The purpose of this study was to use the US naturalization test as a springboard to gauge the citizenship knowledge and notions of young adolescent students in Ohio and Georgia. The participants' citizenship knowledge was partially measured by administering questions from the US naturalization test in two case studies. Students from a range of academic achievement levels were then selected to participate in interviews regarding their notions of citizenship. The findings show that the overwhelming majority of adolescents in this study dismally failed the naturalization test. When interviewed, the predominantly Caucasian participants from Ohio struggled to articulate universal conceptions of citizenship and were notably uninformed about justice-oriented citizenship. The more diverse participants from Georgia showed very similar results, however, with a few notable exceptions among the immigrant adolescents.
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