined with the teachers union push to avoid accountability doomed the test, despite support for it even from the liberal Boston Globe.
As the regents and their counterparts in Boston consider alternative tests that might actually boost learning, here’s a time-tested exam to consider, one that commands wide respect and popularity: the test to qualify as a contestant for the game show Jeopardy. This is not a jest. A “Jeopardy” diploma would reflect a mastery of subjects that are featured time and again on one of the most popular television shows of all time, now in its 41st season. Minimized at times as a trivia game, it is far more than that.
A study guide for the Jeopardy qualifying test includes lightweight topics such as pop culture. But those are far outweighed by the sort of knowledge whose lack is lamented among the young. The most common categories on the test and the program itself are nothing if not serious.
Literature, per the study guide, focuses on “classic novels and famous authors.” Atticus Finch is a character in what Harper Lee novel? Who wrote the classic poem The Wasteland or the novel War and Peace? These are not trivia questions — the answers show preparation for understanding American race relations, the ennui of contemporary civilization, and the history of Russian warfare. Not irrelevant to our current affairs.
The American history category asks who the first president was, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and which issue caused the Civil War. The last one tripped up former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary campaign. The science category ranges across biology, physics, chemistry, and technology. The other most common categories include world geography (What is the longest river in Africa? Which European country is divided into cantons?) and arts and culture (Which playwright wrote Death of a Salesman? Which Spanish surrealist painted “The Persistence of Memory”?).
It’s a 50-question test, and it’s said that one needs at least 35 to 45 “correct responses” to qualify for further consideration. In other words, try it — it’s a hard test. But that’s not why the regents should use it, or a test like it, as one of their diploma alternatives. Its significant degree of difficulty has not deterred mass market viewership. Just the opposite. In 2021, Jeopardy was the most-watched nonsports program on television, averaging 9.2 million nightly viewers, and this popularity sends a message.
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Americans respect those who can demonstrate a mastery of subjects that are serious, even if they include classical music and 19th-century English literature. We understand that such general knowledge not only makes for an appreciation of the world around us but prepares us for the fabled water-cooler conversation that helps one fit in at the office — and advance.
It is this sort of knowledge from which our public schools are inexplicably retreating in favor of equivalent assessments that are not as demanding. If our goal is for all high school graduates to get participation trophies, then dropping the regents exam makes sense. If our goal is to pass on knowledge to an ambitious, intellectually curious, and well-prepared next generation, teachers should be teaching for the test — the Jeopardy test.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.