(CNSNews.com) – Sixty-five percent of the eighth graders in American public schools in 2017 were not proficient in reading and 67 percent were not proficient in mathematics, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress test results released by the U.S. Department of Education.
The results are far worse for students enrolled in some urban districts.
Among the 27 large urban districts for which the Department of Education published 2017 NAEP test scores, the Detroit public schools had the lowest percentage of students who scored proficient or better in math and the lowest percentage who scored proficient or better in reading.
Only 5 percent of Detroit public-school eighth graders were proficient or better in math. Only 7 percent were proficient or better in reading.
In the Cleveland public schools, only 11 percent of eight graders were proficient or better in math and only 10 percent were proficient or better in reading.
In the Baltimore public schools, only 11 percent were proficient or better in math and only 13 percent were proficient or better in reading.
In the Fresno public schools, only 11 percent were proficient or better in math and only 14 percent were proficient or better in reading.
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Among the states, Louisiana public elementary schools did the worst in teaching students math and New Mexico public elementary schools did the worst job teaching reading.
In the Louisiana public schools, only 19 percent of the eighth graders were proficient or better in math and only 25 percent were proficient or better in reading.
In the New Mexico public schools, only 24 percent were proficient or better in reading and only 20 percent were proficient or better in math.
The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics describes what it means to be “proficient” in math and reading.
“Eighth-graders performing at the Proficient level should…understand the connections between fractions, percents, decimals, and other mathematical topics such as algebra and functions,” says NCES. “Students at this level are expected to have a thorough understanding of Basic level arithmetic operations—an understanding sufficient for problem solving in practical situations.”
When it comes to reading, eighth-grade “students performing at the Proficient level should be able to provide relevant information and summarize main ideas and themes,” says NCES. “They should be able to make and support inferences about a text, connect parts of a text, and analyze text features. Students performing at this level should also be able to fully substantiate judgments about content and presentation of content.”
The NAEP math and reading tests are scored on a scale of 0-500.
The average reading score for an eighth-grade public school student on the 2017 NAEP test was 265. That was slightly above the average score of 264 that public school eight graders achieved in 2015, but slightly below the average score of 266 public school eighth graders achieved in 2013.
The average math score for an eighth-grade public school student on the 2017 NAEP test was 282. That was slightly above the average score of 281 in 2015, but slightly less than the average score of 284 in 2013.
Not to worry – they’ve all passed sex education with high scores.
Before we get to bashing teachers, let’s consider the veracity of the political polls during the presidential election. Why are we willing to believe this poll when we know that progressives and Marxists are determined to destroy the public school system for a system that will make many people very wealthy?
Seems to me the Marxists are out to destroy private, charter, parochial schools and home schooling. They want socialists to control our children’s minds.
Robert (QSLV)
Minnesocold (Land of 10,000 Taxes) the kids are at the 36% percentile in reading, and 46% in maff. Here in Minneapolis, we pay over $22,000 per pupil to edumacate mostly blacks, Somali’s (they have their own HS), and Indians – all the white people left for the burbs. In the burbs, they are in the 90% percentile, and their school spending is something like $8,000 a pupil.
Diversity is really great!
Man those are some depressing stats. What the hell can we as a nation due with youngsters who are educated more poorly than children 100 years ago?
How can they be expected to operate complex computer systems? Or even generate utility of labor in the modern economy?
We are so screwed.
“What the hell can we as a nation due with youngsters who are educated more poorly than children 100 years ago?”
Really? What can we due?
Blow me.
Don’t need to. Your brain is obviously blown. Try not to call others stupid with words you can’t spell properly.
Beyond disgraceful even for US Dept of Education Standards. How do public schools compare to private schools? How do USA schools compare to schools in developed countries? How do schools today compare to schools prior to desegregation (for the South, that was 1964 but parts of NYC are still not desegregated!). The public school system cannot heal itself; only if the tax money is provided to parents as Vouchers as in Europe can we ever climb out of this Dismal Swamp.
Speaking from almost direct experience – my wife has taught accounting and related courses in private and public colleges here in Eastern Canada for the last 12 years – we aren’t doing any better.
She is an excellent teacher (she had a decade of experience as an accountant/auditor prior to getting an MEd), who tends to get a lot more out of her students than do her colleagues, but the decline in student quality over the course of her career is shocking. We get into heated discussions about it, with me saying it will continue to decline as long as the good teachers like her remain silent and don’t speak out about the crisis to the school’s senior management (of which there is a lot), but she just isn’t the kind of person that can or will do that. So it goes.
People at every level, starting in kindergarten, just keep passing the buck. Some, but not many, of her teaching colleagues at least have an understanding of the long term effects, but nobody in senior management does, either in the public school system or the gov’t-run community college system. It will be the death society as we knew it. You can’t have a democracy that’s worth a pinch of shit when three quarters of the voters can’t read and understand a political platform, or can’t understand the concept of compound interest.
The owners don’t want a population that understands the concept of compound interest.
I taught school for 17 years; high school math, carpentry, electronics, metal working, etc. I have two degrees, a red seal trade certificate, and 10,000 hours accident free as a commercial pilot flying float planes on the BC coast and in Yukon. My work experience speaks for itself and I have always worked hard at every job to the best of my ability.
I liked teaching kids. I liked teaching a great deal and ended up flying and building on the side for extra cash. Teaching was harder than both of my other careers. Much harder.
Here is the problem as I see it. Towards the end of my teaching career I decided to move to my local rural school teaching a mixed group of grades 5-6-7-8. Imagine my dismay when I discovered the majority of these students did not know their times tables. I sent notes home, talked to parents on the phone and in person, bought supplies and practice lessons from my own pocket, all to get the kids up to speed. Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day (any day) to practice at school what needs to be done at home. Kids have to be encouraged or forced to learn/practice math facts at home. They also need to be encouraged to read and it starts by being read to as young children. Sometimes parents have to be told and sometimes parents need to listen. Quite often, they don’t.
The rest you can write yourself. The kids did crappy as they progressed and their options narrowed with every year. The dumber parents blamed the school system and failed to see that hours spent on tv, playing video games, phones etc have much of anything to do about anything with their children’s education and lack of progress. There is often NO reading done at home, whatsoever. Never. Finally, at teen years many kids are embroiled in sex chasing hormones, discover smoking, beer, pot, and cars. And many also do sports. Many also hold down part-time jobs.
The time for basics was left in the dust. There is a narrow window of opportunity as children age. Doors often close much easier than they can be opened.
Is the picture becoming clearer? But many say it is all the school system’s fault, or the teachers, or the teachers union; pick your biased dog whistle for whatever agenda you want to push. “Somebody’s fault, but never mine……”. It’s millions of times harder to obtain a drivers license than it is to knock up your girlfriend, or get knocked up. It’s easier to get a divorce than learn to drive. But the kids keep popping out and the world chugs along with more electronics to entertain us, more drugs and booze to use, and more groups to blame.
My own kids were taught to do their school work at home when they needed to improve. They read. They learned their times tables, or they didn’t do another damn thing for fun until they did! My daughter was blessed with absolute pitch so she teaches music and loves it more and more, everyday. She is married, and owns her own home. My one grandchild is 6 and is now learning her times tables…at home. She is also a very good reader. My son is an industrial electrician earning 200K+ per year in the oil patch working a 2 wk shift. He also owns a home….at age 33. They learned how to work as a part of growing up. When my son was screwing around at high school he was told his success and failure would be up to him. When his grade 11 math teacher phoned me at home to let me know my son was failing, I told him to let my son fail. My words, “I appreciate the courtesy call as a fellow teacher, but I am afraid you need to just let him fail this year”. He did. Sometimes people just need a kick in the ass called ‘natural consequences’ and ‘personal responsibility’. I have saved my son’s school picture for that year in order to share with his future wife. It’s the picture with blue hair and an earing beside his bright and beautiful smile.
A number of years before Detroit went bankrupt, a private group approached the city masters and requested permission to build Charter Schools for the huge number of Black children that were not getting an education.
The city administrators and the Unions involved denied the request even though no money was required from the city to build the schools or pay labor costs involved with the schools.
An example of Democrats and Unions screwing the Black population and the Dem’s still get the Black vote. They truly are dumb.
Detroit schools spend over $18,000 per student per year to produce the worst results in the country. black parents are in it for the ADHD diagnosis which produces a disability check and backpacks full of food sent home every weekend. the big payoff is some kind of lawsuit or reparations. we will have to let them slide or they will take us all down with them. they are incapable of learning.
And keep in mind, as the example of Atlanta Public Schools from 5 years ago or so showed…..these folks CHEAT on these tests too (meaning the administration and teachers…not the students). So who really knows just how bad these numbers actually are?
Government monopoly day prisons that masquerade as schools must ALL simply be shut down and a fully competitive, free market, in charity, business-funded, private, home, on-line, co-op, neighborhood, parent-run, or whatever, schools must be allowed to replace it. Socialist funding, government controls, government restrictions, government demands, government regulations, and everything horrible the government has contributed to this mess, must end. Parents will only be responsible for their children when they are forced to. Parents can only be empowered to make choices when they are allowed to, and children will only be prepared and ready to learn when parents finally have a real stake in the game. Nothing else will solve the problem as anything that is considered “free” will be valued at $0.00. When even the charity schools are held accountable to their voluntary donors as are the private scholarship agencies, accountability will trickle down to all involved and no more will school be seen as a free ride by anyone.
Mr. Liberty
I have found John Taylor Gatto interesting indeed per your suggestion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
So what if 8th graders can’t read or add 2+2. At least they know what the letters LGBT mean. Isn’t that what is important.
Exactly!
Math and reading skills are racist. All that is important is knowing proper anal sex technique and a clear understanding that all failure is due to White Privilege.
I see that Common Core has really turned things around.
I observe in public schools in my neck of the woods that students rarely work independently. Tasks are done with a partner or a group – but it doesn’t seem to translate to high test scores, does it?
I predict test scores will rise as soon as some questions are revised.
Common Core is a notion designed to further destroy the education of our American children. I do not even doubt for 1 second that this is not accidental; it is a very well planned and concise action planned on purpose by our “betters” to destroy us from within.
“I do not even doubt for 1 second that this is accidental”
You mean ‘I do not even doubt for 1 second that this is [not] accidental,’ don’t you?
Thanks for your proof reading, Anon! You fixed it!
The standard used by the military for years in the ASVAB tests declares that to be considered literate an individual must be able to read on a 4th grade reading level. This is not a 2018 4th grade reading level, but what we call a reading level from about 1906 when they started testing in the military. This original 4th grade reading level, as one would find in the 4th grade McGuffey Reader (these text books were used between 1834 to 1920 or 86 years to teach literally everyone in the country how to read), is demonstrated in a reader replete with compound sentences. Now fast forward to 2018 and look at a “12th grade textbook” and once will see where about half of the readings are simple sentences and the other half are compound sentences. This modern era 12th grade book can be described as a true 3.5 grade reading level.
Folks, this is called Roman Imperial Decline and it’s only getting worse. Oh yes, in my neck of the woods about 25% to 33% of the school students can’t tell time off an “old-fashioned” or analog clock. I read somewhere that at least 80% of the students in Oklahoma City Schools can’t read time off an analog clock.
Just read anything by Dickens, which when it was written in the mid-1800’s was universally accepted as fiction “for the common man”. The length of the average sentence in those books is about 3-5 times what it is in any mass-market fiction today, and his writing regularly employed such foreign concepts (for today’s readers) as the semi-colon.
Hemingway’s books are widely read because they are written at a fifth grade reading level.
Dolly Parton has the only actionable solution, but i wonder how many of the free books her program provides are collecting dust in black and hispanic households. “Sheeit, Equinameous don’ hafta read that stuff from that hillbilly white bitch!”
So teachers nationwide deserve better pay , I realize parents play a huge role in the successful education of their children with teachers . However with pathetic results in all measurements nationwide extreme pay cuts are in order as well as school budgets . Checking Baltimore City , once the model for the nation of what a public school system should be and now …! Let’s just look at who or what populates and runs the Baltimore City School System now . You want more money ? Bull Fucking Shit !
Greetings,
As someone that spent a few years in the public school system, I have this to add. WE THINK IN WORDS.
If you only have the words of a third grader then it isn’t possible to think beyond how a third grader can think. I know this as a fact because the State hired me to teach both History and Government to young adults that could only read, write and comprehend at a third grade level. I can tell you from first hand experience that it is impossible to teach those subjects to someone that is not proficient in reading. It can’t be done.
What may be even more terrifying in all of this is the lack of understanding of basic math. Given that the world and our reality can ONLY be described in mathematical terms, it leaves us with entire generations of people that can not comprehend how any single thing works. Quite frankly, it doesn’t look good for us moving forward and why we still pay for this horrible horrible service is just beyond me. None of them deserve a penny.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make ‘thoughtcrime’ literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning
rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…
Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller… The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect… The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed.”
— George Orwell, “1984”
Greetings,
I had a band named Newspeak back in my youth. Banging on the guitar never gets old though.
Until a genuine education is really of value to the lower half, schools will fail. When you can no longer feed yourself without an education, schools will excel. Motivation is the problem. Children used to be curious about everything-learning was what kids did -not just at school. Now, not so much; except for the stuff they maybe should not be learning……..yes, I mean sexual perversion, drugs etc…………
This goes back to “W” needing to do his bro Neil a solid, so “common core” was born and Neil was off to the gov boogeytrain ‘o cash. with his “edumication” company.
I knew they were full of shit when I first heard about this. It’s not gotten any better. School kids are soooo confused.
It goes back a lot further than that.
“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds… We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science…”
— Frederick Gates, Rockefeller Foundation “General Education Board”, 1913
Quoted in “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”, page 9
https://archive.org/details/DeliberateDumbingDownOfAmericaCharlotteIserbyt
Note that 1913 is the same year that the Rockefeller / Morgan / Warburg banking interests succeeded in installing the Federal Reserve system and the Federal income tax.
Yes. I downloaded that book in .pdf about 10 years ago and just the preface/intro really floored me. Struck a chord….her research and logic are compelling, to put it mildly. Never even read the book beyond much further than that, but it sort of “set me on the path”.
I think we should give those teachers a raise.
You forgot the sarc tag.
And the answer is more munny more gubbermint that’ll fix it
Urban school districts? So primarily non-white/non-asian students?
The Mexicans are fighting a 12 point genetic IQ deficit, Haitians a 33 point genetic IQ deficit, with the mulattos falling in between somewhere. Is anyone really surprised that they score poorly?
Why are we wasting money pretending we can turn every last 67 IQ Haitian into a top notch research scientist, and then blaming ‘white priviledge’ when the inevitable failure occurs? These people can barely function in a stone age culture, it’s delusional to believe that any amount of education can address that intellectual gap.
aint dat da troof!
Curiously, there is a paper within the Urantia Book where they actually describe government on another planet, one with a history similar to our own (rebellion and default). Much is revealed, seemingly as a guide to what we may implement in some future. Most interesting to this discussion is a section on the method of educating the young… completely different.
Check it out – https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-72-government-neighboring-planet
Greetings,
I do not have enough weed at the moment for any of that to make any sense. Wow.
Pretty simple solution. Real simple….
Just dumb down the courses and the tests. Already been completed with great success here in Nova Scotia. There was a study done just a couple years back and researchers found out that 91% of students who started Grade 9 finished High School in just four years. It is all thanks to the amazing work of teachers, administrators and of course the little Einsteins themselves. The plan is still not a complete victory, no Sir. It is the stated goal of the Dept. of Ejamacation that absolutely no child will be left behind. The quislings and underlings hope to have that problem fixed by the end of the next five year plan.
Once done it will be, Comrades all forward and on to the promised Brave New World.
a couple of points–
as to lowering standards & passing the kids,my wife & her fellow teachers have been told multiple x over the years not to flunk kids because of grades–she gives a certain amount of credit just for writing their name on the paper,even if they get every problem wrong–get a couple correct & the curve is low enough that most kids will pass–she puts the actual numerical score in the remarks section of the computer as a cya but the grades show johnny passing–
you guys blame the teachers but it is the administrators putting pressure on the teachers,the school board members & higher politicians putting pressure on the administrators,and the voters putting pressure on the politicians to pass little johnny–
you guys should all go volunteer in a public school for awhile,and not one in a lily white,upper middle class area,but a working class school of any racial or ethnic background–
also,the next time you hear someone griping about how their kid is being flunked or mistreated,challenge them to allow you to go online & access their kid’s current academics,most school systems have the current classroom activity online & you can see the missed homework(i guarantee there will be many)assignments,the disciplinary referrals,and the attempted communications w/parents–
as to communications proficiency ,do you remember how during the 2016 campaign the press derisively reported on trump & how he spoke to crowds at an 8th grade level?looks like he was on to something–
Parents don’t want to be bothered.
High percentage of low IQ simians.
Shit is not an ingredient of ice cream.
STRIKE THREE YOUR’E OUT.
This is FAKE NEWS! Lesley Stahl stated in her 60 Minutes interview with Betsy DeVos: “Test scores have gone up over the last 25 years.”
Transcript here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secretary-of-education-betsy-devos-on-guns-school-choice-and-why-people-dont-like-her/
CBS News would NEVER lie to us
Lesley Stahl is a member of the Rockefeller CFR, along with CBS News exec Stephen Capus. Others include Katie Couric, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and CBS founder William S. Paley. The CFR has sponsored the “Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship” for the past 60 years.
Rockefeller lawyer Allen Dulles was a CFR director for 40 years. While serving as CIA director, he ran “Operation Mockingbird” to coordinate the corporate media, including Paley’s CBS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird