I have been known to call this the Secret Blog of Gloom and Doom. I promise a fun post like my Christmas letter soon. Because I do want people to keep reading and if I keep writing, “Well, this is another way that the whole thing has gone to hell in a handbasket!” perhaps people will reach for their Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels instead. I also should stick some fun pictures in recent posts. But I have to add one more nail to education’s coffin this morning, because I don’t want a scary speculation to slip past us.

The following is from a post a few days ago:

From a government document titled “NAEP 2012 Trends in Academic Progress, Reading 1971–2012 | Mathematics 1973–2012″ at https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013456:

“Results from the 2012 NAEP (a test that has been given to America’s students since 1973 as part of government tracking of educational trends) long-term trend assessment show improvement in the mathematics knowledge and skills demonstrated by 9- and 13-year-olds in comparison to students their age in 1973, but no significant change in the overall performance of 17-year-olds.”

Sadly, the news is even worse when we look at reading scores. According to the same publication, seventeen-year olds in twelfth grade scored 12 points lower in 2012 than in 1971.

Eduhonesty: For all our attempts to create student-centered learning, it would appear that our mathematics remain relatively stagnant and reading has declined. I don’t want to oversimplify. If you read the report, you will find that some disadvantaged groups have shown improvement in math. Reading has been impacted by the lack of recreational reading outside the schools.

What I do want to observe is that in the 1970s and, indeed, until No Child Left Behind (NCLB), few districts were teaching specifically to the state standardized test. This phenomenon where the whole year’s curriculum is scripted to prepare for a huge governmental whammy in the spring began fairly recently, an offshoot of Draconian penalties in NCLB for schools that failed to improve test scores. In contrast, students back in the seventies were taught by teachers who were not focused on the annual state test, teachers who were designing their own materials. Those past teachers were frequently standing at the front of the room, lecturing to classes who were quietly taking notes and answering questions toward the end of the hour. Many of those questions were simple questions of fact: What does the Secretary of State do? They were mixed with critical thinking questions: Why did Alexander Hamilton favor a strong, central government? What are the strengths and weaknesses of a strong central government?

If teaching to the test actually works, then today’s test results are not stagnant or gently falling. They may even be plummeting. Without having been taught the content of the test in a laser-like focus, those kids in the seventies nonetheless did as well or better than kids today.

P.S. A small note on the fierce push away from questions of fact toward critical thinking questions: I love critical thinking questions. Nothing is more fun than watching students make connections and draw conclusions based on data. But we might benefit from more people knowing what the Secretary of State actually does.