<i>This all being said - I would expect an 8th grader of 2024 to pass the 1912 test. Look at the questions, they are nothing untoward, not rocket science.</i><p>Yeah, but the vast majority wouldn't, so isn't this contradictory? Is he trying to say 8th graders could pass if they studied or had the identical question in advance? That, too, I am skeptical of. Maybe some could, but most would not.<p>The reason is because the corpus of knowledge is so large. It's not like those are the only questions, but rather drawn from much larger reading. This is why even well-educated adults do poorly on general knowledge tests--what is considered 'general knowledge' is quite vast.<p>The difference now vs. 1912:<p>Emphasis on specialization for gifted kids, but also considerable intra-classroom variability of skill, so you have some kids learning multi-variable calc at 9th grade (not at school, but rather at local college, private tutoring , or self-study such as online with apps), and on the other extreme, others still struggling with fractions.<p>In 1912, the strugglers would have been weeded out by either dropping out of school or learning a trade. Mandatory k-12 school was not yet a thing. So there are selection biases here. Same for demographic change.