From: Martin Solomon <mbsolomon@aol.com>
Dr. Philip Kovacs asks whether the data supplied by Bill Gates and Eli
Broad, chronicling the crisis in education have validity. The answer is no.
Gates and Broad say that: Over two thirds of new jobs being created require
college education or advanced training.
Answer: Wrong. According to the Bureau of labor Statistics forecast for the
year 2014, there will be 10.4 million new jobs requiring no post-secondary
education, only on-the-job training and another 2.7 million not requiring a
bachelor?s degree but some post-secondary training, while there will be 5.8
million new jobs requiring a bachelor?s degree or higher.
Source:
<http://data.bls.gov/oep/servlet/oep.noeted.servlet.ActionServlet?Action=empr>http://data.bls.gov/oep/servlet/oep.noeted.servlet.ActionServlet?Action=empr
prt&Occ=XXXXXXXXXX&Number=All&Sort=nchg&Base=2004&Proj=2014&EdLevel=98&Searc
h=Education&Type=Education&Phrase=&StartItem=0
Gates and Broad say that: Seventy percent of 8th graders can?t read at
their grade level ? and most will never catch up.
Answer: Wrong again. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the
nation?s report card, establishes four categories of educational attainment:
below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. The National Assessment
Governing Board defined achievement levels as:
Basic?denotes partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are
fundamental for proficient work at a given grade.
Proficient?represents solid academic performance. Students reaching this
level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter.
Advanced?signifies superior performance.
Nowhere is ?grade level? defined. Some people define grade level as the
average of a grade. Perhaps, above basic may be considered grade level.
But certainly not proficient which demonstrates ?competency over challenging
subject matter.? That is clearly above average. Yet people who would like
to denigrate public schools, continue to equate proficient with grade level,
which is absolutely misleading and disingenuous.
In the 2005 NAEP reading test, 71% of 8th graders scored basic or above
which is a probably a much better picture of grade-level achievement.
Gates and Broad say: The majority of employers and college professors say
today?s high school graduates do not have the skills to succeed. The
majority of high school graduates say they regret not learning more in high
school.
Answer: Correct. But the majority of employers have ALWAYS complained that
high school graduates are not sufficiently skilled. This has been said
every year since 1845. Richard Rothstein chronicles this constant and
never-ending criticism of high school graduates in his book, ?The Way We
Were?? But things have never been different in America. Rothstein puts
things in perspective, however by pointing out that in 1900, only 6 percent
of youngsters graduated from high school and more half failed to get past
the eighth grade.
Gates and Broad say: ?In 1976, the U.S. was home to 30 percent of the
world?s college graduates. Today it?s 14 percent.?
Answer: So what? What does that prove? In the past 31 years the developing
world has been, well, developing. That seems like a good thing and I would
guess that Gates and Broad don?t quite realize that more educated people in
foreign countries will create greater markets for computer software and
retirement programs. More educated people in foreign countries might create
a more stable and less belligerent world. But in any case, it seems silly
to blame American education for the educational progress in foreign
countries.
Gates and Broad say: ?America?s high school graduation rate ranks 19th in
the world. (Forty years ago, we were first.)?
Answer: Naïve. Neither the United States nor any foreign country knows what
it?s graduation rate is. Here in the U.S. we cannot even agree on how to
measure it and we have had widely differing estimates by various groups.
Gates and Broad claim that our graduation rate was highest in the world in
1967. That is utter nonsense. In 1967 we hadn?t, the foggiest idea of our
national graduation rate. Not even an inkling. But more importantly, David
Berliner has pointed out that the child poverty rate in the U.S. is higher
than any other developed nation and we all know that low test scores and
dropouts are highly correlated with poverty.
So in summary, as Shakespeare would say, Gates and Broad present us with,
?sound and fury, signifying nothing.?
Marty