Credit: Geri Lavrov
Every two years, education-policy wonks gear up for what has become a time-honored ritual: the release of the Nation’s Report Card. Officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the data reflect the results of reading and math tests administered to a sample of students across the country. Experts generally consider the tests rigorous and highly reliable—and the scores basically stagnant.
Math scores have been flat since 2009 and reading scores since 1998, with just a third or so of students performing at a level the NAEP defines as “proficient.” Performance gaps between lower-income students and their more affluent peers, among other demographic discrepancies, have remained stubbornly wide.
Among the likely culprits for the stalled progress in math scores: a misalignment between what the NAEP tests and what state standards require teachers to cover at specific grade levels. But what’s the reason for the utter lack of progress in reading scores?
On Tuesday, a panel of experts in Washington, D.C., convened by the federally appointed officials who oversee […]
There are two factors that _aren’t_ considered in this article. The first is that kids choose _not_ to read anymore. Once they get their first smart phone, they’re done unless there’s some necessity that forces them to read. The second does have to do with testing requirements. And that is the triumph of quantitative evaluation over qualitative. To get federal funds, states have to have an objective measure of student performance. But only some things are easily measurable in that way. The result is, the focus goes to those things and other, equally valuable things get marginalized or ignored. It’s the tyranny of numerical evaluation that permeates so much of our society.
Yes, I agree with you, but it is an article not the definitive work on the subject. I have done a number of articles and papers on this subject, no single one of which covers everything.
As a culture we have a real problem with growing functional illiteracy. In many schools they are no longer teaching cursive writing, and a growing number of young people can’t read cursive. They also can’t understand multi-syllabic words. I was talking with a young man in college the other day, about someone who had not moved promptly on his problem, and said procrastination is indeed a problem, and I could tell he had no idea what the word meant. All of this is part of the dumbing down of America trend.
John Taylor Gatto sums it up nicely in his history of education tome :(paraphrasing) it doesn’t work because it’s designed that way. Also U.S. had a big setback when word sight method was used over phonics. Money isn’t needed to fix this; the one room school house proves it. They taught more with less.