According to this story on CNN:
The national test of student math skills is filled with easy questions, raising doubts about recent gains in achievement tests, a study contends.On the eighth-grade version of the test, almost 40 percent of the questions address skills taught in first or second grade, according to the report by Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank...[more]
What more can I say? Kids are ill-prepared for adulthood. There are certainly decent schools out there, but if all of the tests and school goals are set by the state, then we're doomed.
Well, OK, not "doomed" as in "about to be struck by a giant meteor." But the sorry state of education (on average) in this country isn't getting any better, and hasn't been great to start with...
Posted by Tom Nugent at November 18, 2004 07:27 PMIn Illinois, the minimum definition of "passing is acheiving a 20 on the ACT...no matter if you are in a vegetative state or not.
In Illinois, 100% of students must be college eligible by 2012, or we will be considered failures.
In retrospect, what these states are doing is not too bad.....as long as they really are preparing students at their own level (which not every school does, but far more do than most people think).
as the article stated...there is a gulf between educators, politicians, and researchers as to what should be defined as "age level appropriate skills and knowledge". Until that gulf is narrowed......this is the outcome.
Posted by: Tom at November 19, 2004 03:11 PM