Polk State resources support student success on Civic Literacy Exam
Passing the Florida Civic Literacy Exam is one of the newer requirements for Polk State College students to earn an Associate in Arts degree. The College is continuing to work to ensure that students are aware and prepared.
For degree-seeking students who enrolled in college for the first time for the Fall 2021 Semester or after, the state requires them to pass National Government (POS2041) or American History (AMH2020) with a C or greater and score at least 60% on the Civic Literacy Exam. The exam is an 80-question test broken into four parts of 20 questions each, requiring 48 total correct answers.
“If you’re going to pursue a degree, you’re required to do this,” said David Sutton, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs. “We’re putting together strategies to help students be successful.”
Resources for students
Spearheaded by Sutton and Warren Brown, Coordinator for Career Services, advisors are emphasizing the requirement in their conversation with students. The College is advocating that students take the test within 30 days of passing either POS2041 or AMH2020 to optimize their opportunity to successfully pass the exam.
“If you don’t use it, you lose it,” Brown said. “Students were waiting until the last minute to take the test. Many knew nothing about the requirement until they saw it on their degree audits.”
Polk State staff members have also developed a free course and study guide in Canvas, which will continue to be improved. Brown said the College will track how students who took the free Canvas course fared on the Civic Literacy Exam. In addition to the added emphasis from advisors, students in the two courses will also receive email reminders about the resources available for the exam.
“The biggest thing is that students are now prepared,” Brown said. “For our online students, we’re going to make sure they’re aware of it as well. We’re going to recommend that everyone take the course available to them in Canvas.”
Additionally, Polk State faculty from diverse disciplines including English, Nursing, History, and more are working collaboratively to seek opportunities to integrate Civic Literacy content across all course areas.
What the numbers say
As of the end of July, Polk State students have passed the exam at a 75% rate on nearly 1,000 attempts. There is no limit to how many times students can take the test.*
“(Former Dean, now Associate Provost) Sutton was my mentor throughout this process,” Brown said. “We looked at pass rates at other schools, data on student success, anything we could get our hands on.”
Students who pass the exam in high school are exempt from having to take it again in college, but for the 2021-22 Academic Year – the first year of its requirement – students struggled. Statewide, high school students posted just a 37% pass rate. Excluding Florida Virtual School, only Alachua (53%), Santa Rosa (57%), and St. Lucie (57%) county school districts passed at greater than a 50% clip.
“Our advisors were very concerned because students were struggling to pass this test,” Sutton noted. “Though students can pass the test if they study effectively, they should not take the task lightly. I taught modern history in my humanities classes for many years and found the practice test challenging.”
The requirement was implemented by the Florida Legislature to ensure that students “demonstrate competency in civic literacy.” According to the Florida Department of Education, this includes an understanding of basic principles of American democracy, the United States Constitution, and landmark Supreme Court cases’ and founding documents’ impact on law and society.
“Our faculty is committed to preparing students to perform well on the exam,” Sutton added. “They are emphasizing the importance of landmark supreme court cases and introducing students to the content of the essential documents of American democracy in their classrooms. Some have provided special study sessions for students with great success.”
*NOTE: Failures are not reflected in the data in cases where students need multiple tries to pass the test. For example, if a Polk State student passes on the fourth try, their three failures would not be reflected in the College’s overall pass rate.