More on the Sad State of U.S. Education .... It's Going from Sad to Sadder

Most kids leaving high school and entering college, or hoping to start a career, are often not capable of doing the college or job related work required for success. They leave high school woefully unprepared for the future.


In that regard, a new report released yesterday has the gruesome story, and it's not a pretty one. We need to ask ourselves why we are spending so much time and money on educating our children in grades K-12 and getting such a sorry end product.


Here's what I say --- If we dare to try something new, what's to lose? Besides, it just may work wonders and come to the rescue of future generations of individual Americans and America as a whole, too.


Federal Test Shows U.S. 12th-Graders Aren't Improving in Reading or Math has the summary:


"Despite years of efforts to lift U.S. academic performance, 12th-graders showed no improvement in math or reading in federal test scores released Wednesday, underscoring concerns that the country isn't generating career- and college-ready graduates.

Students' 2013 performance in the National Assessment of Educational Progress didn't budge since the prior one in 2009. About 38% of students scored proficient or higher in reading, while about 26% did so in math—matching the 2009 results. A majority of students received marks of below basic or basic for both subjects in both years.                

                  

Lower expectations for what graduates should study and know are part of the problem . . . . 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 . . . .

SAT scores for the graduating class of 2013 were flat from the prior year, with 43% of students deemed prepared for college-level classwork, according to the College Board, which administers the test. At the international level, results announced last year from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment show American teenagers slipping in world rankings in math, science and reading. . . .

The latest 12th-grader test scores showed ethnic and gender gaps remain, with non-Hispanic white students outperforming blacks and Hispanics in both reading and math.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said test scores have been improving in lower grades, but high-school results were troubling, even as graduation rates have risen. "We must reject educational stagnation in our high schools, and as a nation, we must do better for all students, especially for African-American and Latino students," he said in a statement. . . .

The report did highlight that more-advanced course work goes hand in hand with higher test scores.

Students who discussed their interpretations of readings more frequently and those who took higher-level math courses, such as precalculus and calculus, tested better than average."

Summing Up

When kids graduate from high school, most are not career or college ready.

That makes them individually, and our country as a whole, more and more uncompetitive internationally. 

There are no silver bullets to fix this problem of epic proportions.

Hard work and school choice, including vouchers, are the keys to fixing our educational system in America, and it must be fixed.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.