Complete Report may be found at
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/DevTalent/coverpge.htm
When a program produces negative outcomes year after year after year a reasonable person would conclude that the negative outcomes were the real goals of the the program.
Cheers,
Robert Reis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL EXCELLENCE:
A CASE FOR DEVELOPING AMERICA'S TALENT
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
Programs for Improvement of Practice
Pat O'Connell Ross, Project Director
October 1993
National Assessment of Educational Progress
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provides one of the few indicators of how well American students achieve. These tests are not intended to give specific information about the nation's more capable students. However, the results show that very few students perform at NAEP's highest level -- a level that is not very demanding. NAEP considers the advanced level to be what is needed for college-level performance.
Only 7 percent of 17-year-olds could solve multi-step mathematics problems such as finding percentages, a skill that does not require advanced algebra or calculus (1990);
Less than 5 percent of 17-year-olds could interpret historical data at a level that is expected for college work;
Only 6 percent of 17-year-olds tested in civics could answer questions such as who in the federal government has the power to tax;
Only 9 percent of 17-year-olds knew enough science to infer basic relationships and draw conclusions using detailed scientific knowledge (1990);
Only 1 in 100 high school seniors chose to write a coherent response of more than one paragraph to an essay question (1990); and
Only 7 percent of high school seniors could read at the advanced level (1990).
Scholastic Aptitude Tests and Advanced Placement Data
Scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), required for admission to many American colleges and universities, also provide an unimpressive portrait of the academic accomplishment of America's top students. Thy show that:
Since 1972, the number of students with high scores (over 600 out of a possible 800) declined by more than 40 percent on the verbal portion, with 1989 yielding the fewest students scoring between 700 and 800 since 1984. The average entering scores to the most selective colleges in 1970 ranged from 670 to 695 on the verbal portion; in the mid-1980s, they ranged from 620 to 640.
----- Original Message -----From: Bob YatesSent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 3:57 AMSubject: Re: IN ANSWER TO GRETCHEN'S QUESTIONRobert Reis makes the following assertions about literacy in the US:
You and I are confronted with a great mystery: we had a perfectly literate country before 1852 when, for the first time, we got government schooling shoved down our throats. How we achieved this amazing literacy is wrapped up in the secret that reading, writing and numbers are very easy to learn -- in spite of what you hear from the reading, writing and number establishments.
I am no expert on the nature of literacy in the US, but I do have a passing interesting in the American Civil War. I recommend to Mr. Reis James McPherson's widely admired one volume history of the American Civil War entitled Battle Cry of Freedom. In one of the early chapters, McPherson gives some numbers about literacy in 1850s America. New England had one of the highest literacy rates in the world (over 95% if I recall correctly). It was perhaps rivalled by some parts of Scandanavia. This literacy rate was NOT achieved by private schools but by widespread well-supported PUBLIC schools. A point that McPherson makes explicitly. Moreover, the South, which did not have such a public schooling system had significantly lower literacy rates among the white population. (Let us ignore the issue of slavery.)
I wonder what Mr. Reis means by "perfectly literate." In my passing interest on the Civil War, I have read a lot of unedited letters by soldiers who fought on both sides. Again, I recommed to Mr. Reis another book by McPherson: Cause and Comrades. The book tries to understand why men fought in the Civil War. McPherson quotes actual letters these men sent home. I am not near that book at the present, but in the year 2000 we would consider most of those writers as illiterate. They do not control the standard conventions of spelling and punctuation. Moreover, they use dialect constructions that most of the college freshmen I teach would never, never write in a formal paper.
Mr. Reis, you are terribly, terribly ignorant of American cultural history. Take off your ideological blinders and do some actual research on what you are writing about. You clearly haven't up to now and your posts here do not help anyone understand the place of grammar in the classroom.
Bob Yates
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