Posted on 10/20/2018 7:01:41 AM PDT by NOBO2012
Q. In a country where every year the percentage of high school graduates deemed “college ready” declines do we continue to promote the concept that everyone should go to college?
Bad news reported in the WSJ: ACT Scores Show Drop in College Readiness, Especially in Math. As usual, math and science hit hardest.
A greater percentage of U.S. high-school graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam aren’t ready for college-level coursework, with math readiness at a 14-year low.
Reading that awkward sentence makes me think English scores might not be so far behind. Oh wait!
"Readiness in English has also been trending down over the past several years, dropping from 64% in 2015 to 60% this year, the lowest level since the benchmarks were introduced," according to the report…Science remains the subject area in which students are least likely to be prepared for college coursework."
Some people are blaming Common Core for the decline, if you can believe it:
"I think testimony we took during our attempts to eradicate Common Core showed the dumbing down of curriculum, the social justice indoctrination, the emphasis on social-emotional learning, reduced quantity and quality of reading, emphasizing screen time rather than classroom instruction," Thompson said. He explained that the "destruction of proper math" has also been a contributing factor. Common Core proponents, he said, "place a higher priority on indoctrination than education." - Ohio state Representative Andy Thompson, via PJMedia
Can the news about the children’s education get any worse? Well yes it can, there’s also a racial component to the report, although you won’t read about it anywhere in the MSM: ACT College Admissions Test Scores by Race: Asians Pulling Away. And even worser: “Hispanic and black students continue to lag behind their white and Asian counterparts.”
Average ACT scores:
Overall: 22.1
White: 23.4
Asian: 25.0
Black: 17.9
Hispanic: 19.8
No wonder Harvard had to limit the number of Asians they admitted.
But back to my original question: in a country with such a low level of high school graduates ready to handle college level work (such as it is) why do we continue to encourage everyone to go, often incurring oppressive debt in order to do so?
We might want to consider the possibility that it’s because “university” is just another big business where they respond to their market in order to stay in business. Eventually entrance requirements at all but the top tier universities will boil down to money and a pulse, and they’ll waive the latter if you can come up with the former. Learn to answer all the questions “correctly” and you too can go to college!
With scams like that you will get even more AOCs.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
“Hispanic and black students continue to lag behind their white and Asian counterparts.”
It’s a good thing that race isn’t real, or this would be troubling.
Common core epitomizes liberals silent bigotry of lowered expectations.
I watched a docu about Shakespeare today. By age 12 he had a college level education - taught mostly in latin. By age 18, the equivalent of a doctorate. He was not the only student in the class, not the only class in school, not the only school in his parish. So, if children of 500 years ago could absorb knowledge and be able to logically process it, and children of 100 years ago could do the same, it’s not a lack of cognitive ability. Unless the IQ of the attendees has been dumbed down by external factors. Or college has just become another place to goof off and squander borrowed money outside the confines of the parents’ home.
Trying to educate the third world is tough.
Why, the answer is obvious: stop testing.
Just as Eisenhower warned of the military/industrial complex; beware of the education/union/goverment complex.
If you are a VIP In the ERA and took the SAT and ACT but are an NPC do you still have an ETA on the AOC. RSPV PDQ.
In 1922, he wrote an essay >b>Vox Populi that defines the kind of man or woman who can rise about the uneducated "mob" as he called it, and effectively lead it.
Mencken's essay essentially presaged President Donald J. Trump and a couple years back I plucked out the best parts of Vox Populi and posted is as an FR vanity.
Mencken both entertains and illuminates the topic in a way perhaps no one has done before and since. Check it out:
H. L. Mencken Predicted Donald Trump, the Enlightened Rabble-Rouser
p>The cause may simply be that more and more people are taking the test. There are only so many high IQ people in the country. Once most or all of them are taking the test,expanding the number of test-takers brings in people of lower and lower IQ. That drags down the average score. I’d like to know if the number of high scorers has declined, or if that number remains constant, but the average is being dragged down by the kind of people who didn’t take the test previously.
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