Despite increases in test scores, most American Children don't have a command of the basic facts of American history.
Federal officials reported yesterday that students in 4th, 8th and 12th grades had scored modestly higher on an American history test than five years earlier, although more than half of high school seniors still showed poor command of basic facts like the effect of the cotton gin on the slave economy or the causes of the Korean War.
Federal officials said they considered the results encouraging because at each level tested, student performance had improved since the last time the exam was administered, in 2001.
“In U.S. history there were higher scores in 2006 for all three grades,” said Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, at a Boston news conference that the Education Department carried by Webcast.
I suppose the silver lining one could cling to is that advances were made despite the lack of emphasis, particularly in lower grades, on history and science educcation.
The best results in the history test were also in fourth grade, where 70 percent of students attained the basic level of achievement or better.
The test results in the two subjects are likely to be closely studied, because Congress is considering the renewal of President Bush’s signature education law, the No Child Left Behind Act.
A number of studies have shown that because No Child Left Behind requires states to administer annual tests in math and reading, and punishes schools where scores in those subjects fail to rise, many schools have reduced time spent on other subjects, including history. In a recent study, Martin West, an education professor at Brown, used federal data to show that during 2003-4, first- and sixth-grade teachers spent 23 fewer minutes a week on history than during 1999-2000.
Still though, haveing 70% of 4th grades at the "basic" level is not anything to really crow about.
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