My mother noticed a recent column by Patrick Buchanan - Dumbing-Down of America.
He starts off saying the America reacted to Sputnik in 1957 with a lot of government focus on public schools. He says that a recent report claims public education is doing well. But Buchanan says:
"However, it is all a giant fraud, exposed as such by the performances of high school seniors on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams known as the 'nation's report card.' An NAEP test of 12th-grade achievement was given to what The New York Times called a 'representative sample of 21,000 high school seniors attending 900 public and private schools from January to March 2005.'"
He continues with many of the sobering statistics that parents who pay attention to public education are painfully aware of:
"Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills has risen by a third, from 20 percent to 27 percent."
"Only 35 percent of high school seniors have reached a "proficient" level in reading, down from 40 percent."
"Only 16 percent of black and 20 percent of Hispanic students had reached a proficient level in reading."
"Among high school seniors, only 29 percent of whites, 10 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of black students were proficient in math."
He ends with:
"Taxpayers are being lied to and swindled by the education industry, which has failed them, failed America and flunked its assignment -- and should be expelled for cheating."
I agree. I think the federal and state governments should get out of education. Let the local commuinties handle education. There is no need for Washington DC to tell a teacher how to run a classroom. For fifty years the role of the federal and state governments has increased, decaded after decaded, and the quality of public education has declined, decade after decade. Having more government involement has not helped. The right answer is to get big government out of education.
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Technorati tags: Buchanan, education, public school, school
1 comment:
We were at an ice cream establishment with my dad the other day (he only pays in cash) and the total came to something like $13.37. My dad said he had the $.37 but the girl didn't hear him and rang up the $20. When he handed her the $.37 she was paralyzed. She had NO IDEA what to do. I couldn't believe it. I've not seen anyone so completely frozen over change. Then she tried to short him one dollar. "Speaks well for our public schools" I said.
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