Facing Reality in American Education: Why the Racial Gap in Education Achievement Persists by Robert Walters

Author:Robert Walters [Walters, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Walters
Published: 2015-09-20T07:00:00+00:00

DECLINING STANDARDS

The effort to eliminate achievement differentials between the races has been accompanied by a significant decline in overall academic standards. Already in 1983, A Nation at Risk, the report by President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, warned that declining standardized test scores were largely the result of an erosion of academic standards in the nation’s high schools. That erosion, the study says, is reflected in rampant grade inflation, increased absenteeism, easier textbooks, large increases in the number of elective courses allowed, and a decreased emphasis on reading and writing, along with a general tendency to demand less of students than formerly.10 Grade inflation serves to mask the decline. As Thomas Sowell reports: “American high schools gave out approximately twice as many C’s as A’s in 1966 but by 1978, the A’s exceeded the C’s. By 1986, more than one-fifth of all entering freshmen in college averaged A– or above for their entire high school careers.”11

The educational establishment is afraid to enforce standards because of the effect it would have on the lives of students unable to meet them. In 1999, the Massachusetts State Board of Education set a low passing mark on its new statewide graduation exam so as not to drive weak pupils to drop out or put them at a disadvantage in trying to get a job later. Wisconsin scrapped their plans for graduation exams altogether after protests from parents. (US News, 13 December 1999)

10 Don Speich, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1987.

11 Thomas Sowell, Education: Assumptions vs. History (Hoover Institution Press, 1986).

The state of Georgia bragged that 85% of its students met or exceeded the proficiency benchmark on its 2007 tests. But only 28% of the same students scored high enough to be considered proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, administered by the US Department of Education. Georgia, like many states, sets its proficiency standards so low that barely literate students can be deemed proficient. Alarmingly, five other states have even lower standards. Fifteen states lowered their levels between 2009 and 2011. Since 2012, New York students can pass the English exam required for high school graduation with a grade of 55 out of 100.

In view of the dismal results obtained in graduation and achievement exams in Los Angeles, rigorous graduation requirements set in 2005 were dramatically reduced five years later. Students can now pass college preparation courses with only a D grade, even though California colleges require a C average for admission. The California state legislature also passed a law exempting most students with disabilities from taking the test. The number of units needed to graduate was also reduced so that more students could graduate. “I know of no other school district which is reducing graduation requirements by 60 units could then call such action an improvement [sic],” said former senior district official, Sharon Robinson. The school district called the changes a “creative solution.” Scores are expected to drop farther once California adopts Common Core in the Fall of 2015.

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