No Child Left Behind?
Why the hell not?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills -- no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
War On Moronism, anyone?
Possibly the saddest thing about this is that a) when these people leave school, their disabilities continue, b) they still get to vote, even though clueless about issues.
Of course, they will be certain that their opinions are correct. I'd love to see what their distribution between political parties and religious sects might be!
Radwaste at January 21, 2006 6:11 AM
Perhaps if we spent less time trying to get bible study into high schools we would not have this problem. We could spend that money on say...problem solving skills and more English classes.
Wes at January 21, 2006 8:03 AM
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