High School students will now have 10 civic questions added to their history exams during the United States history end-of-course assessment.
House Bill 1244 was authored by Rep. Trent Ashby and saw support from other Texas representatives as the bill passed through both the House and Senate during the 86th Legislative session.
The bill’s amendment was written as; “Section 39.023, Education Code, is amended by adding Subsection(c-7)to read as follows:
(c-7)AAThe United States history end-of-course assessment instrument adopted under Subsection (c) must include 10 questions randomly selected by the agency from the civics test administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of the naturalization process under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. Section 1101 et seq.)”
This means beginning and effective immediately after Gov. Greg Abbott signed into effect, that ninth-grade students in the 2019-20 school year will have 10 questions added to their testing that reflect the same of any person(s) who undertake a citizenship test.
“It will add 10 questions to the current U.S. history end-of-course exam. Those questions will be taken from the United States Citizenship Exam,” Rep. Trent Ashby, R-Lufkin said in an interview with KTRE 9.
“I’m very proud of what House Bill 1244 does. It encourages greater civics knowledge and American history knowledge of our graduating seniors,” he added.
Although the original bill was proposed to add 100 questions, a compromise was undertaken to include just 10, however, present an annual report of which questions were asked and the answers given to the Texas Education Agency.
