ARE AMERICAN STUDENTS UNEDUCATED OR LAZY?

The article below argues that international comparisons of educational achievement are invalid because American students may be less motivated in doing their tests than overseas students are in a similar situation. That is undoubtedly a fair point. But since motivation is arguably even more important in life than is "book learning", it seems cold comfort. One hopes that the lack of motivation extends only to the obviously uninvolving stuff American kids are taught at school. Of greatest concern, of course, are the large disparities WITHIN America. When a California High School graduate may well be unable to read properly, international comparisons are the last thing that matters

The fact that 8-year-olds and 17-year-olds have different attitudes toward low-pressure exams isn't going to come as a surprise to anyone who has raised a teenager—or has been one. The NAEP is used to judge school systems and overall student performance, but the test doesn't matter at all to individual kids. In 2002 nearly half of the 17-year-olds tapped to take the national NAEP exam didn't bother to show up. Students who did show up left more essay questions than multiple-choice questions blank, an indication that they weren't going to be bothered to venture an answer if it required effort.

The "who cares?" phenomenon probably plagues older students' performance on international exams, too. Granted, kids in Japan and the United Kingdom don't pay a personal price for how they do on global tests, either. But cultural pressures can be very different in other countries. Korean schools have staged rallies to rev their children up before they take international assessments. And Germany created a national "PISA Day" to mark the date when 15-year-olds take the exam that will rank them against students in other countries. The U.S. Department of Education, meanwhile, has a hard time convincing principals to administer voluntary international tests at all.

The dubiousness of these test results becomes clear when you compare them to the results of tests that actually do matter for teenagers: high-school exit exams and college boards. Nineteen states now require their students to pass assessments before they can don a cap and gown; seven others are testing students but not yet withholding diplomas. When states begin imposing penalties for failure, it makes a difference—sometimes a big one. Look at Texas: In 2004, results counted toward graduation for the first time, and pass rates on both the math and English portions of the test leapt almost 20 points. According to Julie Jary, who oversees student assessment for the state, no substantive alterations were made to the test. What changed was students' motivation: When their diplomas were hanging in the balance, they managed to give more correct answers.

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MORE EROSION ON STANDARDS IN NEW YORK

Obviously budget-driven rather than education-driven

Several foreign-born students at Brighton High are confident that they handily passed a state exam measuring their grasp of the English language. But instead of rejoicing, they've written letters to the state Education Department, demanding to know why the test wasn't more challenging. A couple of their comments:

"How can you give us this easy test? Do you think I'm stupid or something?"

"Please change this test. Make it fair and honest to help us."

State officials rolled out the New York state English as a Second Language Achievement Test in 2003 to assess reading, writing, speaking and listening skills for an increasing number of foreign students in prekindergarten through 12th grade. Once students reach proficiency on the test, they no longer are eligible for translation dictionaries and extra time on exams. Even more importantly, they are moved into mainstream classrooms and no longer work regularly with teachers trained to help them learn in an unfamiliar language. So, if the proficiency test is too easy, many students could lose their special instructional help too soon.

The concern is acute at the high school level, where students must pass the rigorous English Regents exam to graduate. Some argue that students who are relatively new to the United States are put at a disadvantage as they try to score as well on the Regents exam as their peers born and educated in this country. "There shouldn't be that much of a gap," said Annalisa Allegro, coordinator of the Bilingual/ESL Technical Assistance Center in Spencerport, which helps area districts educate students learning English. She has fielded concerns about the test from more than half of Monroe County's 18 districts. "The current test is very weak," Allegro said. "It's insulting, it's demeaning and it's not what we expect of our New York state students."

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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