Countries reporting data: England, Germany, Italy, Russian Federation, United States
Ninth-grade students in the United States and Italy had the highest average scores on the test of civic knowledge of the five countries participating in the International Civic Education Assessment in 1999. Assessment of civic knowledge is based on the assessment of ninth-grade students’ performance in two areas: civic content and civic skills. The score on civic knowledge of U.S. ninth-graders was higher than the scores of ninth-graders in England, Germany, and the Russian Federation (table 1a). U.S. ninth-graders had a higher average score on the civic skills portion of the Civic Assessment than their counterparts in England, Italy, Germany, and the Russian Federation. Students in the Russian Federation had the lowest average score of these five countries, and German students had the second-lowest average score on the civic skills portion of this assessment (table 1b). On the civic content portion of the assessment, no difference was detected between the scores of ninth-graders in the United States and ninth-graders in Italy, Germany, and the Russian Federation. However, U.S. ninth-graders had a higher average score on this part of the assessment than their counterparts in England (table 1c).
Table 1a. Average achievement scores of 14-year-olds in total civic knowledge, by country: 1999
Table 1b. Average achievement scores of 14-year-olds in civic skills, by country: 1999
Table 1c. Average achievement scores of 14-year-olds in civic content, by country: 1999
Definitions and Methodology
This indicator provides performance scores of 14-year-olds (ninth-grade
students in most countries) on 13 civic skills assessment
items and 25 civic content assessment items on the International
Civic Assessment in 1999. The combination of these two item
sets makes up the total civic knowledge question set.
The total civic knowledge scale comprises the civic content scale
and the civic skills scale. Civic content refers to the content knowledge
of civic principles or pivotal ideas (e.g., the knowledge of
what constitutes a democracy), whereas civic skills refer to the
interpretive and thinking skills needed to make sense of civicrelated
information (e.g., the skills needed to make sense of a
newspaper article or a political cartoon).
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