NAEP long-term trend numbers are out. Headlines and links:
Improvements seen in reading and mathematics
Black students make greater gains from early 1970s than White students
Most racial/ethnic score gaps narrow compared to first assessment
For students whose parents did not finish high school, mathematics scores increase compared to 1978
Percentages of students taking higher-level mathematics increasing
USA Today’s Greg Toppo highlights sharp increases in math and reading among many of the nation’s lowest-performing students. especially in the past four years, but notes “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).”
Over at Curriculum Matters, Mary Ann Zehr notes average scores have remained flat for 17-year-olds both in reading and math since the early 1970s. “The scores for 17-year-olds in reading, however, did increase by three points, to 286, from 2004 to 2008, which is considered significant. But the same was not true for 17-year-olds in math. The scores remained stagnant for that age group in math during that same period,” she notes.
I always knew that our schools were doing pretty well,but doesn’t the information provided by these tidbits indicate that teachers ought to be left to do their own thing and not something like Core Knowledge? Core Knowledge sounds like a good idea but it would seem to handicap teachers’ abilities to respond to different learning styles in the classroom,since the model is predicated on having kids learn the same thing at the same grade level at the same time all around the country( as opposed to expecting kids to know the most important information in the subject areas by the end of middle school for example). Standards are important but they need to be flexible and reasonable for teachers. Otherwise, how is it possible expect them to teach effectively so that the kids will meet the standards in the first place?
I’m curious where in the NAEP numbers you see the evidence that our schools are “doing pretty well.”