In 2010, fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students across the country took a civics exam administered by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The results of the exam demonstrate just how immediate the need for education reform is in this country. According to the exam, only twenty-five percent of American high school seniors are “proficient” in civics, and only seven percent of eighth graders could identify the three branches of the federal government. That’s twenty-five percent proficiency in civics for a group of people who will be eligible to vote within the year. If students cannot even reach proficiently, it makes sense that even fewer are sophisticated in the subject; only four percent of twelfth graders, and even fewer fourth and eighth graders were “advanced” civics students. These statistics make one point demonstrably clear: the American education system is not working, and government officials owe it to the children of this country (and this country’s future) to fix it. *
The article lists several other takeaways from the disturbing results of the exam, including the following:
· Only 50% of students could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights
· 12th grade scores on the exam actually decreased since the last test administration, while 8th grade results stayed the same.
The results seem dire, but there may be an unfortunately simple explanation. According to Ted McConnell, Executive Director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of School, the No Child Left Behind Act disproportionately emphasizes the teaching of certain subjects. While the act inundates students with reading, math, and science, it focuses little on art, music, social studies, and the humanities. In order for schools to attain NCLB funding and improve their students' chances of scoring well on exams that “matter,” little time is devoted to other extremely important subjects.
But are math, science, and reading pursuits more important than other academic areas like social studies? I think that answer is a resounding no, and so does Peter Levine, director of Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts. According to Mr. Levine, “America has always relied on active citizens to solve our most serious problems. If the next generation of kids can’t rise to that challenge, we’ll be in trouble.” It is impossible to expect out governmental structure to work effectively if only half of America’s children understand the function of the Bill of Rights. We’ve been endowed with the longest lasting and most successful democracy in the history of the world, but if we fail to produce an educated mass of citizens, that system will fail to work properly and we may lose the freedoms that have defined us for so long.
This gaping hole in NCLB’s evaluation and incentive method can, however, be used as a teaching tool. In any future reform legislation, it is critical that certain subjects are not promoted over others. It may in fact be beneficial to pay teachers in math and science more, if it is harder to recruit people to fill those positions. What is not effective, however, is incorporating only certain subjects into potential teacher performance metrics, or driving many more resources into one academic area over another. We must learn from the pitfalls of past education reform bills, because giving academic preference to certain subjects is a problem that all future legislation must avoid.
The full article may be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/federal-civics-test-shows_n_857776.html
*Note, portions of this post are drawn from a strategy paper written for COCO 3 at Dartmouth College.
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