“About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.”
According to the New York Times our society is crumbling as we know it! Well actually according to the standards of the NCLB Act our country is earning one big fat “F” in writing. My question is…. How is if these people are labeled as failures in school and then they go on to lead good, fulfilling, and often highly successful lives? Are these students really failing or are our standards failing them?
I am a firm believer in the idea that if more than half of a class is failing then perhaps it’s not the students failing but the teacher. Perhaps this is a similar situation and the students are learning and growing just as they always have (perhaps even more with the mountains of requirements we place on their shoulders) but our standards are simply so inaccurate that we think that they are doing terribly.
It’s true our students are failing in major ways on standardized test, but when you keep raising the bar eventually students simply won’t be able to reach high enough to drag themselves over it. Perhaps we have hit that barrier?
“Girls far outperformed boys in the test, with 41 percent of eighth-grade girls scoring at or above the proficient level, compared with 20 percent of eighth-grade boys.”
Do these numbers mean that females are twice as successful in life? Not every student is going to be Mark Twain or Emily Dickinson yet we continue to act as though they all should be. I say enough! Stop making our students feel like failures just because we do an awful job of determining what is passing or failing.
So to all the students out there, don’t give up on school you can do it! Do your best, and that should be all that we ask of you.
Written By Sam Dillon
Published By The New York Times
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