"Student scores on history 'abysmal'"
Mike Yared
History appears to be a mystery to American high school seniors,
according to a national "report card" released yesterday.
John Gilmer
LenLW
>Stupid Teachers => Un-Educated Students
How about stupid or uncaring parents?
Len
Jim Elbrecht
How about stupid tests make kids, teachers, & parents all look
stupider than they are?
Look over the test at
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls/search.asp?picksubj=History
Then look at the answers the kids gave. Look at the variation
between Public & private schools, ethnicity, urban & rural, and
geographic location.
I think the test has loads of faults, but this question was pretty
straightforward.
The kids didn't do well on this question;
Question 22
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness . . . "
The passage comes from the
A) Constitution
B) Mayflower Compact
C) Declaration of Independence
D) Articles of Confederation
[46% got it right--24% thought it was the Constitution. 5% never got
that far on the test.]
So a newspaper reporter says "Students did not know, for instance,
that America's fundamental belief in individual liberty was expressed
in the Declaration of Independence .. ." [Sue Pleming, the author
of the Reuters article; "US History Stumps Many High School Seniors"
May 9, 2002 -- note that she doesn't identify it as a 4th grade
question here- but the Secretary of Education knew it was.]
She quotes the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, as saying; "For
starters, a third of our fourth graders don't know that our
fundamental right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'
comes from the Declaration of Independence,"
Excuse me Mr. Secretary, but the Declaration of Independence doesn't
guarantee anything. [oh-- and 54% is a bit more than a third]
So is the problem with the students, the teachers, the parents,the
test givers or what?
Jim
Rod Keys
LenLW wrote:
Many years ago I wrote a paper comparing education in Germany with that
in Russia in 1900.
The two countries had a allot in common then. They both had
authoritarian monarchies. Both believed in harsh dissiplin. And so on
and so on.
But Germany had a literacy rate well over 95% on a rather small
education budget and Russia was less than 15%. literate on a huge
education budget .. Germany led the world in engineering and science
while Russia remained 100 years behind in technology. Russia spent far
more per capita on education than Germany but got stink bomb results.
How can this be? The answer to this puzzle, in my opinion, was:
Germany had "The three freedoms." Academic freedom meant that teachers
taught what they felt should be taught. Students freedom was the
freedom to take the classes you wanted and Administrative freedom meant
that administration was kept to a minimum and any administrators at all
were really teachers elected by other teachers and students.
At the same time Russia had a State set curriculum, extensive teacher
testing, hordes of administrators, oceans of money spent on education
but no freedom at all.
The moral of the story is that state set curriculum, teacher testing and
money do nothing. The answer is in dedication teachers, parents and
students. Given these, education will be fine. Just pouring money at
the problem and testing everybody will just piss everybody off and get
no results.
Rod
Jim Elbrecht
-snip-
>The moral of the story is that state set curriculum, teacher testing and
>money do nothing. The answer is in dedication teachers, parents and
>students. Given these, education will be fine. Just pouring money at
>the problem and testing everybody will just piss everybody off and get
>no results.
I mostly agree with that, though I do see value in state [not
federal!] guidelines.
That test seems to bear out your theory. Look through the
questions and see how much better the kids in private schools did than
those in public schools. It is generally about 5% better. [I
didn't check them all, but the several questions I looked at bore out
the 5-10% improvement in private schools.] I would think that
demographics & parental motivation should account for that 5-10%
easily. The better paid teachers, smaller classrooms & 'atmosphere'
don't seem to make much of a difference.
Jim
Jim Elbrecht
I find a couple of items of concern within the very article that is
criticizing today's students;
> Student scores on history 'abysmal'
> By Cheryl Wetzstein
> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
> For example, fewer than 30 percent of American high school
> seniors knew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President
> Johnson to expand the scope of the Vietnam War.
That is an interesting question.[#77 at
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls/search.asp?picksubj=History
] If I were a teacher I'd be asking why 43% of students thought it
had anything to do with the Korean war.
The question;
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) was significant because it
A) ended the war in Korea
B) gave President Johnson the authority to expand the scope of the
Vietnam War
C) was an attempt to take foreign policy power away from the
President
D) allowed China to become a member of the United Nations
the answers;
a.43%, b. 29%, c. 15%, d. 13%
The difference between private & public schools on this one was the
usual 5%. For some reason 10% more of the kids from the Northeast got
it than those in the west. 12% more 'urban fringe' kids got it than
the rural ones. And perhaps not surprisingly the Asian kids
outscored their white, black & hispanic counterparts.
But, except for the Asian kids, in every case more of them thought
the Gulf of Tonkin affected the Korean war than Vietnam.
> And only 34 percent knew Nat Turner's rebellion led Southern
> states to tighten control of slaves.
Actually 26%. 34% chose the same 'wrong' answer.
On this one I fault the test;
The question [#180]
What was one consequence of Nat Turner's rebellion?
A) Large numbers of slaves fled to the North.
B) Slave revolts broke out throughout the South.
C) Conditions for slaves on many southern plantations improved.
D) Southern states passed laws designed to tightly control slaves
The answers the students gave;
a.21, b. 34, c. 19, d. 26*, Since the question didn't specify
'immediate', or 'direct', then I think I agree with 34% of the kids---
Nat inspired more revolts.
> Among fourth-graders, 68 percent thought California, Illinois or
> Texas was one of the original 13 Colonies.
?? The author seems to be looking at a different key. The key I'm
looking at says 65% got it right. [still not impressive, but not the
shocker that '68% got it wrong'-- and remember these are 4th graders,
not the seniors mentioned in the opening line of the article.]
Question #167;
Which of these was one of the thirteen colonies that fought the
American Revolution against the British?
A) Illinois
B) California
C) New York
D) Texas
a. 17, b. 8, c. 65*, d. 10
The public school kids were wrong 8% more than the nonpublic school
kids. Only 56% of the kids in the Southeast got it right, but
70% of Northeasters did.
> These are "truly abysmal scores," New York University education
> professor Diane Ravitch told a Department of Education news
> conference yesterday.
"All of us need to understand the ideas, traditions and the democratic
> values that unify our nation," she said. "This is not possible unless one
> has studied and learned the history of the United States."
This is an aside--- but can anyone state the value of learning history
better than Prof. Ravitch? What she is saying is that kids need to
learn history in order to "understand the ideas, traditions and the
democratic values that unify our nation". She doesn't say what value
that understanding holds. Does it outweigh the value of science,
or math, or communication skills?
-snip-
> When asked about the "major cause" of the Civil War, 57 percent of
> fourth-graders knew that it was a North-South dispute over
> slavery.
Except that it wasn't, really. The keyword is 'states rights' not
'slavery'.
IMO the test gave no good answer to the question;
What was a major cause of the Civil War?
(a) People in the North and in the South had different religions.
(b) People in the North and in the South disagreed over slavery.
(c) People in the North wanted control of the country when they found
out that gold had been discovered in the South.
(d) People in the South wanted control of the country when they found
out that oil had been discovered in the North.
> More than half of eighth-graders [52 percent] knew that Roger
> Williams was forced to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony
> because of a fight over religious beliefs.
Question 45;
Why was Roger Williams forced to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
A) He claimed that the Puritan government had no right to control
religious beliefs
B) He was more loyal to the King of Spain than to the English
monarchy.
C) He refused to do his share of the farming and other work.
D) He wanted to lead a war against the American Indians.
a. 52*,b. 18,c. 13,d. 15
> Among 12th-graders, 68 percent correctly identified the Harlem
> Renaissance as a 1920s period of achievements in black art, literature and music.
Question 88;
The phrase "Harlem Renaissance" refers to
A) African American political gains during the Reconstruction period
B) African American achievements in art, literature, and music in the
1920's
C) religious revival in the African American community that swept the
nation in the 1950's
D) a series of urban renewal projects that were part of the Great
Society program of the 1960's
a. 9, b. 68*,c. 13, d. 9
> Far fewer seniors, though, could explain the ramifications of an early section
> in the U.S. Constitution that counted the population as "the whole number
> of free persons three-fifths of other persons."
Here's the first essay question the reported tackled. Overall the
essay questions were complete failures. The questions were
generally vague, often had several parts and were sometimes based on
previous question, so if you got one question wrong you were doomed to
failure on the second.
Of the first 100 questions shown on the NCES site, 34 were essay.
The average 'appropriate' answers given for these 34 is 17%. [A low
of 3%, and a high of 38%]. On average more than one in ten
students skipped the essay questions. [Average 10.4%, with a high of
41% - question #76. No-one skipped #43, but since only 5% got full
credit, maybe they should have.]
> Only 21 percent of seniors could explain how that passage affected
> the counting of black slaves and the makeup of the House of Representatives
> in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Here is question #79;
Article I, Section 2, United States Constitution
"[The population of states] shall be determined by adding to the whole
number of free persons . . . three-fifths of all other persons."
An important debate led to the writing of this section of the
Constitution. Identify the issue being debated.
Describe the northern position in this debate and explain why many
northerners took it.
Describe the southern position in this debate and explain why many
southerners took it.
The scores;
Inappropriate 46 partial 20 essential 9 appropriate 12 omitted 11
off task 3 not reached 0.
Only 12% got it 'right'. 9 more percent included the 'essential'
points, but 11% of the kids skipped the question entirely.
How the numeric score is determined isn't explained, but a key
explaining how they determined the individual score is.
An 'Essential' answer is explained as; "The response identifies the
debate, and the arguments made by northern and southern states over
how to count slaves for the purposes of representation, without
mentioning the desire of the southern states to increase their voting
power in the House, OR top portion is blank but the issue is made
clear in two correct positions or gets all parts right but weak,
flawed, inconsistent, or incomplete.
> NAEP surveys do not explain why students perform as they do.
> The 2001 history survey, however, indicated that getting more than 180
> minutes a week in social studies was linked to good scores among
> fourth-graders, and almost-daily reading of social studies textbooks and
> using computers to research and write history reports was beneficial.
This seems like common sense to me, ['If you teach them, they will
learn.'] but if anyone can see where that is indicated on the NCES
site, I'd appreciate it.
I don't know which is worse, the test itself, or the limited reporting
on it.
Jim
Jim Elbrecht
that were given to two grades were listed twice, apparently once for
each grade.
Jim Elbrecht <Elbr...@email.com> wrote:
-snip-
>>
>>http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020510-74547288.htm
-snip-
>> Student scores on history 'abysmal'
>> By Cheryl Wetzstein
>> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>
-snip-
>> And only 34 percent knew Nat Turner's rebellion led Southern
>> states to tighten control of slaves.
>
>Actually 26%. 34% chose the same 'wrong' answer.
>On this one I fault the test;
>The question [#180]
>What was one consequence of Nat Turner's rebellion?
> A) Large numbers of slaves fled to the North.
> B) Slave revolts broke out throughout the South.
> C) Conditions for slaves on many southern plantations improved.
> D) Southern states passed laws designed to tightly control slaves
>
>The answers the [8th grade] students gave;
>a.21, b. 34, c. 19, d. 26*,
As the author said, 34% of the Seniors answered it correctly;
a. 16, b. 35, b. 13, b. 34* omitted 1 not reached 1
[and note that 1% more gave what I would call the other correct
answer]
Jim
Sharon Desrosiers
much more to it than the intelligence level of the teacher
(who, by the way, is required to take a history competency
exam before they are able to teach in my state). The town is
of a low-socio-economic environment. The parents could care
less about their child's education, attendance is a HUGE
problem, not to mention the student's attitudes. They just
don't care and they have no respect for the teacher who is
busting their ass trying to deliver a good (and interesting)
education.