In today’s Washington Post, Margaret Spellings mildly praised the progress created by NCLB. That “Student achievement results from the Nation’s Report Card published last week show that we are on the right track. Since enactment of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, which called for all students to be on grade level in reading and math by 2014, students have been making progress in reading and math in elementary and middle school. Improvement has been greatest for African American and Hispanic students and those students who are lowest-achieving.” But, I will unforunately offer a different statistic and insight into our condition.

48% of College Students will not graduate with a Bacheloriate degree within 6 years.

30% of College Freshman will drop out their first year of school.

Both these above statistics are widely available from google searches to actual journal articles.  Second statistical insight…

Grade increase can be largely due to a skew in the curve and not necessarily an improvement in knowledge.  In fact, any grade shift beyond the bell curve showing any sort of “skew” reveals the condition of the grading, teaching, and also the “standards”.  The issue is actually that when tested, if the test is supposed to “test” something, then we should be respectful in reporting the purpose of the test accurately. 

For Example:

1. Minimum knowledge “mastered”.  A pass required to move on to the next set of learning conditions.  Grade advancement is an excellent example of this sort of “test”.
2. Progress towards an end Goal.  This type of exam would reveal your typical “Bell Curve.”  Rather than examining for a minimum knowledge memorized/acquired, this would reveal where a group is in relation to an End.
3. Mastery of an Area.  Mastery is very different from “minimum knowledge”.  This type of test would also be a Bell curve, because only small number of students would show “mastery”.  Another small group would show no mastery and the large amount of students would show what?!?  Minimum knowledge acquired!

So, what then are our schools?  While they wish to be “mastery”, they are actually “minimum knowledge acquired” institutions.  And, when schools move to these types of instructional ends, they move at the sacrifice of producing and fostering any mastery of anything.

What can we educators and parents do to change this?

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