How many U.S. senators are there? In what month do we vote for the president? These are some of the many questions that students will need to know the answer to in order to graduate.

Governor Doug Ducey was sworn into office in January of this year and only weeks later he mandated the American Civics Act which requires students to pass a civics test in order to graduate. Arizona is the first state in the country with this prerequisite.

“The good thing about it is that it’s showing the importance of civics in our education system,” Government, Economics, and We the People teacher John Feula says.“Civics is so important because it’s the rulebook for America. You should know how the country works if you’re going to live in it.”

The motives behind Ducey’s push to introduce the test so soon are unclear; nonetheless, it was administered to Perry students on Nov.10,12,17, and 18, and Dec. 1 and 2.

“The state didn’t give districts any guidance in terms of how [schools] were going to administer the test,” counselor and civics test administrator Clint Beauer said,“so districts were kind of left on their own to make those decisions.”

The test will generally be given at the 8th grade level but Chandler Unified School District decided to test 11th graders. Their decision was based off off retention numbers which verify that the number of juniors in high school is steadier.“If you test [students] at the 8th grade level, by the time they get to 12th grade, they may have moved districts and they don’t have record of [their score],” Beauer explained.

The test is generally identical to a basic nationalization test given to immigrants and requires a score of at least 60% to pass. For that reason, most teachers are not too concerned with setting time aside to review.

“This is material that’s covered at the 7th-8th grade level. A lot of it’s just review,” Beauer states. If for any reason students do not pass the test the first time around, they do have unlimited chances to retake it.

Currently, the test is exclusively given in Arizona and Beauer believes that this will remain true in the future.“I don’t know that it matters to states like it did to Arizona. I think it’s important to have an understanding of how government works, but I don’t see a big push in terms of nationally.”