Education is lethal!

The following is an indictment of the policies and administration of our education system: local, state and national. It is not an attack on teachers or students! History shows us that students have potential far greater than is thought by many today.

The sources for this very brief article are the US News and World Report, Dept. of Education (NAEP) and DPI.

NAEP has been testing U.S. history since 1994, civics since 1998, and both reached their peak in 2014, 18 percent of eighth graders were proficient in history and 22 percent in civics. Rather than teach the Constitution (what civics is) it seems teaching students how to be social justice warriors is the public schools’ attempt to compensate. And in reading, math and science the scores are equally as dismal and the national trends are downward.

In WI, the DPI reports that ACT scores for grade 11 were: ELA(reading) – 37.7% and math – 26.9%

Locally, to recap last year’s US News data: Reading – 49%, Math – 31%, Science – 47%. And now for this year’s data: Reading – 38%, Math – 29%, Science – 28%. Is this the improvement we were promised?

These are the proficiency scores reported by DPI to US News. These scores mean that there is a level of proficiency for each grade and 29% of students reached that level in math this past year, in other words, 71% (nearly ¾) did not even reach the level of proficiency.

With each successive year of this ‘achievement’ we fall further behind in some category of education in world standings. How we are still ranked fifth must be because of the massive amounts of money we spend on education. And it seems that the more we spend the worse the results get. Gotta have those DEI officers and other administrative staff, I guess.

The USA was #1 in education before the federal government got involved. We can be No. 1 again but it requires some work by some folks…YOU! Yes, it requires effort from you, locally, if you want to improve education.

A successful education system leads to a great nation and improved standing on the world stage, in education and perhaps other areas.

The choice is yours.

by Tom Ward