U.S. School Deterioration: Poorest Performing Teachers Should Be First to Go

[Kamaji]

U.S. School Deterioration:  Poorest Performing Teachers Should Be First to Go

By Larry Sand
June 30, 2023

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results released last week were quite distressing. The scores on the reading and math tests administered in October-December 2022 showed the steepest declines ever recorded since the tests were first administered.

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), explains:

“The mathematics decline for 13-year-olds was the single largest decline we have observed in the past half a century. The mathematics score for the lowest-performing students has returned to levels last seen in the 1970s, and the reading score for our lowest-performing students was actually lower than it was the very first year these data were collected, in 1971.”

It’s worth noting that the result of the NAEP U.S. history and civics test, also taken in 2022, were no better. According to data released last month, just 13% of eighth graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history, meaning they could “explain major themes, periods, events, people, ideas and turning points in the country’s history.” Additionally, about 20% of students scored at or above the proficient level in civics. Both scores represent all-time lows on these two tests.

These dismal results beg the question: “Why is this happening?”

The immediate response is to blame the Covid-induced shutdowns that gripped public education in 2020 and 2021. And to be sure, the hysterical response to Covid did indeed leave scars. In addition, the time spent by many teachers advancing the political fads-du-jour didn’t help things.

But as The 74’s Kevin Mahnken importantly notes, the latest scores, which highlight long-term trends that extend back to the 1970s, “widen the aperture on the nation’s profound academic slump.” In doing so, the latest test serves “as a complement to the 2020 iteration of the same test, which showed that the math and English skills of 13-year-olds had noticeably eroded even before the emergence of COVID-19.”

So, what factors other than Covid are dumbing down our students?

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Source:  https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/30/u-s-school-deterioration-poorest-performing-teachers-should-be-first-to-go/

[PeteS in CA]

1. Ed schools' love affair for "educational" method fads that double- and quadruple-down when the fad methods fail.

2. Ed schools' 1960s relic hatred of all things American.

3. Ed schools' worship of every latest "Progressive" social fad.

Ed schools' students become what the Ed schools teach.

4. Academia's disdain for the people who grow their food, build their houses, bring food and consumer goods to their stores, and the people who design, manufacture, and service the things necessary for the academics' lives (did I miss any normal people disdained by many/most academics?).

5. Unions - resisting reform, defending the lazy, inept, and perverted, milking taxpayers, buying school board elections.