October 15, 2004
FROM SOFT BIGOTRY TO HARD ACCOUNTABILITY:
Report: Reading, math scores up: Elementary school reading and math test scores are improving in many states, an education group said. (CAMILLE RICKETTS, 10/15/04, Knight Ridder News Service)
Elementary students' performance in reading and math is improving and gaps in racial and economic achievement are closing in many states, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Education Trust, a nonprofit education-advocacy group.Nonetheless, the current rate of improvement is too slow to reach state proficiency standards by 2014, the deadline set by the No Child Left Behind Act, the group said.
The data, collected from 24 states over three years, focuses on students in the third, fourth and fifth grades. Only states that hadn't changed their tests since 2002 were included, so that researchers would have valid year-to-year comparisons.
Twenty-three of the 24 states showed student improvement in math, and 15 showed an increase in reading and English skills.
Ross Wiener, the policy director at the trust, attributed the success to the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act, which she said not only has increased school accountability, but also has allowed schools to collect more data and information about student performance.
Well, that's working exactly as the President said it would too. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 15, 2004 5:39 PM
I'm always extremely suspicious of these kinds of reports. It has been a tradition in educational bureaucracy to dumb down the tests to make it look as if there has been improvement. The SAT has been dumbed down(the term of art is 'renormalized') by about 200 points since I took it, and people in their mid to late 40s have since about a 260 point dumbing down.
The goal is to create the illusion of Lake Wobegon where 'all the children are above average.'
Posted by: Bart at October 15, 2004 7:17 PM