Student Achievement

By George Will

No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it...

With mandated data collections -- particularly tests of "adequate yearly progress" in reading and math -- NCLB was supposed to generate information that would enable schools to be held accountable for cognitive outputs commensurate with federal financial inputs. Bad data would make schools blush and reform.

Fourteen months ago, the president said, "The gap is closing. . . . How do we know? Because we're measuring." But about those measurements . . .

U.S. Students Still Lagging in Math and Science

Neal McCluskey, policy analyst with Cato's Center for Educational Freedom:

"Between the release of a major assessment last week (the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) showing American students continuing to fall behind their international peers in literacy, and today's troubling PISA math and science results, the case against top-down reforms like No Child Left Behind is becoming increasingly conclusive: they don't work.

"The time has come to scrap our decades-long efforts to improve American education through more and more centralization, and give power back to parents and educators through decentralization and universal school choice."

Fuzzy Math: A Nationwide Epidemic

By Michelle Malkin

Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are you worried that your third-grader hasn’t learned simple multiplication yet? Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as “spiraling,” which is used to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busywork of cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers who emphasize “self-confidence” over proficiency while their students fall further and further behind? Join the club.

Across the country, from New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up to math fads like Everyday Math. Sounds harmless enough, right? It’s cleverly marketed as a “University of Chicago” program. Impressive! Right? But then you start to sense something’s not adding up when your kid starts second grade and comes home with the same kindergarten-level addition and subtraction problems — for the second year in a row.

2007 NAEP Scores Show Spending Increases Haven't Produced Results

The 2007 edition of "The Nation's Report Card" wasn't straight A or straight F when it was released in late September. However, had it had been an individual student's take-home report, conscientious parents would have limited the kid's video game access and increased family reading time.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report on fourth- and eighth-graders' math and reading skills yielded mixed results that are subject to widely differing interpretation. As has been true in the recent past, this year's results were better in elementary school than in middle and high school, and math scores were higher than reading...

Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, said NAEP long-term test results show that "[high school] scores have stagnated or fallen in reading, math, and science since the NAEP tests were first administered in the late '60s and early '70s. That is despite the fact that we have more than doubled real per-pupil spending since 1970, to the current national average of more than $11,000 per pupil."

Inner-city success in Milwaukee

By Kevin Killion

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has just carried three articles about one of my favorite schools: St. Anthony's in inner-city Milwaukee. Despite a litany of obstacles – poor families, many English learners, dicey neighborhood – this school has been getting spectacular results both in academics and in family participation.

Among its keys to success: It is a program based on faith and values, includes a full implementation of the Core Knowledge program, Direct Instruction, Saxon Math, and it rejects education fads.

There isn't a finer demonstration anywhere of the value of a voucher program. Here's a win-win-win-win-win summary:

Poor kids are getting a wonderful education.

Parents are very involved.

The infamous "gap" is closing: St. Anthony's kids score almost as well as non-poor kids in Milwaukee schools.

This is an inner city Catholic school that has doubled its enrollment.

Taxpayers are getting a tremendous bargain, educating kids for thousands less than public schools would cost.

How to Dumb Down Tests and Associated Curriculum

The Champion Foundation is pleased to link to an article written by Cary resident and school reformer Chris Jenner about what has been going on with Illinois State Achievement Tests.

Jenner lists five things that are being done - like lowering the required scores and allowing for subjective manipulation of scores. He then asks: "Would a state really do these things, then claim to be 'Second to None' in education?"

His answer:

"Looking at the history of the Illinois State Achievement Tests since their introduction in 1999, the answer is a resounding yes! The mathematics section of the ISAT provides a clear example. It would have been a shock and an embarrassment if results on the 2006 ISATs did anything other than skyrocket."

Dropout Nation?

From the Cato Institute:

Time magazine's latest cover story, "Dropout Nation," illustrates a serious educational crisis -- not in the nation's high schools, which are bad enough, but among the nation's writers and editors. One critical lesson our schools have failed to teach aspiring journalists is that when something sounds too bad to be true, it probably isn't.

The author of the Time cover story, David Thornburgh, claims "an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly one out of three public high school students won't graduate. ... For Latinos and African Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50 percent." The number of think tank researchers constructing such alarming estimates has not just increased, but doubled. Yet Thornburgh mentioned only one of them, neglecting the other one.

Pacific Research Institute Book Shatters Myth that “Good” Schools Are Found in “Nice” Neighborhoods

Press Release from the Pacific Research Institute:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in California, today announced the release of a ground-breaking book on the performance of students in "middle class" public schools. Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice, which was supported by a generous grant from the Koret Foundation, found that in nearly 300 schools in middle class and affluent neighborhoods, more than half of the students in at least one grade level performed below proficiency on the 2006 California Standards Test (CST)—the statewide test that assesses student grade level knowledge. Many of these schools are located in California’s most affluent areas including Orange County, Silicon Valley, and the Los Angeles beach and canyon communities.

Studies show that parents are willing to purchase houses well beyond their means for what they believe is an opportunity to send their children to "good" public schools. Not as Good as You Think shatters the myth that buying a home in an expensive neighborhood also buys a "good" public school.