The federal takeover of education is really paying dividends!

WASHINGTON (AP) — High school students are getting better grades and taking more challenging courses, but that apparent progress is not showing up on national math and reading tests.

…

Nearly 40 percent of high school seniors scored below the basic level on the math test. More than a quarter of seniors failed to reach the basic level on the reading test. Most educators think students ought to be able to work at the basic level.

“I think that we are sleeping through a crisis,” said Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, a governing board member. He said the low test scores should push lawmakers and educators to enact school reforms.

The new reading scores show no change since 2002, the last time the test was given.

“We should be getting better. There’s nothing good about a flat score,” Winick said.

It should be noted that No Child Gets Ahead was enacted in 2001.

The transcript study shows high school students are earning more credits, taking more challenging courses and getting higher grade-point averages than in the past.

In 2005, high school graduates had an overall grade-point average just shy of 3.0 — or about a B. That has gone up from a grade-point average of about 2.7 in 1990.

Hmmm…  Skills stay constant.  Grades go up.  It’s called grade inflation!

On the math test, about 60 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the basic level. At that level, a student should be able to convert a decimal to a fraction, for example.

I’m going to use a politically incorrect term and my wife will chide me for saying this, but it’s the first thing that popped into my head.  If you are 18 years old (or older) and you can’t convert a decimal to a fraction then you are retarded.

Just one-fourth of 12th-graders were proficient or better in math, meaning they demonstrated solid academic performance. To qualify as “proficient,” students might have to determine what type of graph should be used to display particular types of data.

On the reading test, about three-fourths of seniors performed at or above the basic level, while 40 percent hit the proficient mark.

Seniors working at a basic reading level can identify elements of an author’s style. At the proficient level, they can make inferences from reading material, draw conclusions from it and make connections to their own experiences.

It looks like our about 25% of the kids that are government schools churn out are barely qualified to ask, “You want fries with that?”

The NAEP study continues to break out students’ performance by gender, race, and parental education.  One key factor that they don’t (can’t?) provide data for is family income and/or wealth, which I feel has more significance than race.  If latino children underperform their fairer skinned brethren it isn’t because they are latino.  It is likely due to a number of factors that happen to be more common to latinos than caucasians, such as income.  Since our government education system determines school assignment based on your address, poorer (and even middle class) families can’t afford to buy property in the best school districts.

• Government schools churning out civic morons
• Government schools not preparing students for college
• Students falling behind on math
• Strict education standards in Alabama - later
• Blame the teachers’ teachers

This entry was posted by Brian on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.