Passed by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2017, Senate Bill 159 requires students to pass a 100-question civics test in order to graduate from a public high school with a regular diploma.

Each local board of education is expected to prepare or approve an exam that must be comprised of questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test. Students are required to score 60 percent or higher and may retake the exam as many times as deemed necessary to pass the test.

A Civics Test Manual is available to offer guidance to districts in preparation for the administration of the legislatively-required exam. This document provides considerations for the administration, implementation, scoring and recording of results on the civics test. Additionally, this manual includes two complete 100-question sample versions of the test, both in short answer and multiple choice formats.

For more information on the civics test, visit the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) Civics Test webpage.