I think there is no other country in the world where, proportionately to population, there are so few ignorant and so few learned individuals as in America. Primary education is within reach of all; higher education is hardly available to anybody” - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1848.
Since 1971, test scores and proficiency levels in all subjects of learning have been falling. Based on the research of Caroline Hoxby, who recently divided average student achievement scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress by per-pupil-spending data from the U.S. Department of Education to estimate the change in productivity between 1970-71 and 1998-99. She found American school productivity fell by between 55 and 73 percent, depending on the skill and age cohort tested. According to Hoxby, if schools today were as productive as they were in 1970-71, the average 17-year-old would have a score that fewer than 5 percent of 17-year-olds currently attain. that: Additionally, it was reported in 1995
“Twenty-five percent of high school seniors can barely read their diplomas, and only 3 percent can write above an adequate level
Only 15 percent of college faculty members say their students are adequately prepared in mathematics and quantitative reasoning
High school seniors correctly answer questions about basic economic concepts only 35 percent of the time
American businesses lose between $25 billion and $30 billion a year because of the weak reading and writing skills of their workers.”
Thirty years ago, the public school system was thought to be a failed experiment. Such prominent writers as Peter Schrag said we had reached “the end of the impossible dream” of providing universal, free, and high-quality public education. In the 2000-2001 school year, over 41 million students were enrolled in the public school system. The total cost of the public school system for that year was $334 billion, which equals $7,079 per student. The average cost per student is continually rising, but the average proficiency per student has been continually falling. Thirty-five years ago, the educational deficit became clear. Since then, the government has tried nearly everything in their power to fix the problem: they have failed.
A radical change must take place in the American public schools. The primary education of the current generation is most accurately described in the words of a Nebraska teacher who taught at one of the nation's best academic high schools:
With very few exceptions, I watched for fourteen years as student after student entered and left high school having learned next to nothing during his or her four year term. . . . My experience has convinced me that if the purpose of the public schools were to prevent children from acquiring an education, they could not do a better job than they are right now, at this very moment in the classrooms all across the nation. . . . [The public school system] crushes our children's intellectual curiosity and then demands that they learn anyways (1992).
Clearly in the last thirty years, the scholastic proficiency of the average high school graduate has been falling, and based on the data, will continue to fall. This trend is perilous indeed. The consequences of the low proficiency of many younger Americans are yet to be seen. No doubt, they will be far reaching.
“The educational foundations of out society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. . . . We have, in effect been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament”- A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform (1982).
