U.S. School Children Losing More Ground to Other Nations…

 

U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according to results of a global reading test.

Test results released on Wednesday showed U.S. students scored about the same as they did in 2001, the last time the test was given. During the interim, there has been an increased emphasis on reading under Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.

The U.S. average score on the Progress in International Reading Literacy test remained above the international average. However, ten countries including Hong Kong and three Canadian provinces, were ahead of the United States this time. In 2001, only three countries were ahead of the United States.

The loss of academic ground is

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law requires schools to test students annually in reading and math, and imposes sanctions on schools that miss testing goals.

The U.S. performance metrics on an international test of 45 nations differed from results of a U.S. national reading test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card. Fourth-grade reading scores rose modestly on the most recent version of that test, taken earlier this year and measuring growth since 2005. During the previous two-year period, scores were flat.

On the latest international exam, U.S. students posted a lower average score than students in Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Hungary, Italy and Sweden, along with the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.

Interesting how the U.S. metrics showed progress while other countries’ metrics seem to indicate we are getting dumber. 

Hong Kong and Singapore have taken steps such as increasing teacher preparation, providing more tutoring and raising public awareness about the importance of reading, said Ina Mullis, co-director of the International Study Center at Boston College, which conducts the international reading literacy study.

The results:

Countries that improved since 2001 included Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.

Countries that declined included England, Lithuania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden. Sweden still outperformed the United States this time around, but average scores in England and the Netherlands were not measurably different from the U.S. average.

Overall, girls scored higher than boys in the United States and all other countries except for Luxembourg and Spain, where the boy-girl scores were the same.

The average U.S. score was above the average score in 22 countries or jurisdictions and about the same as the score in 12 others. The U.S. average fell toward the high end of a level called “intermediate.” At that level, a student can identify central events, plot sequences and relevant story details in texts. The student also can make straightforward inferences from what is read and begin to make connections across parts of the text.

Background questionnaires administered to students, teachers and school administrators showed that the average years of experience for fourth-grade teachers in the United States decreased from 15 years to 12 years between 2001 and 2006. The international average was 17 years.

U.S. kids seem to get more reading instruction than others. U.S. teachers were more likely to report teaching reading for more than six hours per week than those elsewhere.

In my opinion the public education has devolved from the classical approach of character plus basics (reading, writing, arithmetic, respect, and responsibility), to skills, to psychological-social engineering. Today, education “experts” celebrate their doctrines of multiculturalism and values clarification, but sadly, the experts have been too preoccupied with experimental education, diversity training, evolution-instruction, to wake up and realize that 68 percent of students are unprepared for college. 

The long and short of it is…what they are doing…isn’t working.

Check the Nation’s Report Card here…

Latest Education Report Says Our Kids Don’t Understand Economics…

 

Recently, the federal government tested American high school students on how much they understand economics. The results were predictably dismal. Only half knew that banks use deposits to make loans to other customers, while only half understood the basic principles of global trade.

In an era where global trade is directly affecting our culture on a critical level, why aren’t our high school students made to learn economics? The fact is, only about 5% of all high schools curriculums mandate economics as a requirement for graduation, while most schools don’t offer economic courses at all.

In addition, the same report shows that math skills are well below the international average and continuing to trend downward. Governor Richardson recently called for a new ‘Manhattan Project’ with the goal of developing alternative fuel. I say, with what talent? Will we have to import math and science students from China too to shore up the pathetic porduct our high schools are turning out? 

As a nation we cannot afford to allow future workers to languish in academic mediocrity at the risk of sacraficing our way of life. These statistics are the precursor for a socio-economic cataclysm that will see the U.S. slip into economic and cultural chaos, as we wilt in the face of economic pressure from countries like China, unable to compete or moreover, preserve our culture. Maybe the trend has already begun.  

No one in this generation experienced the great depression and few know much about it because by default, few students care to talk about history either – but if things continue on the same destructive path in this country both economically and culturally, they may get a taste of it first hand. Maybe students will be made to learn economics and math then? Of course our president doesn’t seem to understand economics either so why should our students be bothered? 

Our Dysfunctional High Schools…

America’s public school system has traditionally served our culture as an institution of equal opportunity in American society – but it is failing and failing badly. June is graduation month and if you take time to quickly examine many schools, you will find that millions of high-school students will not be graduating and that the shear number of non-graduates is at an all time high. A new report from the U.S. Department of Education reveals that more than 1 million students will fail to graduate high school this year and that the core of these students are primarily present in minority communities across the country. Almost 50% of Black and Hispanic male students drop out of public high school by the 10th grade. The most miserable areas for public education in general are Detroit, where only 25 percent of students will graduate, Cleveland at 35%, Baltimore at 35%, Dallas at 46%, New York at 45% and Los Angeles at 45%. In my opinion, these are appalling. Many education analysts and experts believe that the current education crisis is all the more problematic given the ultra-competitive nature of the global economy and the direct effect that the global economy has on the domestic socio-economic dynamic in the states.

The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that each high school dropout earns approimately $260,000 less than a high school graduate over his or her lifetime. These dropouts also put additional strain on social and welfare programs. In fact, high school dropouts make up nearly half of heads of all households on welfare, and also represent over half of our total prison population. Do our insulated leaders in Washington – enscounced in their ignorance – see the cost to our society?

Even more pathetic are the students who do graduate and the grossly inadequate education they are receiving. In low-income schools, students have less than a 2 in 5 chance of being taught by a mathematics or science teacher who holds a degree in the subject he or she teaches at all, much less an advanced degree. This may explain why less than a third of our fourth-grade and eighth-grade students performed at adequate levels in math, and why American 15-year-olds have consistently fallen below the international average in mathematics literacy and problem-solving over the past 15 years. Some professional estimates predict a national shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers by 2015. 

So what is your government doing? You may have guessed – nothing. George W. Bush’s “No-Child-Left-Behind act is long on accountibility and short on substance. You can test students all you want – if they’re only taught to pass the test – your strategy is hollow and void of any life-long skill building that is crucial to the continued success of our culture. The sad truth is – we don’t produce competent doctors, mathmeticians, computer programmers, scientists or anything for that matter, that requires real use of grey matter. How long are we going to let our public school system crumble? Will we finally learn when our GDP begins to shrink and we become one of the ruled instead one of the rulers? If things don’t change, we as a society better be prepared to face the consequnces of our academic mediocrity. Just read the history of Rome America…if you can understand it.

Posted by M Podoba 6/20/07