Democrats are more interested in teaching kids how to tuck and tape than they are teaching math, science, reading and writing....
https://www.city-journal.org/article/our-failing-schools-are-a-national-crisis
The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in reading and math, released in June, are appalling. The scores on the test, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” administered in October–December 2022, showed the steepest declines for 13-year-olds since the tests began.
“The mathematics decline for 13-year-olds was the single largest decline we have observed in the past half a century,” explains Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). “The mathematics score for the lowest-performing students has returned to levels last seen in the 1970s, and the reading score for our lowest-performing students was actually lower than it was the very first year these data were collected, in 1971.”
Results on the NAEP U.S. history and civics test, also taken in 2022, were no better. Released in May, these scores revealed that just 13 percent of eighth-graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history, meaning that they could “explain major themes, periods, events, people, ideas and turning points in the country’s history.” Additionally, about 20 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level in civics. Both scores represent all-time lows in these areas.
Most analysts blame students’ dismal showing on the Covid-induced shutdowns that gripped public education in 2020 and 2021. The hysterical response to the pandemic certainly did damage. But, as Kevin Mahnken notes for The 74, the latest scores, which highlight long-term trends that extend back to the 1970s, “widen the aperture on the nation’s profound academic slump.” In doing so, the latest test serves “as a complement to the 2020 iteration of the same test, which showed that the math and English skills of 13-year-olds had noticeably eroded even before the emergence of COVID-19.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/our-failing-schools-are-a-national-crisis
The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in reading and math, released in June, are appalling. The scores on the test, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” administered in October–December 2022, showed the steepest declines for 13-year-olds since the tests began.
“The mathematics decline for 13-year-olds was the single largest decline we have observed in the past half a century,” explains Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). “The mathematics score for the lowest-performing students has returned to levels last seen in the 1970s, and the reading score for our lowest-performing students was actually lower than it was the very first year these data were collected, in 1971.”
Results on the NAEP U.S. history and civics test, also taken in 2022, were no better. Released in May, these scores revealed that just 13 percent of eighth-graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history, meaning that they could “explain major themes, periods, events, people, ideas and turning points in the country’s history.” Additionally, about 20 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level in civics. Both scores represent all-time lows in these areas.
Most analysts blame students’ dismal showing on the Covid-induced shutdowns that gripped public education in 2020 and 2021. The hysterical response to the pandemic certainly did damage. But, as Kevin Mahnken notes for The 74, the latest scores, which highlight long-term trends that extend back to the 1970s, “widen the aperture on the nation’s profound academic slump.” In doing so, the latest test serves “as a complement to the 2020 iteration of the same test, which showed that the math and English skills of 13-year-olds had noticeably eroded even before the emergence of COVID-19.”
