Dismal Decline in 12th Grader’s Reading Abilities
Nick Mangiaracina notes some disturbing statistics about the trend of American high school students in his article “Reading, writing are one of our last bonds” , published in the University Daily Kansan. This information, culled from the well known National Endowment for the Arts survey completed in 2004, has been noted elsewhere many times before, but it bears repeating:
According to a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, the percentage of people reading literature dropped 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002. More significant was the 17 percentage point decline of reading literature of those between the ages of 18 and 24 during the same time period.
Standardized test scores support this trend. The Center for Pubic Education reported a 6 percentage point decline on National Assessment of Education Progress reading test scores among 12th graders between 1992 and 2005. As the name suggests, this test is used to measure progress in education, especially in math and reading.
Its easy to point our blame at schools, especially public schools, but really, there are many fine teachers just trying to maintain as best as they can. What we, as parents or students, can do, is do our best for ourselves in the sphere of influence that we have.
We have to monitor our our kids’ progress and supplement where we can. We don’t have to pay for expensive tutoring, if we can’t afford it, but we can get supplementary materials and start where our kids are at, work with them, and help them reach and exceed their expected grade level of performance.
Isn’t this what homeschoolers do? They have a growing network online and offline where they discuss curriculum and learning experiences and they do very well. As a supplement, some of these same strategies would work for our non-home schooled kids.
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