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TechnoratiNCLB No Panacea: US Educational Skills Improve; Learning Gap Stagnates
The basic math and reading skills of USA students have slowly, surely improved over the past 30 to 40 years, new findings show, with sharp increases among many of the nation's lowest-performing students - especially in the past four years.
That's the good news.
The bad news? Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, out Tuesday, find that the stubborn, decades-long achievement gap between white and minority students shrank between the 1970s and the first part of this decade, but has barely budged since 2002, when the federal government compelled public schools to address it through No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
In a few cases the gap has actually grown since 2002, according to NAEP.
Overall scores have risen across the board since then, with an average three-point gain on a 500-point scale - and 10 points since the 1970s.
But the results also show that gaps in reading between white and black 17-year-olds, which shrank 26 points from 1971 to 2004, actually grew by two points in 2008. In math, the black-white gap shrank 13 points between 1978 and 2004, but was essentially unchanged in 2008.
Results were equally flat on the Hispanic-white achievement gap, the findings show.
For more than a decade, states have focused on shrinking skills gaps between ethnic and socio-economic groups. In 2002, Washington explicitly pushed schools to address the problem, requiring them to improve scores in annual math and reading tests through No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the congressionally mandated school reform law that is now up for reauthorization.
Tuesday's findings suggest that the effort has had mixed results. While gaps between ethnic groups barely budged between 2004 and 2008, in most cases the lowest-achieving one-fifth of students closed their reading and math performance gap with the highest-achieving one-fifth.
"Low-achieving students are making greater gains than high achievers," says researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, the Washington, D.C., think tank. "We can't say for sure why this is happening, but it is consistent with the focus of accountability systems, including NCLB, to raise failing students' learning to an acceptable level."
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he's "pleased to see some recent progress," but, adds, "we still have a lot more work to do."
6 Comments so far
Show AllI think what people are missing is the fact that the education gap as many like to refer to it as, is not shifting. Not to mention we live in a society much like the 1920's where no one gives a crap about anything anymore. In all honesty having a test given by the states has too many loopholes to actually suceed. Personally I live in an area where on the borders school districts continually cannot meet NCLB standards while in the middle is a suburban area school district in which excels in education. The bill by far is discriminatory in regards to demographically challenged areas, hence should be challenged. The problem with assaulting this act and those like it, is because state and federal legislatures are so endowed with power that they "know" it will work while children who are special needs (whom have IEPs) move up grades not knowing how to read clifford the dog in 8th grade. The future of the nation as said by every single damn president since George Washington said the future lay with the children of tommorow then hell let us decide what is right for education. Apparently adults have no common sense and are to busy bickering over whether it is a state or federal disupte. Arrogance is why we will fall as a national super power. Scrubs wtf pwnt.
"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he's "pleased to see some recent progress," but, adds, "we still have a lot more work to do."
Actually, it's the students who have the work to do. Once they are released from our corrupted school systems, they will be forced to educate themselves.
q
Before anyone assumes anything about this obscene piece of garbage, check out the make up of the U.S. Department of Education. Look at the Corporations running the show and their agenda. This article is nothing but propaganda to destroy education in this country.
US Educational Skills Improve; we have improved our position as Texas Scholars?
It's all about what we're educating them 'for', isn't it? During the Industrial Revolution in England, working class children (who really were working!) could attend Sunday school to learn to read -- the Bible -- but not to learn to write. Teaching them to write and enabling them to communicate their own ideas would be just too dangerous!
N.M.
This much-discussed and agonized-over "gap" on NCLB results for different ethnicities covers over, in my opinion, a vastly more important area of concern about NCLB: its impact on WHAT school children are learning, be they children of any ethnicity. The focus in these tests on reading and math "skills" is helping us to educate a generation of "technological idiots," those who can read and calculate well enough and can manipulate electronic devises with the greatest of ease, but who survive an "education" without knowing the first thing about literature, art, history or sociology because these subjects are typically not tested in NCLB or other standardized tests. The pressure on teachers for their students to "do well" on standardized tests results in "every child's behind being left" without true "education" in what it means to be an educated person today. If you don't believe it, look at what passages for "conversation" among children and adults: at the fact and logic-challenged character of our political dialogue today.