May 9, 2023
How good is America’s education system, and how does it stack up against other countries?
“The United States isn't investing as much in human capital as other developed countries and its comparative advantage is falling behind as a result,” The Balance online tells us. “U.S. students' math skills have remained stagnant for decades. The country is falling behind many others which have greatly improved, such as Japan, Poland, and Ireland. U.S. test scores are below the global average.” China did not participate in this evaluation.
Four points are offered to support this claim:
* The U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science when testing was last administered in 2018.
* The top five math-scoring countries in 2018 were all in Asia.
* U.S. students' math scores have remained steady since 2003. Their science scores have been about the same since 2006.
* The IMD World Competitiveness Center reports that the U.S. ranked 10th in its 2020 Competitiveness Report after ranking first in 2018.
These points tend to show that there were problems in K-12 education prior to the pandemic. School closures, that caused trauma and isolation of young people during the Covid-19 pandemic, brought on some serious problems.
U.S. News and World Report explains in an article from last October that “An overwhelming majority of states saw significant score declines among fourth- and eighth-graders in math and reading between 2019 and 2022, with students posting the largest score declines ever recorded in math, according to new federal data that provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the impact of the pandemic on academic achievement.”
The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called “The Nation’s Report Card,” shows the state of student learning after the pandemic.
“The results reflect what U.S. students in fourth and eighth grade know and can do using a common measure of student achievement across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Schools, Puerto Rico and 26 large urban districts that volunteered to participate in the assessment,” U.S. News reported.
Fourth-graders lost 5 points in math scores and eighth-graders lost 8 points in math, while both grades lost 3 points in reading.
“These mathematics results are historic,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. “They are the largest declines in mathematics that we have observed in the entire history of this assessment.”
Further, the proportion of students in the basic level — the lowest level of achievement — increased in math from 25% of fourth graders, and 38% of eighth graders by 3% each.
Another U.S. News article, this one from last Wednesday, titled “‘A National Concern’: Student Scores Decline on U.S. History and Civics,” explains that while young people are more active in politics than ever, their knowledge of history and government continues to decline.
In U.S. history, eighth-graders continued a decline in scores that has run nearly a decade. They also had their first-ever scores decline on a national civics assessment, as reported the prior week by the NCES.
“These data are of national concern,” said Carr, responding again to the situation. “A well-rounded education includes a grounding in the democratic principles. These assessments challenge students to show their knowledge and skills as they prepare to become engaged citizens in a democracy. Too many students are struggling to understand and explain the impact of civic participation and how our government works and the historical significance of events. This is concerning. Quite honestly, I was shocked.”
She said that the rise in students scoring at or below the basic level on the exam was most troubling: 40% of eighth graders scored below basic compared to 34% in 2018.
“We were shocked to see the first declines ever in math assessments. It's hard to top that,” Carr said. “But for US History I was also very, very concerned because it's a decline that started in 2014, long before we ever thought about COVID. So, this is a decline that’s been on the down for a while.”
A September, 2022 Forbes article titled “Pandemic-Era Policies Caused Dramatic Education Decline” discussed the effects of the responses to the pandemic on education, and the heavily negative results on student learning.
“Fast-forward to nearly 10 months after the pandemic’s most serious weeks, and the Chicago Teachers union defied the school board’s order to open while hundreds of districts, including Fairfax County, VA, said that even with vaccinations their teachers would not return to school, contradicting the relevant CDC guidance,” the Forbes article said. “Such behavior — which some have called a rolling teachers strike — persisted in some cities for two years.
“This is not the first dire news about the United States’ failure to deliver excellence to every student. That came in 1983, and just about every couple of years since. The question is whether it can be the last. It can be, if we unleash innovation, and give families, not the system, the power to direct the educational path of students,” the article concluded.
Whether the schools are public or private, the parents who pay the bills cannot be excluded.
No comments:
Post a Comment