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The nationwide test known as the “Nation’s Report Card” has revealed a historic low for eighth-grade history scores, and also saw the first-ever drop in civics scores, in the year 2022.As reported by the state-funded NPR, the latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show the lowest levels ever for history scores since the NAEP first began in 1994. This comes after several consecutive years of reading and math scores consistently dropping among fourth-graders and eighth-graders, which has been directly attributed to the “remote learning” model of learning that was implemented during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.Education Secretary...

Baltimore’s failing schools. Recent test scores found that there were 23 schools in the city where not even one child was doing math at grade level. These included Elementary Schools, Middle Schools and High Schools. Those were the extreme low end but the numbers also showed that city-wide just 7% of 3-8th graders were doing math at grade level. Today, Fox News highlights a similar report coming out of Illinois from a conservative group called Wirepoints. In this case, there were 53 schools where not one child could do math at grade level. Granted this is a small number of...

The US Army has a major recruiting problem and can't find enough young people who meet the basic requirements to enlist, according to Army Times. Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais, second in command for Army Training and Doctrine Command, sounded off Thursday about the troubling developments. She highlighted disqualification rates for potential recruits jumped from 30-40% (pre-Covid) to a whopping 70% this year due to obesity, low test scores, and/or drug use.Gervais pointed out the service has experienced a "nosedive" in recruits since July 2021. She explained Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores were 10% lower during the virus pandemic...

Chinese teenagers ranked as the world’s best students according to results from a closely watched global survey announced on Tuesday. But unlike in the rest of the world, in China, the victory was met with a resounding shrug. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a standardized test for 15-year-old students around the world in reading, math and science. It’s administered every three years, with 79 countries participating. The Pisa, as the test is widely known, is regarded as one of the most important ways to directly compare different educational systems. China beat out education powerhouse Singapore and its...

Teens from some of China's wealthiest regions are outperforming their peers in the world's richest countries in reading, math and science, according to new results from a global education study. The survey found that 15-year-old students from Beijing, Shanghai, and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranked top for all three core subjects, achieving the highest level 4 rating. Students from the United States were ranked level 3 for reading and science, and level 2 for math, while teens from Britain scored a level 3 ranking in all three categories. The findings are part of the 2018 Program International...

In the race to the future, education is key. Everyone knows that. And yet, if that's so, America may be in big trouble.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday that states can apply for extra time before they use student test scores to judge teachers’ performance. Duncan’s decision is an acknowledgement of the concerns by teachers’ unions and others that it’s too early to make teacher personnel decisions based on how well students do on new assessments developed under the Common Core standards that will be used in much of the country this school year. …

From a macro perspective, the most distressing aspect of America’s education system is that taxpayers spend a lot of money (more than any other people in the world, on a per-student basis) and we get very mediocre results. And it’s getting worse over time. This famous chart, prepared by my colleague Andrew Coulson, shows how spending and bureaucracy have skyrocketed since 1970 while test scores have been stagnant. Blacks and other minorities are the biggest victims. They are trapped in the worst-performing schools, largely because leftist politicians would rather curry favor with union bosses then help the poor. But I...

Everyone knows that America’s education system is broken. Committees are convened, grants are dispensed and new studies are rolled off the educational assembly line every few months that purport to change everything by showing that the entire process of educating children from medieval to modern times was completely wrong. Education has come to be a science of its own with a jargon full of nebulous pseudo-scientific terminology impenetrable to the ordinary person. The majority of public school teachers now have master’s degrees because it takes more than some ignorant BA to tell Johnny to pay attention in class or he’ll...

The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards. In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department. The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as the Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and...

For those of your who haven't found out yet, American students don't know basic history of their own country. I can't say I find this surprising because no one in my school is really that excited about history, let alone American history. I think this is a major problem with our schools and one that we must fix! The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests students every couple years to see if our education system is headed in the right direction. If we dive into the stats, it's clear to see that students have horrendous history test scores. Only 12...

"We're going to have to out-educate other countries," President Obama urged this week. How? By out-spending them, of course! It's the same old quack cure for America's fat and failing government-run schools monopoly. The one-trick ponies at the White House call their academic improvement agenda "targeted investing" for "winning the future." Truth in advertising: Get ready to fork over more Cash for Education Clunkers. Our government already spends more per capita on education than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, according to recent analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and...

If test scores look too good to be true, they probably are. “Yet another test-tampering scandal has erupted, this time involving teachers at Normandy Crossing Elementary School in suburban Houston, Texas,” Sarah McIntosh reported in the September 2010 issue of School Reform News. “When test results came back, many were amazed at astonishing improvement in state science test scores.” “The scores were so good, Galena Park Independent School District officials decided to launch an investigation. As a result, Normandy Crossing’s principal, assistant principal, and three teachers resigned in late May.” “The Texas teachers reportedly put together a study guide to...

(07-03) 10:41 PDT Kansas City, Mo. (AP) -- Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route. Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/03/national/a104032D76.DTL#ixzz0sggB0HKe

AUGUST 19, 2009 College-Entrance Test Scores Flagging ROBERT TOMSHO Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college, according to a report on the exam that shows little improvement over results from the 2008 graduating class. The Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT said 23% of this year's high school graduates had scores that indicated they were ready for college in all four ACT subject areas, or had at least a 75% chance of earning a grade of C or better in entry-level courses. Last year, a similar ACT...

America's moms and dads are getting a good scolding: Your kids are lagging behind students all around the world. The White House says so, with concern bordering on alarm. So do institutions such as the Gates Foundation, citing performance tests, graduation rates and other benchmarks. But don't measure for dunce caps just yet. While they're not in first place, U.S. students generally hold their own on international tests. They spend more time in school than the Obama administration would have you believe. And their college graduation rates stack up better than reported. That is not to say the critics are...

For Quadir Askew, having girls in his sixth-grade class at Hawthorne Avenue School in Newark was just "drama" all the time. "Now it's real easy to concentrate with all boys," said the 12-year-old. "We don't have a lot of distractions and we get good grades." Hawthorne is one of only a handful of schools in New Jersey to have same-sex classes. Though prohibited by state and federal sex discrimination laws, a provision in the federal No Child Left Behind act gives public schools the flexibility to implement such programs as they try to improve academic performance. "We were failing and...

There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy. But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900, as opposed to, say, 1750-1800 or after 1950, they are very good at text-messaging. They also probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea...

Appalachazona? : Hispanic students excelling in other states with similar per-student spending Matthew Ladner Goldwater Institute Daily Email February 05, 2008 Last week I refuted the notion that the rising Hispanic population will doom the Southwest to becoming the Appalachia of the 21st century with data from Florida. I’ve dug into the numbers further, and they tell an extraordinary story. Figure 1 presents reading scores from Florida and Arizona for all students. Looking at the data, the obvious question to ask: what happened after 1998? Two words: Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush was elected Governor of Florida in 1998, and implemented...

Cutting Off Doom and Gloom at the Pass: Demographics don’t have to doom our destiny Matthew Ladner, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, January 30, 2008 The Morrison Institute’s Beat the Odds report related a disturbing prediction made at an academic conference concerning Arizona’s future: Well slow down there, Hoss. Some states have shown that demography is not necessarily destiny. For example, the state of Florida has employed both tough standards and widespread school choice since the election of Jeb Bush in 1998. The results: remarkable progress on NAEP fourth grade reading scores, especially among Hispanics. In fact, in 2007, the average...