Photo: JD Snover
(Des Moines, IA) -- A bill which would require Iowa students to pass a portion of the US naturalization test is headed to the Iowa House of Representatives floor. House Study Bill 30, which will be re-numbered on the floor as a committee bill, passed the House Education Committee on Tuesday. The proposal would require students to pass six of ten given questions, pulled at each district's discretion, in order to earn a high school diploma.
Rep. Robert Henderson (R-Sioux City) chaired a recent subcommittee on the bill.
"The questions...they're not that difficult," Henderson says. "There's a couple that might be...a little more knowledgeable such as naming someone who wrote the federalist papers or something."
The proposal would allow students to take the test as many times as needed to pass. Rep. Elinor Levin (D-Iowa City) is a former teacher who now serves on the committee. She agrees with the general idea, but has concerns surrounding implementation.
"Students don't know some of the basic facts that some of us here would expect," Levin says. "The implementation date is so soon that, first of all, the DOE potentially has time to finish the rulemaking process. Also, the first class to graduate will only get one shot at it."
Others argue the pressure of graduation shouldn't ride on one test. Rep. Tom Moore (R-Griswold) taught history for 33 years.
"Do I believe our students need to have a better foundation of American history?" Moore says. "You're right. The problem is we're making this contingent on graduation. We're making it six questions to determine whether this is going to impact their concern about American government and American history."
He suggested creating a requirement for American history to be taught as a two-semester class, but Rep. Henderson argues attending a course does not guarantee the recollection of knowledge.
"When I was in Pennsylvania going through high school, we had a required course mandated by the state called Problems of Democracy. In that course, we learned about federal government as well as our state government," Henderson says. "You could be pretty certain that if a student took that course they had a minimum understanding of those things. There's no guarantee of that today."
Because it will be sent through to the floor as a committee bill, it will be re-numbered and can be tweaked. It passed by a 14-8 vote.