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The fact is that NONE of the states' public school systems educate even half of their students to basic grade-level proficiency.
Public school student achievement is actually much, much lower than most people think. Each state's education officials establish their own state standards, commission/construct their own tests, and set their own 'passing' scores. This has resulted in manipulations that make it look like public schools are educating our country's children, when in reality the majority of students in many states are far below acceptable levels of proficiency. In some cases, there's as much as a 70 percentage point difference in proficiency levels between NCLB state achievement tests and the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests. Not one state listed in the chart below educates even half of their students to grade-level proficiency on the NAEP.
If anyone wants to see their (or any other) state's reported proficiency level vs. the NAEP proficiency level (to see if their public schools are being honest about providing an adequate education), check here: NAEP Researchcenter - NAEP and State Equivalent Percent Table
For each grade level, the first column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient (meets or exceeds state standards) on the state test; the second column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient on the NAEP (National Assessment).
Thank you for that post. And that is why so many can't survive in college because college isn't owned by Fed dollars..YET. CC's post more remedial HS classes than entry level college classes in math and reading because our K-12 does such a p*ss poor job and pats themselves on the back with manipulated numbers.
Thank you for that post. And that is why so many can't survive in college because college isn't owned by Fed dollars..YET. CC's post more remedial HS classes than entry level college classes in math and reading because our K-12 does such a p*ss poor job and pats themselves on the back with manipulated numbers.
Ugly truth is our top end scores have gone down because we have done away with tracking. Homogeneous classes produce better outcomes at all levels, provided all have quality teachers. We stopped doing it because being put in a low group hurt people's feelings. Also the best teachers were never assigned to the bottom group. Until we start celebrating and rewarding academic excellence again, the kids aren't going to bother putting in the extra work.
Ugly truth is our top end scores have gone down because we have done away with tracking. Homogeneous classes produce better outcomes at all levels, provided all have quality teachers. We stopped doing it because being put in a low group hurt people's feelings. Also the best teachers were never assigned to the bottom group. Until we start celebrating and rewarding academic excellence again, the kids aren't going to bother putting in the extra work.
It's time to stick a fork in public schooling. Let parents choose where their children go to school and use vouchers to pay for for-profit education. Put the empahsis back on education in the fundamentals and let the cream rise to the top.
American schools are not any better or worse than they have ever been. There has never been a point in time in the US when most of the youth population was doing "well" at schooling, particularly as they approached the ages of 16 to 18. In the past, it was entirely acceptable for a teen to drop out at 12 to 14 and enter the workforce.
There aren't many job opportunities open to such people anymore, however. Any attempt to educate most kids to a "high" standard is doomed to fail, because most kids cluster around the average, and a certain percentage just don't have the right psychology to learn in a school classroom.
If you look at test scores for new admits at top US colleges, they are higher than ever.
There was no "golden age" of American education. Then, as now, some schools are outstanding, most are average/perfunctory, and some are just awful.
Many of the top-ranked universities admit around 1/3rd of their classes from private schools, which is the same ratio it has been for a long time. It varies from school to school - Caltech is usually around 25%; some are a bit higher. But public schools today - as in the past, going back for several decades now - provide the majority of admits to top colleges as well as colleges as a whole.
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