Test Scores Better But Lag Overall : Feds Should Step Aside

I know how to make the schools a lot better and that's by eliminating the Department of Education. Getting the federal government out of the states way to control their own educational systems is a winning proposition.

U.S. Students Make Slight Progress on Test Scores
Source: Stephanie Banchero, "U.S. Students Make Slight Progress on Test Scores," Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2013.
November 20, 2013

Amid the sluggish progress nationwide, a few areas notched drastic improvements on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, with Tennessee and Washington, D.C. -- as well as schools on military bases -- the only ones achieving statistically significant gains on all tests, says the Wall Street Journal.

• Fourth- and eighth-graders across the country made modest advances in national math and reading exams this year, but proficiency rates remained stubbornly below 50 percent on every test.
• Washington gained a cumulative 23 points since 2011, while Tennessee posted a 22-point jump -- both compared with a four point national gain. The exams are scored on a 0-500 scale.

The scores are a big improvement over results when the exams were first given, in the early 1990s. But the slow progress prompted fresh calls for a more rapid remaking of public schools, which are under fire from some business leaders, policymakers and politicians for failing to keep students on a level footing with international peers.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the scores "encouraging" but said they don't show the "transformational progress" needed to prepare students for a competitive global economy.
Hope Harrod, a fourth-grade teacher at John Burroughs Education Campus in Washington, D.C., says she has noticed a focus in the last three years on helping teachers identify effective classroom strategies, including sharing videos of top-notch teaching. "It's refreshing to get the chance to have such laser-focused discussions about how we can get better," she says.