Large Percentages of American Students Perform Above Grade Level

An additional data point on this issue is from a few years ago, the discovery that students surveyed by the federal National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known informally as &quot;the Nation&#x27;s Report Card,&quot; often self-report that their school lessons are so easy that school is mostly boring.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.americanprogress.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;education&#x2F;report&#x2F;2012&#x2F;07&#x2F;10&#x2F;11913&#x2F;do-schools-challenge-our-students&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.americanprogress.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;education&#x2F;report&#x2F;201...</a><p>On my part, having lived in another country (Taiwan), I have long suspected that most United States pupils could handle more challenging school lessons, if only those were on offer in United States schools. For example, in almost every other country in the world, it is routine for pupils to begin foreign language study while still in elementary school, and in many countries (including Taiwan and Singapore, a generation ago) the majority of school pupils are attending school with a language of instruction that is not the same as the language they speak at home with their parents. Yet most United States high school graduates are resolutely monolingual English speakers, unless they grew up with another home language besides English. International comparisons suggest that there is still plenty of room at the top for achievable higher standards for United States students, and that students would enjoy school better if their lessons were more challenging.

My parents believed in &quot;radical unschooling&quot;, i.e. they didn&#x27;t formally teach us anything at all. I had to ask to learn to read.<p>I entered the public school system for high school and did not find myself at all behind. Much of the history kids had learned was wrong (Columbus, anyone?), I was reading better because I basically read fantasy novels 24&#x2F;7 for the last seven years, and I caught up in math in one semester even though I started high school not knowing division. I have a BS in CS from Georgia Tech now.<p>I am not surprised that students are bored in elementary school. I am also skeptical of everyone commenting here to say things like &quot;but in Russia&#x2F;Singapore&#x2F;China&#x2F;Norway school is so much harder!&quot; etc. Any motivated kid can catch up pretty easily. The big fear, IMO, is that you will burn your kid out, bore your kid to death, and crush their curiosity. I am pretty sure all school systems are capable of doing this, albeit in different ways.

Unsurprising. Under NCLB and related measures, schools are incentivized not to promote advanced students faster than their age peers, since they are rewarded for improvement in (and punished for insufficient improvement or backtracking in) the percentage of students performing at or above grade level, so students that would otherwise have been advanced in grade ahead of their peers are held back to the normal advancement rate to make the schools&#x27; results look better.<p>You get what you pay for.

Grade inflation. Talk to highschool students in western canada&#x2F;us. They talk of 90% as a below-average score. My highschool grades, if I applied to university today, wouldn&#x27;t qualify me for anything.<p>There is an old skier&#x27;s adage: If you aren&#x27;t falling you aren&#x27;t improving. By already knowing everything, these kids learn nothing. Then after all their As these now adults hit my classroom with reading issues and a fear of curiosity. Anything not on the exam is to be actively ignored. Don&#x27;t read anything that might confuse the issues. Stick to the outlines.<p>And when the prof asks you to pick a paper topic on your own, something not already in the outline, inundate him with panicked emails asking what you should and shouldn&#x27;t find interesting .

Students may perform above grade level in reading and math, but tests in these areas fail to measure the skills involved in learning how to learn. No Child Left Behind and its ilk focus on proficiency and remediation, but actually risks leaving bright students behind. When children can breeze through their assigned work because it’s so easy for them, they end up ill prepared for facing challenge and failure when it finally comes. They are left with poor study habits and time management skills because they never needed good ones before. I’m not sure how to measure these skills but doing so may give a more complete picture of a student’s learning situation — maybe a picture that incentivizes challenging students according to their abilities.

As a parent I will respond with the general observation that what most kids in my city (SF) need is more sleep and less rote work.<p>I will _opine_ that what they need is more time outside. Out of the classroom. Out of the house. On the beach and in the forest etc etc.<p>Unfortunately quantity of work [sheets] and number of hours invested are a convenient proxy for &#x27;challenging&#x27; in public education.<p>Fortunately my daughters go to a charter school which is ahead of the curve on contemporary research into education and learning, and compared to their peers in mainline SFUSD, they are relatively insulated from that false equivalence.<p>The cliché but oft-recounted &#x27;tiger mom&#x27; childhood saturated completely by academics sounds to me frankly like hell, and I would work hard to ensure that mirroring its excesses in the US does not become the fad.<p>Me, I&#x27;d far rather we have a generation of rounded kids with experience of the physical (especially, natural) world, than a cadre well trained from birth for knowledge worker jobs which may not even exist when they become adults.

&quot;Between 11% and 37% of California students scored at or above the next grade level . . . of their current grade level. The percentages tend to be higher for students in the older grades.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s a pipe dream to believe that the public education system is going to adapt to be a one-size-fits-all, especially in California&#x27;s gigantic public schools system which has a &quot;minimum&quot; budget of ~$70,000,000,000 allocated to it every year.<p>As a parent there is clear responsibility to help our kids outside of this structure - what strategies does HN undertake with their kids (or what did your parents undertake with you) that helped to close this gap?<p>(1) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cde.ca.gov&#x2F;fg&#x2F;fr&#x2F;eb&#x2F;budletter15-16.asp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cde.ca.gov&#x2F;fg&#x2F;fr&#x2F;eb&#x2F;budletter15-16.asp</a>

Pretty sure we are all above average now.<p>But seriously, it seems like schools have really drifted towards programs that enhance self-esteem and build confidence rather than making school the narcissistic insult it was when I was kid. I think that is fine. For the most part you can learn everything you actually want to know or need to know yourself later in life. It would be great if every kid left school thinking they were really good at things and had the confidence to get out there and try.

The public school my kids attend routinely teaches the N+1 th grade math material in grades 7 and 8 so I suspect it is well known that the official syllabus has been pushed to allow score inflation. Same thing as all airline timetables having 10-20 minutes padding to reduce the probability of a late arrival.

American public schools don&#x27;t have much to offer highly capable students. On the other hand, they don&#x27;t stand in the way of them, either. I met many such in college, and they found ways to get what the wanted.

What real argument for age-based grades can there be?

If I were a billionaire my kids wouldn&#x27;t go to school. I&#x27;d fly in experts and pay them top dollar. Want to learn about the web today? Here&#x27;s Tim Berners-Lee to show you.<p>I guess I&#x27;d make them do team sports so they didn&#x27;t end up weird though...

Pretty obvious side effect of lowering standards.

At the same time India has more kids with IQ over 120 than total amount of kids in the US.