Re: Dumbing-Down of America ( Patrick J. Buchanan )

On Mar 7, 1:37 pm, jazzerci...@hotmail.com (-) wrote:
> http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/070305_education.htm
>
> Patrick J. Buchanan
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> March 05, 2007
>
> Dumbing-Down of America
> By Patrick J. Buchanan
>
> Fifty years ago this October, Americans were jolted by the news that
> Moscow, one year after drowning the Hungarian Revolution in blood, had
> put an 80-kilo satellite into Earth orbit.
>
> In December, the U.S. Navy tried to replicate the feat. Vanguard got
> four feet off the ground and exploded, incinerating its three-pound
> payload. America was humiliated. Khrushchev was Man of the Year. Some
> of us yet recall the Vanguard newsreels and the humiliating laughter.
>
> Stunned, America went to work to improve education in math and
> science, and succeeded. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of
> high school seniors began to rise, reaching a high in 1964.
>
> However, test scores for high school students have been falling now
> for 40 years. In 1984, the Reagan administration issued A Nation at
> Risk, documenting the deterioration of American public education.
>
> More trillions of dollars were thrown at the problem. And if one
> judged by the asserted toughening up of courses and rising grades of
> seniors, it appeared we had made marvelous progress. On March 4,
> The Washington Times reported:
>
> "In 2005, 17 percent of graduates had completed a 'standard'
> curriculum, 41 percent completed a 'midlevel' curriculum, and
> 10 percent completed a 'rigorous' curriculum. Fifteen years
> earlier, the percentages were 9 percent (standard), 26 percent
> (midlevel) and 5 percent (rigorous). Grade point averages (GPA)
> increased, as well. The average overall GPA increased from 2.68
> in 1990 to 2.98 (virtually a B level) in 2005.
>
> However, it is all a giant fraud, exposed as such by the performances
> of high school seniors on the National Assessment of Educational
> Progress exams known as the "nation's report card." An NAEP test of
> 12th-grade achievement was given to what The New York Times called a
> "representative sample of 21,000 high school seniors attending 900
> public and private schools from January to March 2005."[Schools,
> Money, And Results, March 3, 2007]
>
> What did the tests reveal?
>
> Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills
> has risen by a third, from 20 percent to 27 percent.
>
> Only 35 percent of high school seniors have reached a "proficient"
> level in reading, down from 40 percent.
>
> Only 16 percent of black and 20 percent of Hispanic students had
> reached a proficient level in reading.
>
> Among high school seniors, only 29 percent of whites, 10 percent of
> Hispanic students and 6 percent of black students were proficient in
> math.
>
> This is only the half of it. Among the kids whose test scores on
> reading and math were not factored in were the 25 percent of white
> students and 50 percent of black and Hispanic kids who had dropped out
> by senior year.
>
> Factor the dropouts back in, and what the NAEP test suggests is that,
> of black kids starting in first grade, about one in eight will be able
> to read at the level of a high school senior after 12 years, and one
> in 33 will be able to do the math. Among Hispanic kids, one in 10 will
> be able to read at a high-school senior level, but only one in 20 will
> be able to do high-school math.
>
> Yet, as columnist Steve Sailer writes on VDare.com, the Bush-Kennedy
> No Child Left Behind Act mandates "that all children should reach a
> proficient level of academic achievement by 2014."[ Why "No Child Left
> Behind" Is Nuts, February 18, 2007 ]
>
> We're not going to make it. We're not even going to come close.
>
> Why are so many Americans ignorant of the depths of failure of so many
> schools? As Sailer explains, it is due to government deceit.
>
> "Not surprisingly, practically every single state cheats in
> order to meet the law" mandating a rising academic proficiency.
>
> "For example, Mississippi... recently declared that 89 percent
> of its fourth-graders were at least 'proficient' in reading.
>
> "Unfortunately, however, on the federal government's impartial
> National Assessment of Education Progress test, only 18 percent
> of Mississippi students were 'proficient' or 'advanced.'"
>
> Hence, a huge slice of the U.S. educational establishment is complicit
> in a monstrous fraud that, if you did it in business, would get you
> several years at the nearby minimum security facility.
>
> This is corruption. Teachers are handing out grades kids do not
> deserve. States are dumbing-down tests to make themselves look good.
> Voters are being deceived about how much kids are learning.
>
> There is no real moral distinction between what teachers and educators
> are doing on a vast scale and what professional athletes do on a
> smaller scale when they take steroids to enhance performance.
>
> As The Washington Times noted, according to the Digest of Education
> Statistics, spending for public education, in constant
> (inflation-adjusted) dollars, rose from $6,256 a year per student
> before "A Nation at Risk" to $10,464 in the 2002-2003 school year.
> Taxpayers have thus raised their annual contribution to education by a
> full two-thirds in real dollars in a quarter century. More than generous.
>
> Under George W. Bush, U.S. Department of Education funding has risen
> 92 percent in six years, from $35.5 billion in 2001 to $68 billion in
> 2007. Sinking test scores are what we have to show for it.
>
> Taxpayers are being lied to and swindled by the education industry,
> which has failed them, failed America and flunked its assignment-and
> should be expelled for cheating.
>
> Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his
> book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of
> America, can be ordered from Amazon.com.
>
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but de bruvvas sho' can shoot dem hoops.

greg