Concept-heavy citizenship test unveiled

Do you know who was president during World War I? Or the name of the current speaker of the House? Can you say what the Constitution does?

If so, then you could be on your way to becoming American. Those questions are on the new citizenship test unveiled Thursday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The federal agency says it redesigned the test to move away from memorization and instead emphasize fundamental concepts of American democracy, basic U.S. history and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

For example, the new test asks for a description of one of four constitutional amendments dealing with voting rights. The current test asks for the number of the amendments.

Some answers may seem simple to most Americans, such as current President George W. Bush or President George Washington or April 15, a k a tax day. The new test also asks about more open concepts, such as, "What is the 'rule of law'?" and "What does the Constitution do?"

Starting next October, applicants will be asked 10 questions from the list of 100 potential questions. To pass they'll have to answer six correctly. The list was whittled down from 142 items on a pilot test, which roughly 6,000 applicants volunteered to take earlier this year. The test was not piloted in Utah.

Agency director Emilio Gonzalez said the 100 questions were selected after a review by USCIS representatives, history and government scholars, and English as a Second Language teachers.

"Together, we developed a test that will encourage citizenship applicants to learn and identify the basic civic values that unite us as Americans," Gonzalez said.

During the pilot period, 92.4 percent of applicants passed the test on the first try, agency spokeswoman Maria Elena Garcia-Upson said. That's compared to an 84 percent pass rate for the current test.

Nationwide implementation of the test, which will be phased in starting Oct. 1, 2008, was delayed so that community organizations will have time to revamp their citizenship courses, she said.

When posed a sampling of questions from the new test, a handful of Utah residents had mixed results in their ability to answer them.

One man who declined to give his name expressed surprise that a woman, Nancy Pelosi, is speaker of the House. Another woman thought a U.S. territory might be in Texas.