Following is the Jersey City, NJ High School Entrance Examination for June 1885, reprinted in the Wall Street Journal in 1992 and in the Educational Excellence Network 's News and Views in December 1996. Although, as the Wall Street Journal acknowledges, few attended high school in those days, keep in mind that this was a test given to children at about age 14 or 15 at most, and was based on what was determined to be important knowledge. Test yourself in algebra, arithmetic, geography, grammar, US history, and compare your answers to those provided by the faculty of Jersey City State College and the Wall Street Journal . America's children need strong academic skills more than ever before. Yet, despite a decade of educational reforms, their achievement remains disappointing.
American students rank near the bottom of industrialized countries.
To be fair, in 1885 most Americans did not attend high school. Nevertheless we thought readers might like to inspect the exams. Make a literal trinomial. Write a homogeneous quadrinomial of the third degree. Express the cube root of 10ax in two ways.