Monday, November 20, 2006

Proficiency for All - an Oxymoron



Courtesy of AFT NCLBlog, this report on NBLB's proficiency mandate discusses reasonable targets for proficiency goals.

An example in the paper illustrates illustrating the absurdity of an 100% proficiency mandate.

Singapore's 13 year olds scored first in the world in math in 2003, with an average scale score of 605, compared with 504 among US 8th graders. But one-quarter of the students in Singapore scored below the NAEP proficient level in math. In other words, a nation that trounces the USA in math still only gets about 75% proficiency.

They're still more than a standard deviation away from even 98% proficiency.

For the USA, it would be far easier to achieve "best in the world" performance than to achieve a 100% proficient mandate.