Below are the main statistics to know. The charts are by percentage.
No state has more than 50% of 8th grade students proficient at math or reading. I was surprised.
It would be interesting to know the absolute number of students as the number in a lot of states should be lower than the number of students in a high populated state like California which comes in #36 out of 50 states in math and reading.
These 8th graders will probably do even worse when they move into more complex math in high school without the basics under their belts. Then college? Faggeddaboudit.
Public education needs to be tossed into the trash along with the teachers unions. We need locally governed schools with performance motivated teachers.
Read More if you wish.
When compared to industrialized nations, the US fared well at the elementary school level (85th percentile). This falls to the 45th percentile at the end of middle school (8th grade), and increases to the 49th percentile at the end of the 12th grade. I see nothing at all for the American people to be proud of ... but now consider how many billions of dollars we have spent over the past 70 years to get to where we are presently. Our system needs to be scraped and reinvented. If our education system is not preparing students for the next 50 years, then it is clearly a waste of money, time, and effort. You're right ... toss it in the trash. We couldn't do worse heading in a different direction.
ReplyDeleteSam - I don't think anything has to be reinvented. What we did when my mom was a girl and when I was a girl worked just fine. Phonics, memorization, repetition. It works. Oh - and throw cursive back there too. Good for the brain.
DeleteSam, Yes, we could not possibly do worse. Makes me think of morons like richard dryfus who said about spending 40 Billion on education "If we helped one kid it was worth it." Seriously it is a mental disease. I wonder how much he'd like to pitch in of that 40 bil.
DeleteAdrienne, yea. I also got a good education regards reading and math anyway. The rest of the stuff has since been tossed but with the basic a person can build on it and re-educate themselves properly regarding history, science, etc, which in my case looking back was mostly BS.
The trouble started when they kicked phonics to the curb. I was lucky to have gotten in on the tail end of phonics and was always a superb reader. Plus my mom understood phonics and was able to reinforce it at home. I can still hear my mom saying, "Sound it out", when I was confronted with an unknown long word. The second most important was taking years of Latin. I confess to being a terrible Latin scholar, but enough got through to enhance my being able to know the meaning of words by their root.
ReplyDeleteAs for math, I never did manage to memorize the times tables. I have what is known as auditory dyslexia. When you verbalize numbers to me I hear a word salad. But, being a visual learner, I conceived of all sorts of pictures in my head to do math. For instance, an 8 to me is four dots on the "corners" of the two circles. A nine is three groups of three dots. So when I add 8 and 9, I'm really adding the 8 to three groups of three dots (8 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3.) 9 + 9 is okay, but when you throw in the third 9, the dots come back. Now, I know that sounds awfully silly and time consuming, but it happens at warp speed and it's all in pictures.
It's doesn't help hearing a word salad, but I've learned to just ask people to repeat numbers slowly without embarrassment.
As for overcoming obstacles, when I first left the optical department at Costco to become a cashier it was back in the days of a person "calling" the item numbers and the cashier having to ten key them in the register. Before my tryout, I made up enormous lists of item numbers, got out my ten key, and had hubby "call" the numbers. Passed with flying colors.
Adrienne, I get your pictures with the math. I was able to memorize the multiplication tables, then combine that with 10 base and it is easy. 37 X 48 would get a lot of people looking like a deer in headlights, but it is really 30 X 40 = 1200 + 7 X 8 = 56 = 1256, happens real fast.
Delete:-) At 15 I worked the cash register at McDonalds which looked and operated like a huge adding machine. As people ordered their food, I had all the prices memorized and as they called out 3 cheeseburgers, 3 fries, etc etc, I had it all punched in using both hands by the time they stopped talking and gave them the amount.
Now I like to give cashiers a combination of bills and change and watch them go into a coma trying to figure out the change.
Actually i got that wrong. Pretty funny.
DeleteLol. Think Declaration of Independence :o
DeleteBill Gates now admits that Common Core is a failure.
ReplyDeleteEd, How about we find out how the most successful countries education systems work and do that ?
DeleteI heard somewhere that millennials don't know how to tell time using a traditional clock. You know, that round oval on the wall and those moving stick thingys pointing at random numbers on the periphery. Mercifully, most are not proficient enough in reading to decipher that chart. Ignorance is bliss, and a quick selfie posted on MyInstaFacePageSpace.
ReplyDeleteIgnorance is bliss. And profitable for the media and shows like The View.
DeleteThe View?
DeleteTribal
Haters
Encouraging
Vaginas
In
Earnest
Warmongering
THe VIEW? PHEW!
You know, that round oval on the wall and those moving stick thingys pointing at random numbers on the periphery.
DeleteFunny!
Yea, too many kids can't read a friggin clock I see.
DeleteWhen we desert the Tried and True
ReplyDeleteBad Results will soon ensue.
Methods lacking Common Sense
Keep our thinking Dark and Dense.
The price we've paid for Wishful Thinking's
Made our schooling Weak and Stinking!
~ Minerva the Magnificent
FT Imagine after such sucky performance teachers eant more and more money. Country destroying stuff.
DeleteUNIONISM has been our undoing.
DeleteUNIONISM is fundamentally a MARX-inspired phenomenon, even thugh Marx-Himself, had nothing to do with the early movement to establish collective bargaining "rights" in Britain.
Check out the latest Project Veritas undercover video, FT
Deletehttp://adriennescatholiccorner.blogspot.com/2018/05/project-veritas-nj-teachers-union.html
Adrienne, a direct view into the evil that surrounds us.
DeleteKIPLING SAID EVERYTHING THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID NINETY-NINE YEARS AGO IN THIS POEM:
ReplyDeleteThe Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I pass through my incarnations
___ in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations
___ to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers
___ I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings,
___ I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us.
___ They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,
___ as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift,
___ Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas
___ while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed.
___ They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne
___ like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress,
___ and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield,
___ or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on
___ they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton;
___ they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses;
___ they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market
___ Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming,
___ They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons,
___ that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us
___ and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
___ "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones
___ we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour
___ and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children
___ and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
___ "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch
___ we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter
___ to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money,
___ there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
___ "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled,
___ and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled
___ and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters,
___ and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
___ limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future,
__ it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain
___ since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit
___ and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger
___ goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished,
___ and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing
___ and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us,
___ as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
___ with terror and slaughter return!
The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919)
~ Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Don't you guys find it a little unnerving that ASSACHEWSHITS appears be leading the country in educational achievement?
ReplyDeleteAfter all Aassachewshits is THE BELLY of the BEAST of the GLOBALIST-CRYPTO-MARXIAN AGENDA.
I seriously wonder if we can TRUST any of the products of the various Statistic Mills anymore? Everybody's got an "agenda."
I feel indignant when I read that the USA is THIRTY-NINTH on the list when it comes to proviing adeqate healthcare.
According to the UN data bank we are behind Cubam Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Zaire and Venzuela in this area! [Just kidding, –– but not by much! ;-]
FT, No doubt we are behind countries that make the situation very embarrassing.
DeleteI don't necessarily accept that, Kid. We are now a FRAGMENTED society. The Left has seen to that.
DeleteWhat that means –– as I see it anyway –– is that SOME of the "fragments" are FAR behind the MAJORITY. That has the effect of pulling down the AVERAGES, which in turn makes it seem that the MAJORITY is in fact INFERIOR, when in actual fact nothing could be farther from the truth.
I'll use my favorite adage once again: "DON'T CONFUSE ME with the FACTS, when what I WANT is the TRUTH."
That makes a helluva lot more sense that it seems at first glance.
"FACTS are NOT synonymous with TRUTH."
FT, I look at the goings on in America, and I remain pessimistic.
DeleteFT: I'm skeptical of these stats as well. Massholes leading in math and reading? Oh, please.
DeleteTHis morning, they were discussing this on talk radio and Common Core is a lot to blame for this, apparently...particularly with MATH...the methods are crazy and too lengthy to find an answer, parents don't know it so they can't help.........
ReplyDeleteI blame parents for these awful numbers........California schools were among the best when I was in school......now they're way down at the bottom, but I believe this has a lot to do with immigrant kids who can't even speak English yet. That has to be part of that equation, pardon the unintended pun!
Ya, this is BAD, I have an article tomorrow on my blog that is also BAD and regarding education.
America's losing it on every count....becoming the third world nation the left applauds..after all, why should our kids DESERVE a good education?
idiots. (sorry, but...!!)
Z, From talking to guys at work who have kids in K-12 public schools, I don't put a lot of blame on the parents though I do put a lot. As a parent you can't talk to teachers or administrators in public schools. email, phone calls go unanswered, ad if you go down there, good luck seeing someone, and if you do talk to some unionized administrator puke, good luck getting any satisfaction.
DeleteThey don't care about the ranking of our children with the rest of the world's hollow noggins.
ReplyDeleteThe Political "Class" will send their children to the best and finest Private Schools.
All the while dumbing down the rest of the countries children - insuring the
Political "Class" children will follow in their corrupt footsteps.
It is all about the 2 tier social progress of the Have's and Have not's!
We see the beginnings of such---see the 2 tier ~`Justice System'~ goings on NOW!
TS/WS, I believe that. They want the masses just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork.
Delete