In the Strib voters guide, Justin Bacon writes "For three decades, the state of our educational system has seen consistent decay. In math, science literature and every other subject, the educational standards to which we hold our children are lower than those to which their parents were held. We need to reverse this alarming trend --..."
Just a little over three decades ago, under pressure from the civil rights movement, the educational system in this country began to make significant progress in reducing the test score gap in math and reading, according to test score data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. However, since the late 1980s the test score gap has been getting wider. Bacon uses the rhetoric of a conservative school reform movement that has been bashing the public schools for the past 20 years on the basis of unfounded claims that those evil Liberal educational levelers were reducing the test score gap at the expense of the high achievers, that teachers were watering down the curriculum in order to teach to the middle, etc. However, in recent years educational outcomes for poor and minority students in big city school systems have been getting worse in a relative or absolute sense as conservative school reforms have been implemented. -Doug Mann, King Field Mann for School Board web site: http://educationright.tripod.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
