Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, shows that U.S. educational achievement, to put it nicely, leaves much to be desired.
When it comes to reading and math skills, just 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of U.S. eighth-grade students tested proficient or above — that is, performed at grade level or above. Recent test scores show poor achievement levels in other academic areas. Only 18 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in U.S. history. It’s 27 percent in geography and 23 percent in civics.
The story is not much better when it comes to high schoolers. According to 2010 and 2013 NAEP test scores, only 38 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading. It was 26 percent in math, 12 percent in history, 20 percent in geography and 24 percent in civics (http://www.nationsreportcard.gov).
Many of these poorly performing youngsters gain college admission. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reports, “Every year in the United States, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students discover that, despite being fully eligible to attend college, they are not ready for postsecondary studies.” That means colleges spend billions of dollars on remedial education. Many of the students who enroll in those classes never graduate from college. The fact that many students are not college-ready takes on even greater significance when we consider that many college courses have been dumbed down.
Richard Vedder, emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University, argues that there has been a shocking decline in college academic standards. Grade inflation is rampant. A seminal study, “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, argues that very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college. Adult literacy is falling among college graduates. Large proportions of college graduates do not know simple facts, such as the half-century in which the Civil War occurred.
Vedder says that at the college level, ideological conformity is increasingly valued over free expression and empirical inquiry.
While educational achievement among whites is nothing to write home about, that for blacks is no less than a disaster. Only 13 percent of black eighth-graders score proficient or above in math, and only 16 percent do in reading. In 2013, only 7 percent of black 12th-graders scored proficient in math, and only 16 percent did in reading. The full magnitude of the black education tragedy is seen by the statistics on the other end of the achievement continuum. “Below basic” is the score given when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. In 2013, 62 percent of black 12th-graders scored below basic in math, and 44 percent scored below basic in reading.
Dr. Thomas Sowell has written volumes on black education. The magnitude of today’s black education tragedy is entirely new. He demonstrates this in “Education: Assumptions Versus History,” a 1985 collection of papers. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is a black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college. Dunbar’s distinguished alumni included U.S. Sen. Ed Brooke, physician Charles Drew and, during World War II, nearly a score of majors, nine colonels and lieutenant colonels, and a brigadier general.
Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School also produced distinguished alumni, such as Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, as well as several judges, congressmen and civil rights leaders. Douglass High was second in the nation in black Ph.D.s among its alumni.
The stories of the excellent predominantly black schools of yesteryear found in Sowell’s study refute the notion of “experts” that more money is needed to improve black education. Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. Those resources have meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.
Walter E. Williams is an outstanding libertarian thinker. However, this time he is wrong. If we could tax the people who make over 250,000 dollars/yr little more, spending the money on inner city education would produce many black Einsteins. The rich like Admin would be a little closer to paying their fair share. You subsidize something you get more of it. We need more education.
The purpose of the public school system is indoctrination is social values and attitudes.
Anything else is a secondary activity of much lesser importance.
Our public schools are doing fine, they accomplish their main purpose with a very high efficiency and rate of success.
Graduating stupidity.
Get ’em out of public schools without a clue or a real lesson learned.
Get ’em into liberal colleges.
Tell them how to think.
Tell them they can’t have a voice on campus.
Show them how microaggressions have screwed them up.
Make them understand global warming created terrorism.
Tell them Snowden unleased the muzzie war.
Make them hate God.
Give them the cadence to march to.
Send ’em out for-the-cause.
Wrap it all up and call it a donated education.
Suck the funds from tax payers who work.
The root cause of all of this lies in the welfare state’s promotion of single motherhood. The key piece of data being that fathers are responsible for a child’s vocabulary development. Loss off fathers in the home leads way to children who cannot communicate effectively, which leads to more violent outbursts, classroom disruption, and thus are a detrement to ALL students in the class.
I am glad to see that even Karl Denninger is ranting about this subject. His latest post uses vitriol such as “making as many children as we’re willing to pay them to create”. Its the truth. This welfare state is eviscerating this country, and no one will do anything to stop it. It only accelerates.
Perhaps our black leaders could figure out why 71% of all black babies per year are being born to unwed black women of all ages? Over 80% are born to unmarried black women under the age of 29, or about 350,000 children every year. You would think that the children would have a better chance with two parents.
See CDC stats on page 40.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_01.pdf
Education may be a fail, but at least the public stools have been successful at endearing gender equality amongst the millennial generation…Rock That Fembot Vote !
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The black achievement numbers may reflect very poorly on the school system, but…it reflects GREAT ON THE DEMOCRAT VOTING STATISTICS!!!
BLACKS VOTE 93% DEMOCRAT…and that is what really counts!!!
Holy shit! It was sarcasm.
Geez, where to start. So, barely 1/3 of students can meet the horrible artificially low education benchmarks that exist. I am fucking stunned by that. Not.
If the benchmark is set so that it is obtainable by a kid with an IQ of 100, then of course half will struggle, even ignoring the appalling quality of teachers, who are dumb as a fucking iguana en toto. In combination with a significant number of parents not valuing education, it is no wonder so many kids are illiterate and innumerate.
So, no surprise there, right?
And given that blacks have an IQ median of 85, it is not very surprising that only 15 percent can spell dog and count to 5. I mean, with a median IQ of 85, a very small percentage of blacks will have IQs over 100, plus the inclination to actually learn a damn thing.
What to do, what to do. Eureka! Got it! I will do what all good educators would do in this case.
First, we need to reduce the difficulty of the exam so I hat eight grade level is really first grade level. That will get a few more to meet the pass level.
Second, we will get teachers to take the tests for those that cannot pass. Of course, only the top ten percent of teachers can pass the tests themselves, so we will need to only use those to Do the cheating.
Within a couple of decades, using my system, I bet we can get the pass rate up to say 40% or so! I am a genius!
We are fucking doomed. Seriously, we are fucking doomed.
Blow it up; start all over again. Reading, Writing and (what?) Arithmetic. Teach the basics. When students can pass that, they can move up a grade.
If they could do fractions, %’s, measure, area, volume, read/write at an eight grade level. That would be enough. Yet schools spend $10k – $22k a year on K-12 – not to even get this result.
Blow it up.
If the parents don’t care (or are absent, either one) then that child has little chance. If the parents care, are both present, and :
Monitor the homework / test scores / reading assignments (ask questions about)
Help drive home the basics (muliplication tables, long division, math without calculators, logic, geometry)
Demonstrate good behavior at home, do chores, prevent slacking and instill discipline
Provide all that and LOVE
The kids might have a chance. Otherwise, they were abandoned shortly after birth and left to fend for themselves in a dreary, uninspiring home environment. The society will either teach them or kill them, eventually, and it will cost society LOTS more than having the parents raise functional children in the first place. Self-esteem is earned, not given.
Greetings,
The bigger problem is that the public schools and the parents are creating a generation that is incapable of thought or reason. Sadly, something that can not be reasoned with must be beaten down. A very harsh world of scarcity is headed in our direction and precious resources are not going to be handed out to retards.
Perhaps the military can find a use for them all.
We used to teach Latin and Greek in high school. Now we teach remedial English in college.
Go back to the old ways and style of teaching that gave us great thinkers and problem solvers. Kids today can’t read spell or do a simple math problem but they can tell you how many zits Kim Kardashian has on her fat ass or her favorite position to have sex.
Send that bitch to Syria and I bet many of those damn terrorists will pay for their own ticket to go back so they can have sex with that trailer park trash.
flash says: Education may be a fail, but at least the public stools have been successful at endearing gender equality amongst the millennial generation…
When I was at Austin HS in beanertown, the coach who also taught science class was so impressed with a kid named Pons. Even before Bruce Lee made the scene, this Chinese kid was well known for his fighting skills. The coach said, even while the other guy was going down, Pons still connected 3 or 4 more shots.
I witnessed a fight there between 2 beaners, one a tall skinny kid and the other a kid about my size, 4’8″. This little dude was known by everyone as Bamba. I have no idea what the fight was about, however, the tall dude miscalculated. While they were throwing punches, Bamba backed him into the short rock wall that separated the quadrangle from the woodshop parking lot 8 feet below. Bamba pushed him over onto a parked car, that ended that fight decisively.
http://www.texasobserver.org/el-paso-days/
http://www.texasobserver.org/2352-rediscovering-elroy-bode/