Numbers Game

[groovedaddy]

Americans should be deeply alarmed by new data showing that the country is continuing to lose ground educationally to its competitors abroad.

The United States once had the world’s top high-school graduation rate. It has now fallen to 13th place behind countries like South Korea, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Worse still, a new study from the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation, finds that this is the only country in the industrial world where young people are less likely than their parents to graduate high school.

Most American parents never see these damning international comparisons, which are based on census figures and labor force statistics. Instead, parents who want to know how their schools are doing in terms of vital statistics like graduation rates must rely on phony calculations cooked up by state governments that are determined to hide the truth for as long as possible.

With these problems clearly in mind, Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, has issued new regulations for how school graduation rates are calculated and reported to the public under the No Child Left Behind Act. States will now be required to keep track of students from when they enter high school until they receive regular diplomas, counting as non-graduates any students who choose to leave school before that time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/opinion/30thu2.html?th&emc=th

[spookytooth]

1. I went to back to college in my 30s and had a fellow student

who was probably half my age at the time and she saw my textbook for remedial Algebra (I hadn't tangled with it in years and had to review). She told me that in her homeland (Lithiunia, I believe), they would be doing that level of work in 5th grade! Boy was I pwned!

[goddess40]

2. Part of the difference is that other countries to educate all

as we do. The other part is the underfunding and trying to teach all levels in the same classroom. We like to pretend that every child has the same potential and did away with ability grouping. Ability grouping had issues that could have been dealt with in a better way instead of just eliminating them.
With the money crunch, we know spend a large portion of the money we do have on special needs children as much of what we must do to help them is mandated by law, so it can't be cut.

With no child left behind the federal government insists that all children be at a certain level without exception. A goal that is unrealistic and unattainable. But it pulls money and time away from other children's education and effectively dumbs down education, which is exactly what the republican's wanted when they enacted NCLB.