Posted on 09/14/2011 12:04:13 PM PDT by Mind Freed
Scores on the critical reading portion of the SAT college entrance exam fell three points to their lowest level on record last year, and combined reading and math scores reached their lowest point since 1995.
The College Board, which released the scores Wednesday, said the results reflect the record number of students from the high school class of 2011 who took the exam and the growing diversity of the test-taking pool -- particularly Hispanics. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.
Still, while the three-point decline to 497 may look small in the context of an 800-point test, it was only the second time in the last two decades reading scores have fallen as much in a single year. And reading scores are now notably lower than scores as recently as 2005, when the average was 508.
Average math scores for the class of 2011 fell one point to 514 and scores on the critical reading section fell two points to 489.
Other recent tests of reading skills, such as the National Assessment of Education Progress, have shown reading skills of high-school students holding fairly steady. And the pool of students who take the SAT is tilted toward college-goers and not necessarily representative of all high school students.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/09/14/sat-reading-scores-fall-to-lowest-level-on-record/#ixzz1XxGDsPUo
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This happened in the high schools in the town I live in. One day I received a phone call from a woman who I knew was a avid supporter of the local public schools. She wanted to know about the Catholic HS where I had sent my two daughters. Well, she explained that the "honors" classes had been taken out of the local high schools and she was looking for somewhere that had "honors" programs. She had two, very intelligent, daughters (one had been put ahead a year) and they needed a challenge. My eldest was the same.
Well, the Catholic HS had "honors" programs and college credit programs, etc. So, both of these girls ended up at a Catholic HS. This was a woman who volunteered weekly at the local elementary schools, and I believe continued to do so even after she took her girls out of the public schools.
I think part of this whole problem began with the removal of teaching reading with the use of phonics. Yes, refusing to teach a phonetic language using phonics has really worked out well, hasn't it?
In Alexandria, VA, 34% of the students are in ESOL courses and 54% qualify for free or subsidized meals. Having this large percentage of ESOL students affects other students as well in terms of the quality of learning and the allocation of resources.
They can demonstrate a statistical correlation, but that doesn’t prove causation. Many students from Spanish-speaking households have been in US public schools since kindergarten. If they’re not competent in English, what have the schools been doing all that time?
It has been well-documented that Spanish speaking immigrants tend to keep their language and assimilate to a lesser degree. We have made that easier thru accommodating them in many, many ways. Professor Huntington of Harvard, wrote a great article, The Hispanic Challenge, which describes these assimilation problems and why they are unprecedented in our history. By 2050, one in three residents of this country will be Hispanic.
The U.S. adds one international migrant (net) every 36 seconds. Immigrants account for one in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in more than 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. In a decade, it will be one in 7, the highest it has been in our history. And by 2050, one in 5 residents of the U.S. will be foreign-born.
went to high school in the 80s with students from China and India who had been in the US a much shorter time, and they developed English competency to a high level, starting from native languages much more different from English than Spanish is. I was competing in spelling and English competitions with students from India and Korea, just like so many of the contest winners today.
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood in the 1940s and 1950s. There was no ESOL and parents wanted their children to learn English and discouraged retaining their native language. Assimilation was easier and faster.
They’d have a much better chance of making the case that the culture of most Latin American immigrants - like the culture of most American black people - is less conducive to intellectual achievements than some other cultures ... but that would open a can of worms that liberal don’t want opened.
There is certainly a case to be made in that instance. Also blacks have a 71% out of wedlock birth rate and Hispanics 50% School drop out rates are around 50% for both groups. This is the social pathology for failure in this society.
The real problem for us as a nation is that in just 8 years, half of the children 18 and under will be minorities. They are our future. Asians are doing as well as or better than non-Hispanic whites, but Hispanics and blacks are significantly behind in educational performance. This hurts us in the global economy and creates social problems by creating what could be considered a permanent underclass who will be more dependent upon government and angry about wealth disparaties in much the same way as it is in the Third World.
My point is that the rapidly changing demographics of this country fueled by immigration, legal and illegal, affect school test performance scores and school costs. In Fairfax County, the school budget is $2.2 billion annually. About $377 million can be attributed to the costs of students whose first language is other than English.
One of the main reasons ESL students [and their parents] love ESL classes and flock to them, is their hatred of the Blacks. The ESL classes a private little enclaves that keep them protected from mainstreaming with the other populations.
That sounds downright daffy.
Indeed. ;-).
This puts schools in the position where a significant proportion of high school students cannot read with any facility, and at that point, it's far too late to fix it. So hugh amounts of money are thrown at the least competent, and curriculums are revamped to pretend these students are learning what was once standard secondary knowledge. Students with committed parents are going to get their real education at home or in private school.
The greatest loss is to intelligent students from less-advantaged backgrounds, who will never get the kind of education that made Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell or Richard Feynmann - kids from the tenements - great public intellectuals, because public education that rewards ability and effort is largely gone.
And everyone is being too PC to admit that illegal immigration especially is ruining our education system. I say especially the illegals because they are the least likely to want to assimilate.
When I went to school there were no programs for ESL/LEP, etc. students and they had to sink or swim. Most swam, fast. I have noticed the more money we spend on them and the more we try to help them the worse it gets.
From personal experience those that truly want to succeed will and those that don’t really want it will fail. In my daughter’s graduating class there was a girl that graduated with honors that got a standing ovation. Her family legally immigrated here when she was in mid-school and she did not speak/read/write English. She and her parents refused the acronym classes- she wanted to be immersed. From mid-school to graduating from high school she learned to speak/read/write well enough to graduate with honors and earn a scholarship to a University.
"Failure to assimilate," whether linguistically or otherwise, is purely cultural, a choice that people are making. It has nothing to do with being from a foreign-language household per se. As you've pointed out, the school system accommodates this failure in many ways. That's an active choice of management at the top levels to eschew inculcation of knowledge and skills, simply put, for other goals, which we might say is the basic problem with education in this country overall.
The real problem for us as a nation is that in just 8 years, half of the children 18 and under will be minorities. They are our future.
I agree, although I would hesitate to describe this as a "problem": it's more like "reality." The decision of native-born Americans not to reproduce, and the decision of their elected officials to admit others and to support the non-working, has left us with this reality.
Milton Friedman said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.
Well stated. Thank you.
However it’s true...kids have learned to do poorly on their tests, even though the law, only allows them to stay in ESL for 2 years.
When immigrants were coming to this country from Viet Nam, the very next generation were winning the spelling bees. Both of my parents had a background of people who came to this country from non-English speaking countries. When I asked my father why we didn't speak any German, he explained that he once asked his father that and was told "We live in America, you speak English".
Two lessons: the first, that the Vietnamese (and most Asians) understand that education and being able to speak the language well, are steps up the ladder of success. Two: When you come to the United States, you should learn the language in order to fit in and then success follows. Simple lessons that we now actively work against in this society because we allowed the lefties to be in charge of education and the media.
However it’s true...kids have learned to do poorly on their tests, even though the law, only allows them to stay in ESL for 2 years.
I never said that coming from a foreign language household is the singular cause of a failure to assimilate. It is a factor, especially among Hispanics. When you get an opportunity, read the thoughtful piece by Huntington at the link I provided to you. His book, Who Are We?, is an excellent exposition on national identity and the impact of immigration on American national identity.
Professor Huntington, "The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril."
I would not underestimate the impact that language has on uniting and dividing people within a nation. Bahasa Indonesia, derived form Malay, was created to unite Indonesia, which had and still has mulitiple languages. Language can divide as is the case in Canada and Belgium. Language and culture are intertwined. I say that advisedly having lived overseas 25 years of my adult life in nine different countries. My wife is an immigrant.
I agree, although I would hesitate to describe this as a "problem": it's more like "reality." The decision of native-born Americans not to reproduce, and the decision of their elected officials to admit others and to support the non-working, has left us with this reality.
It is both a problem and a reality. And it is intentional. The Immigration Act of 1965 changed this nation forever. And why must we accept as a given that we must bring in 1.2 million legal immigrants every year? 57% of immigrant headed households are on welfare. We are importing poverty. 25% of the adult legal immigrants who enter each year lack even a high school degree. Do we need more high school dropouts?
The latest data show 22.1 million immigrants holding jobs in the U.S. with an estimated 8 million being illegal aliens. By increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent. Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent. The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status.
The Bureau of Labor statistics for August 2011 show a national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, including 16.7 percent for blacks and 11.3 percent for Hispanics. 25 million Americans are seeking full-time employment. Despite the economic downturn, the U.S. continues to bring in 125,000 new, legal foreign workers a month. This includes new permanent residents (Green Cards) and long-term temporary visas and others who are authorized to take a job. This makes no sense.
Currently, 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year; 350,000 immigrants leave each year, resulting in net immigration of 1.25 million. Since 1970, the U.S. population has increased from 203 million to 312 million, i.e., over 100 million. In the next 40 years, the population will increase by 130 million to a total of 442 million. Three-quarters of the increase in our population since 1970 and the projected increase will be the result of immigration. The U.S., the world’s third most populous nation, has the highest annual rate of population growth of any developed country in the world, i.e., 0.977% (2010 estimate), principally due to immigration.
87 percent of the 1.2 million legal immigrants entering annually are minorities as defined by the U.S. Government and almost all of the illegal aliens are minorities. By 2019 half of the children 18 and under in the U.S. will be classified as minorities and by 2039, half of the residents of this country will be minorities. Generally, immigrants and minorities vote predominantly for the Democrat Party. Hence, Democrats view immigration as a never-ending source of voters that will make them the permanent majority party.
I notice you live in NC. The impact of immigration on NC has been massive over the past two decades. There are electoral consequences in addition to other impacts. If we don't change our current immigration policies, we will no longer have a country that embraces the vision and values of our Founders. We are being colonized and will lose this country thru the ballot box.
What law are you referring to on ESL?
No, you're not. Not knowing words made them look stupid, so the obvious conclusion was that the test was racist.
In fact, that will be one of the questions on the new version of the SAT which will include a section called "Ebonic Logic". They're working on the pictures for it now.
The last thing I want to do is defend the public school system. But, I lived in the city of Buffalo for 20 years and saw that, even in the supposed worst of the city schools, white and Asian kids (some of the whites; all of the Asians) were excelling and going on to college.
Meanwhile, the same schools were being penalized for high drop-out rates and terrible average test scores. You know the reasons for the poor aggregate results as well as I do.
I agree that Vietnamese have done an excellent job in assimilating. Much of it has to do with their culture, family values, and respect for an education as a means to achieve success.
The Vietnamese also did not have the same kind of support structure that Hispanics have in terms of being able to function without mastering English. Spanish has become the de facto second language of this country. And I would not discount the impact of distance, i.e., the Pacific Ocean, that makes it more of a distinct break from the their old country and becoming an American. And Vietnam is still under Communist rule. This is not the case for Mexicans and Latin Americans who can more easily maintain family and other ties.
And the wave of Vietnamese immigration is essentially over while Hispanic immigration is continuous, persistent, and massive. Two-thirds of the 1.2 million legal immigrants into the US come from Latin America and the overwhelming majority of the 500,000 illegal aliens who enter each year are from Latin America. By 2050 one in three residents of this country will be Hispanic.
I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t really disagree. However, my point is that I don’t believe immigrants and immigration are responsible for the decline in educational outcomes. We could have schools that successfully educate students from Mexico and Central America, just as we once had schools that successfully educated students from Russia, Germany, Italy, and Greece. We could have schools that successfully educate blacks, just as we once had schools that successfully educated blacks.
The education problem originates with those at the top of the system, just as the immigration problem largely originates with similar people. We don’t have to have schools that predominantly produce failures. We don’t have to have unlimited immigration and large numbers of people who don’t assimilate linguistically or culturally. We don’t have to have a permanent, uneducated, unemployable welfare class. And yet ... that’s what we have.
I don’t know what I can do to change any of this.
http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2626&q=321160
Each local and regional board of education shall limit the time an eligible student spends in a program of bilingual education to thirty months, whether or not such months are consecutive, except that summer school and two-way language programs pursuant to subsection (i) of this section shall not be counted. If an eligible student does not meet the English mastery standard at the end of thirty months, the local or regional board of education shall provide language transition support services to such student. Such services may include, but need not be limited to, English as a second language programs, sheltered English programs, English immersion programs, tutoring and homework assistance.
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