1. "The only reasonable conclusion to draw from this weeks report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is that reading and math achievement by New York Citys students is dismal and has remained so for almost a decade....only the 24 percent of the [8th grade] cohort that can read at NAEPs eight-grade proficiency level
2. The mayor promised that new accountability measures would reform the previously dysfunctional and sclerotic school system and help newly entering students to improve their academic performance and achieve higher graduation rates. In a January 2003 speech outlining his reform program, he noted that the city already spends $12 billion annually,...The citys education budget this year is close to $24 billion...
3. ...the city has avoided dealing with this disturbing reality by ginning up its high school graduation numbers through dumbed-down Regents exams and credit-recovery abuses, in which students who fail courses required for graduation earn passing grades after attending a few additional Saturday sessions or turning in extra homework assignments....State Education Department poured cold water on the graduation-rate claim with a recent study that showed that only 22 percent of students receiving diplomas were college ready.
4. DOE officials also promise that NAEP test scores will improve once the schools have aligned their curricula and teaching with the Common Core Standardsa requirement the city accepted in order to qualify for Race to the Top funds from the Obama administration.
5. ...the solution to the citys education problems wont come from Washington,... the federally imposed common standards will probably become one more failed reform.
6. The real answer, at least for the citys awful reading scores, is more likely to be found in a group of ten elementary schools participating in a pilot reading program pioneered by the brilliant scholar and cognitive scientist E. D. Hirsch.
7. Over a three-year period, students in the schools using Hirschs Core Knowledge reading curriculum outperformed their peers from a control group of ten other schools by a huge margin...
8. Unfortunately, though the DOE conducted the Core Knowledge reading study, it has made no move so far to bring the program to other schools."
Lots of Children Left Behind by Sol Stern - City Journal
Note...this is hardly the first indication that progressive education is a failure, and content rich is a success...
9. "The Massachusetts miracle, in which Bay State students soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislatures passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirschs legacy.
10. In the new millennium, Massachusetts students have surged upward on the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)the nations report card, as education scholars call it. On the 2005 NAEP tests, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math. It then repeated the feat in 2007. No state had ever scored first in both grades and both subjects in a single yearlet alone for two consecutive test cycles. On another reliable test, the Trends in International Math and Science Studies, the states fourth-graders last year ranked second globally in science and third in math, while the eighth-graders tied for first in science and placed sixth in math. (States can volunteer, as Massachusetts did, to have their students compared with national averages.) The United States as a whole finished tenth."
E. D. Hirschs Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009
The time is long past when the educrats should be made to confront the inconsistency.
2. The mayor promised that new accountability measures would reform the previously dysfunctional and sclerotic school system and help newly entering students to improve their academic performance and achieve higher graduation rates. In a January 2003 speech outlining his reform program, he noted that the city already spends $12 billion annually,...The citys education budget this year is close to $24 billion...
3. ...the city has avoided dealing with this disturbing reality by ginning up its high school graduation numbers through dumbed-down Regents exams and credit-recovery abuses, in which students who fail courses required for graduation earn passing grades after attending a few additional Saturday sessions or turning in extra homework assignments....State Education Department poured cold water on the graduation-rate claim with a recent study that showed that only 22 percent of students receiving diplomas were college ready.
4. DOE officials also promise that NAEP test scores will improve once the schools have aligned their curricula and teaching with the Common Core Standardsa requirement the city accepted in order to qualify for Race to the Top funds from the Obama administration.
5. ...the solution to the citys education problems wont come from Washington,... the federally imposed common standards will probably become one more failed reform.
6. The real answer, at least for the citys awful reading scores, is more likely to be found in a group of ten elementary schools participating in a pilot reading program pioneered by the brilliant scholar and cognitive scientist E. D. Hirsch.
7. Over a three-year period, students in the schools using Hirschs Core Knowledge reading curriculum outperformed their peers from a control group of ten other schools by a huge margin...
8. Unfortunately, though the DOE conducted the Core Knowledge reading study, it has made no move so far to bring the program to other schools."
Lots of Children Left Behind by Sol Stern - City Journal
Note...this is hardly the first indication that progressive education is a failure, and content rich is a success...
9. "The Massachusetts miracle, in which Bay State students soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislatures passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirschs legacy.
10. In the new millennium, Massachusetts students have surged upward on the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)the nations report card, as education scholars call it. On the 2005 NAEP tests, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math. It then repeated the feat in 2007. No state had ever scored first in both grades and both subjects in a single yearlet alone for two consecutive test cycles. On another reliable test, the Trends in International Math and Science Studies, the states fourth-graders last year ranked second globally in science and third in math, while the eighth-graders tied for first in science and placed sixth in math. (States can volunteer, as Massachusetts did, to have their students compared with national averages.) The United States as a whole finished tenth."
E. D. Hirschs Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009
The time is long past when the educrats should be made to confront the inconsistency.
