America’s Knowledge Crisis: The 2019 Survey on Civic Literacy

Bottom Line: A national survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in 2019 showed a startling lack of civic knowledge among a sample of 1,002 U.S. adults. Results indicate that 26 percent of respondents thought Brett Kavanaugh was the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 18 percent picked U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the author of the New Deal, and just 12 percent knew the 13th Amendment freed the slaves.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s (ACTA) 2019 survey of 1,002 American adults demonstrated again the disturbing lack of basic civic knowledge among U.S. citizens. Conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the survey asked respondents 15 questions on general civic knowledge. Questions asked those participating in the survey which federal body impeachment proceedings originate and the identity of the person known as the “Father of the Constitution.”

Some of the survey responses include:

• 26 percent of respondents thought Brett Kavanaugh was the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• Only 12 percent knew the 13th Amendment freed the slaves
• 30 percent thought the Equal Rights Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote 
• 18 percent picked U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the author of the New Deal
• Over 60 percent of respondents did not know the term lengths for members of Congress

ACTA’s goal in making these survey results public is to shed light on the current crisis in civic knowledge among Americans and draw attention to the urgent need for colleges to reorient their focus around instilling a civics education.

The 2019-2020 “What Will They Learn?” report from ACTA, which gives an overview of 1,123 course catalogs from universities across the country, shows that only 18 percent of colleges require students to take foundational courses in U.S. government or history.

“Colleges have the responsibility to prepare students for a lifetime of informed citizenship. Our annual “What Will They Learn?” report illustrates the steady deterioration of the core curriculum. When American history and government courses are removed, you begin to see disheartening survey responses like these, and America’s experiment in self-government begins to slip from our grasp,” said ACTA President Michael Poliakoff.

ACTA hopes that by persuading more colleges to add a civics component to their core curriculum, the negative trends in civic literacy will begin to reverse.

Read the full report here.