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Social promotion and efforts to ban standardized tests are ways of shielding adults from accountability.
If you stare really hard—and maybe squint—at last week’s federal report on long-term K-12 education trends in the U.S., there is some good news. Math and reading scores among 9-year-olds have improved a little since 2022, and most of the gains were driven by struggling students. It’s a signal that those in the youngest cohort of test takers are recovering from the disastrous pandemic school closures.
The good news pretty much ends there. Among 13-year-olds in nearly every demographic group, test scores in math and reading were flat. And most youngsters continue to lack proficiency in both subjects. Standardized tests have no shortage of detractors, but these evaluations have become more important in an era of grade inflation and meaningless graduation rates.
Last week several readers pointed me to a recent investigative report in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the pressure on teachers to pass students regardless of classroom performance or even attendance. The paper said it was “an open secret that in many schools, it is nearly impossible to fail a student.” The result is a school system full of children unable to perform academically at even the most basic level.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.