Increases in Public Education Spending Yields Lower SAT Scores

The New American reports:

One would think that after a hundred years of compulsory school attendance, this nation would have reached new heights of literacy and intelligence. But the very opposite is true. The latest SAT verbal scores for the class of 2011 are the lowest on record. Indeed, the combined reading and math scores have fallen to their lowest level since 1995. No surprise when you consider that No Child Left Behind has just about left every child in the government schools very far behind.

There is actually no better evidence documenting the dumbing-down process than the SAT scores. For example, in 1972, 2,817 students achieved a verbal score of 750 to 800, the highest possible score. In 1987 only 1,363 students achieved that score. In 1994, it was up slightly to 1,438. In other words, over a thousand smarties became dumber.

In 1972, a total of 116,630 students achieved verbal scores between 600 and 800. In 1987 only 88,000 achieved that score. In 1972, a total of 71,084 scored between 200 and 249 in the verbal test, the lowest possible score. In 1987 the number of students scoring in that lowest category had risen to 123,470. In 1994, that number had increased to 136,841.

And so the smart have been getting dumber, and the dumb have been getting even dumber. It should be noted that the total number of students who took the test in 1972 was 1,022,680; in 1987, it was 1,080,426. In 1994, that number was down to 1,050,386, probably indicating that fewer students felt they could score well on the SAT test.

A review of the reforms, such as the new Common Core Standards, being advocated by the establishment, should convince any thinking citizen that government education is headed toward oblivion. Higher teacher pay, national certification, restructuring, more social services, more vegetables for lunch, preschool education, smaller class size, more sex ed, and other such reforms will cost the taxpayers billions of dollars but not one of them will improve academic education.

Monopolies produce very bad results.