Are You Smarter than a Legislator?

Mike Ventrella

Mike Ventrella

Paragon
US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

Here's the test: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/re ... /quiz.aspx


How well can you do? I got 31 out of 33 (93.94%) (I missed questions 27 and 33 -- I never took economics courses in school and am still confused about some of it)
 
... but you did better than the average legislator!

I mean, I would expect a 50% response from most people -- the questions were hard. I got a lot right because of my Political Science degree and educational background. I'm sure if I took a test about medicine, I'd do terrible.

The point though is that you would expect and hope that legislators, who deal with these things every day, would do better, wouldn't you? I mean, that's like doctors only getting 50% on a test about medicine.
 
81.82% with nothing but a high school diploma and less than a year of college, none of which was anything poli-sci related. I do take comfort in the thought that I know Soon To Be President Obama would smoke that test being a constitutional law professor as opposed to our current one who when looking over his wrong answers would probably say "But **** told me...." :D
 
JP your not from around here? where ya from hoss?

Paul
 
72.7% with a BS in Mechanical Engineering

To be honest, I guessed on most of the questions. I really knew the answers to perhaps a third of the questions and the rest were "this sounds like the most correct answer of the bunch".

And that's why I will never get really into politics! :D
 
My AP Government teacher would have a coronary if he knew I missed the one about the Anti-Federalists...could we just not tell him. :oops:
 
Ohhh Vote for me I got 42%. Of course I've been out of school for 8 1/2 years and going on 24 hours of no sleep.
 
90.91%, missing 8, 14, and 15. I have had an intro to economics class that helped me with e.g. the definition of a public good. In my fourth year of a CS degree, for what it's worth.

(edit for punctuation)
 
well......

57.58% hmph.. we never covered any of that stuff in high school! WHere are you people going to school for the love of PETE!

we had this thing in arizona that in the 8th grade if you took a test and passed it you never had to take us history or government classes...I passed...now look!! i don't know anything about this stuff!! In high school i did tech school instead of "real" classes....jeepers....well at least i play with all you guys and you're really smart!
 
81.82% I blew the legislators out of the water, and I'm still a senior in high school!
 
Ahhh!! That's what I get for not hitting "preview"! Was supposed to be a pic that was relevent, but then it must not have copied and...yeah. :oops:

Anyway, who else is smarter than a legislator? :?
 
My results were "You answered 23 out of 33 correctly — 69.70 %"

This is coming from a guy who went through High School with a D average and never went to college.
 
Hmmm. 72%, though I was expecting something much worse. As a mathematician, I wonder how bad the deviation was in that sample of politicians. I'm hoping it's high, because there are a few who you can tell are clueless.
 
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