A Bad Report Card
The news from American high schools is not good. The most recent test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the national report card, finds that American 12th graders are actually performing worse in reading than 12th graders did in 1992, when a comparable exam was given. In addition, 12th-grade performance in reading has been distressingly flat since 2002, even though the states were supposed to be improving the quality of teaching to comply with the No Child Left Behind education act.
The new scores, based on tests given in 2005, show that only about 35 percent of 12th graders are proficient in reading. Simply put, this means that a majority of the country’s 12th graders have trouble understanding what they read fully enough to make inferences, draw conclusions and see connections between what they read and their own experiences. The math scores were even worse, with only 23 percent of 12th graders performing at or above the proficient level.
Marginal literacy and minimal math skills might have been adequate for the industrial age. But these scores mean that many of today’s high school seniors will be locked out of the information economy, where a college degree is the basic price of admission and the ability to read, write and reason is essential for success.
Source: New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/2zxe42
February 28th, 2007 at 11:21 PM
I think you miss the whole point. There is solid research that points to a significant downturn in test scores when high-stakes accountability is stressed. Darling-Hammond looked at 24 states, 12 that had high-stakes accountability and 12 that did not. In all 12 states that had high stakes accountability students performed significantly worse than those in states in which there was no high-stakes accountability. Perhaps it is not so much that 12th graders are not proficient as readers but that they are under far too much pressure to perform for politicians and other adults? I don’t know for sure, but I am willing to speculate that this is what is actually happening.
Others have pointed out that since NCLB nearly 50% of the school year is spent in American public schools preparing students to ‘pass’ the test. That means that of a 180 day school year 90 days are spent on test preparation and only 90 on new instruction. Do you think this might have an effect on scores?
Finally, and this is especially true of reading and literacy instruction, much of the time spent on new instruction is directed toward technical aspects of reading and writing. Students have little time to read or write for purposes other than becoming proficient in the tested skills. Little time is spent in reading instruction in reading for the sake of becoming a reader or writing to develop a sense of authorship. Small wonder kids don’t do well on tests.
I suggest that the popular view of low test scores is a myth, one that should have been put to rest when Berliner and Biddle published the Manufactured Crisis.
What is needed is less hue and cry about the failures of our public educational system and more support given to real instruction, best practices in the classroom; instruction designed to engage students in the real process of learning and far, far less emphasis on testing.