12th Graders Doing Worse On US National Tests

Money and big national lies told by our elites have failed to raise standardized test scores of 12th graders in America.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - High school seniors take harder classes and earn higher grades than they used to but continue to fare poorly on achievement tests, according to reports released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education. Nationwide, just 1 in 4 high school seniors tested in 2005 ranked competent in math and barely a third read at grade level, the reports show. Reading scores are the lowest since 1992, with students in the Western United States performing worse than those in the Midwest and Northeast. Despite the decline in achievement, students take the equivalent of 360 more hours of class than seniors who graduated in 1990.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores provide still more evidence that the mainstream debate on social policy in America is conducted based on a set of lies about human nature.

Within America's Lake Woebegone mythology (or, if you prefer, Bright Shining Lie) how to explain the failure of more instruction hours, more instruction in advanced topics, and standardized testing to raise test scores? How to explain the failure of more money to raise test scores? How to explain the failure of charter schools to raise test scores? How to explain the failure of the No Child Left Behind Act? After all, it had No Lie Left Behind. How to ignore the elephant called IQ standing in the room? Time for a new phrase, a new formulation. How about a "rigor gap"?

"How is it that our high school students can earn more credits, get higher GPAs, but yet not perform any better?" said David Gordon, member of the National Assessment Governing Board and Sacramento County, Calif., schools superintendent. During a Thursday press conference, Gordon termed the problem a "rigor gap."

The lies have some years to run yet. But the more vigorously the politicians try policies based on false assumptions the closer we get to the collapse of the old mythology.

We should be getting better if we live in wonderland.

The new reading scores show no change since 2002, the last time the test was given. "We should be getting better. There's nothing good about a flat score," Winick said.

But our schools have gotten better at lying to parents about how well their kids are doing.

In 2005, high school graduates had an overall grade-point average just shy of 3.0 - or about a B. That has gone up from a grade-point average of about 2.7 in 1990.

Junior is getting better grades. Well, that's great news. What a nice lie those teachers are willing to tell.

The average kid was doing better in the good old days of 1992.

Nationwide, 73 percent of 12th-grade students achieved a ``basic'' reading score in 2005, down from 80 percent in 1992, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a sampling test the government calls the ``nation's report card.'' Sixty-one percent scored at or above the basic level in math. At the same time, 68 percent of high school graduates completed at least a ``standard'' curriculum, up from 59 percent in 2000, with the overall grade point average about one-third of a letter grade higher than in 1990, the department said in a report. The figures raise questions about the quality of the courses being taught at U.S. high schools, it said.

As Hispanics continue to grow as a percentage of the total population average NAEP scores are going to fall further. No educational reform can overcome the demographic force of ethnic groups which score lower in standardized IQ tests.

Steve Sailer says there's a wide gap between private beliefs and public utterances.

Here's the really fascinating thing about the broad support for NCLB. In private, virtually every single person in America understands that human beings are highly diverse in mental capabilities. They just wont acknowledge it in public.

So why the massive widespread lying that forms the basis for educational policy in America? Liars who lie to protect the feelings of others are more popular.

Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every 10 minutes, with some people getting in as many as a dozen falsehoods in that period. More interestingly -- and Libby might see this as the silver lining if he is found guilty -- Feldman also found that liars tend to be more popular than honest people. ... Saxe found in one experiment that nearly 85 percent of college students had lied in the course of a romantic relationship, most often about another relationship. (These were lies that people voluntarily admitted to Saxe, which means the actual number of lies and liars was probably higher.) Nearly to a person, the liars said they were trying to protect the feelings of someone they cared about.

But on some topics where the lies get translated into government policy the lies are very damaging. We need more honesty. We are hurting ourselves with these lies.