65% Of Public School 8th Graders Not Proficient In Reading; 67% Not Proficient In Math

CNS News ^ | 05/01/18 | Terence P. Jeffrey

[sphinx]

In 1960, the country was 85 percent white, twelve percent black, and three percent "other." The test scores would reflect those demographics. Black scores would also be artificially depressed because the civil rights revolution was only beginning to touch the schools; black kids were hugely underserved in much of the country. I'm not sure that the white scores, on average, would be much to boast about either. I was in school during that era, and my recollection is that the slower kids were just exiled to the back of the class and shifted eventually to shop and home ec. A lot of them simply dropped out, and not much fuss was made about it. This was before the "everyone needs to go to college" stuff got loose.

I agree that standards were higher for kids in the top 25 percent or so. The massive loosening of standards in an effort to bring the rest along had yet to happen.