American Students Show Mediocre Test Results
By Carole Hornsby Haynes April 13, 2018 Education Views
The United States spends more on K-12 education than almost any other nation in the world and yet our students are performing poorly on tests.
This week the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress test results in mathematics and reading were published. These are tests that have been funded by Congress since the late 1960s and early 1970s and required for all 50 states as part of No Child Left Behind. Called the nation’s “Report Card,” NAEP tests must be given at least every two years to a stratified random sample of students at specific grade levels (4, 8, and upper high school).
The Texas required standardized tests -- STAAR -- are vilified by parents and teachers alike who complain teachers are forced to teach to the test, using 25 percent -- 46 days -- of precious classroom time. But there is more to the story than that.
Recently Texas State Rep. Jason Isaac, vice chair of the Texas Conservative Coalition & State Representative from House Dist. 45, told 
John Stuart Mill, called the “most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century," characterized government schools in his 1859 treatise