MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Location: file:///C:/1F15DE0C/dumbestgen.html.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Jewish World Review June 3, 2009 / 11 Sivan 5769

3 June 2009

Jewi= sh World Review

Dumbest Generation Getting Dumber

By Walter Williams http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006,= U.S. st= udents ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science. McKinsey &a= mp; Company, in releasing its report "The Economic Impact of the Achieveme= nt Gap in America's Schools" (April 2009) said, "Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth grade reading, math, and science, US students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age = 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students a= re farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce." That's a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school a= nd the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.

W= hile the academic performance of white students is grossly inferior, that of bla= ck and Latino students is a national disgrace. The McKinsey report says, "= ;On average, black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learni= ng behind white students of the same age. This racial gap exists regardless of= how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score) and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures. Taking the average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for math and reading across the fourth a= nd eighth grades, for example, 48 percent of blacks and 43 percent of Latinos = are 'below basic,' while only 17 percent of whites are, and this gap exists in every state. A more pronounced racial achievement gap exists in most large = urban school districts." Below basic is the category the NAEP uses for stude= nts unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental = for proficient work at their grade level.

T= he teaching establishment and politicians have hoodwinked taxpayers into belie= ving that more money is needed to improve education. The = Washington, D.C.= , school budget is about the nation's costliest, spending about $15,000 per pupil. Its student/teacher ratio, at 15.2 to 1, = is lower than the nation's average. Yet student achievement is just about the lowest in the nation. What's so callous about the Washington situation is a= bout 1,700 children in kindergarten through 12th grade receive the $7,500 annual scholarships in order to escape rotten D.C. public schools, and four times = as many apply for the scholarships, yet Congress, beholden to the education establishment, will end funding the school voucher program.

A= ny long-term solution to our education problems requires the decentralization = that can come from competition. Centralization has been massive. In 1930, there = were 119,000 school districts across the U.S; today, there are less than 15,000. Control has moved from local communities to the school district, to the sta= te, and to the federal government. Public education has become a highly central= ized government-backed monopoly and we shouldn't be surprised by the results. It= 's a no-brainer that the areas of our lives with the greatest innovation, tailor= ing of services to individual wants and falling prices are the areas where ther= e is ruthless competition such as computers, food, telephone and clothing industries, and delivery companies such as UPS, Federal Express and electro= nic bill payments that have begun to undermine the postal monopoly in first-cla= ss mail. =

A= t a Washington press conference launching the McKinsey report, Al Sharpton<= /span> called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that t= he enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today= , in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was "Professor James Crow." Sharpton is only partly correct. Sc= hool reform is not solely a racial issue; it's a vital issue for the entire nati= on.

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