The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, reported that today’s high school students’ reading skills and math are not improving, although their grades are better than ever.
“Over the years, substantial changes in reading performance have not occurred,” said Gerald Maring, WSU professor at the Department of Teaching and Learning and co-director of the
“The understandable, but unsatisfactory fact that in
The results of the NAEP survey, which tested 21,000 high school seniors at 900 different high schools across the nation, showed that high school students tested in 2005 had worse reading skills than those tested in 1992, although the score was not significantly different from the score in 2002. Less than one quarter of students tested performed at or above proficient level in mathematics, the study reported.
Maring teaches “Content Area Reading,” where future teachers have an opportunity to study NAEP’s surveys and analyze their implications to try to find solutions. “ Of course, solutions to our literacy problems must be related to matters of cultural and linguistic difference, the overuse of the worst aspects of television and pop culture and Hollywood media, and the problems Alan Bloom identified in his 1980s best seller ‘The Closing of the American Mind’,” he said. “In short, NAEP scores point out the result of all this: that as a culture and as a nation we are not, unfortunately, a nation of readers. Our Cougars who are pre-service teachers or graduate students in literacy development are learning ways to combat our literacy problems, to overcome the literacy challenges. But the battle and the challenge are very great.”
To contact Maring call, (509) 335-5651or e-mail, maring@wsu.edu.
Related Links:
The National Assessment of Educational Progress: https://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_grade12_2005/
