Sunday, March 02, 2008

No Child Left to Answer

A depressing survey of what high-schoolers don't know. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine: "These aren't exactly brainteasers, but when the new education-advocacy group Common Core posed these and 30 similar questions about history and literature to 1,200 17-year-old high-school students (below on the following four pages), it discovered that American teenagers are 'stunningly ignorant.'"

1 comment:

cait said...

While I'm glad that there are so many studies showing the failure of No Child Left Behind, I wish that this one would have polled more than 1200 students. That isn't even enough students to fill an average public high school. Maybe it doesn't matter, it just struck me as odd, although I wholeheartedly agree that No Child Left Behind has been a huge disadvantage to kids in public schools.

What I haven't seen yet, are studies showing how students do at math and reading, the two targeted disciplines of NCLB. Not because I am looking for some ray of hope, but because it would just be the last nail in the coffin, and we could finally be done with this way of "teaching."