Thursday, May 15, 2014

Test Scores Stagnate : New School Agendas Failing Students

It's called 'cultural rot' - the main agenda today in so many schools is 'feeling good about yourself' and social networking and that should be enough to sustain you for the rest of your life. That so many students are allowed to opt out of hard work in high school to engage the social network on their iPad and iPhones doesn't penetrate the intellect of school officials as a problem.

Truthfully,  many of the public school administrators and teachers embrace it. It's the new way, the brace new world of 'live fast, love hard and die young'. Let others take the responsibility of making things work.

The puzzling thing here is do the high school administrators and teachers really believe just 'getting along and feeling good' to be enough? Can a rational person really believe just personal interaction with fellow students while doing a minimum of the requirements for graduation will be enough to be self sustaining once out of school? And if this is enough, why do so many college administrators keep harping on the need for better prepared students?

The next question to ask when the welfare roles are littered with unstaining individuals, who will take care of all the feel good students that fail at socially 'getting along' in this brave new world of social progressivism because they are not employable? Taxpayers? Who knew? What's going on here?

Twelfth Grade Test Scores Not Improving
Source: Caroline Porter, "Federal Test Shows U.S. 12th-Graders Aren't Improving in Reading or Math," Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2014.

May 14, 2014

American twelfth graders showed zero improvement in federal test scores between 2009 and 2013, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Amidst concerns that the U.S. is failing to churn out college-ready graduates, results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed 38 percent of American twelfth graders scoring as proficient in reading and 26 percent as proficient in math, identical to the NAEP results from 2009.

"Too few students are achieving at a level to make our country competitive at an international level," said Cornelia Orr, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP.  Orr said that schools set such low expectations for high school graduates that students are emerging from high school inadequately prepared for further schooling: "Students get a mixed message -- students have a low bar to graduate from high school but it's not a high enough bar to really pursue a career actively when they leave."

NAEP scores are not the only tests indicating a lack of student improvement. 2013 SAT scores were at the same levels as in 2012. According to the College Board, which administers the SAT, only 43 percent of students were prepared for college-level work.
 

No comments: