Ashville Citizen-Times: Public Education Continues to Dumb Down, to the Detriment of Us All

CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Public education continues to dumb down, to the detriment of us all

Bryan Aleksich
March 2, 2007 12:15 am

Robert Tomsho reports in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 23) that though “American educators have complained for years about grade inflation, high schools may also suffer from another type of inflation—in the labeling of courses.”

The study of high school subjects by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the gold standard that does not bias results as individual states routinely do in order to make the public school system look good, has found that “high school students are taking, and receiving higher grades in, more college-prep courses than ever.”

After completing these high tier, tough college prep courses, NAEP discovered that these students in fact require much remedial work when they get to college. NAEP states that although these college-prep courses may be so designated, they are in fact not preparing kids for college. The NAEP’s study asserts that “Some school districts are teaching watered down versions of everything from history to trigonometry.”

When, oh when, will the Democratically controlled legislature and this newspaper realize that the public school system is broken, bankrupted, busted and kaput and needs to be jettisoned.

Bryan Aleksich

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