I found some of these links while considering some of the au courante ideas about standardized testing in schools… It seems to me that graduation rates and college entrance statistics would serve as a partial (real world) means to evaluate how well our k-12 system is doing.
The fact that high school scores for ACT tests have been reasonably flat since I was in high school does not surprise me. The interesting this is that there are no statistics which go further back in time.
Even when I was a new freshman, I was presented with college teachers and professors bemoaning the fact that we were so poorly prepared for college level academic work…I have heard this from almost every undergraduate teacher or professor I have ever talked to since then…
Is this a problem related to K-12 curricula? (Obviously) No. Therefore this must in some way relate to what students and teachers are doing (or not doing) to pas these classes…
I suspect that this same area of enquiry would relate to drop out rates too…
Scores Stagnate at High Schools
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703824304575435831555726858.html
New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years.
The results raise questions about how well the nation’s high schools are preparing students for college, and show the challenge facing the Obama administration in its effort to raise educational standards. The administration won bipartisan support for its education policies early on, but faces a tough fight in the fall over the rewrite and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind program.
Test scores: Middle schools improving; high schools stagnant
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/09/test_scores_middle_schools_imp.html
More than 300,000 Oregon students took state reading, writing and math exams last spring, and results released this morning show surging achievement in middle schools.
But results in high schools, already a weak spot for Oregon, remained stagnant. Just 55 percent of sophomores could write or do math at the level deemed acceptable for their grade level, the tests found.
High School Math and Reading Scores Have Been Stagnant Since The 1970′s
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/29/naep-report
Today, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its 2008 Nation’s Report Card, which provides a look at long term trends in the educational achievement of American students.
The report reveals some pretty depressing information. For instance, while both 9 and 13 year-olds made modest gains in math and reading, high school students have been stuck in neutral since the 1970′s (which is when the first assessments were made). These results eerily mirror America’s college graduation and retention rates, which have also both been stagnant for two decades.
This ties back to America’s falling rate of educational attainment, which for young people has slipped to tenth in the world. America’s overall ranking in terms of education has been inflated for some time by the success of previous generations, but in recent decades we’ve been in a holding pattern, while other countries have surged ahead. As Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out, “we’re lifting the basic skills of young kids,” but “not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”
Stagnant, Falling College Admissions Test Scores Reflect NCLB Failure
http://fairtest.org/stagnant-falling-college-admissions-scores
What do you think the causes of these flatlined test scores and increasing dropout rates are
