Tag Archives: good news

There Is Probably No “Crisis” In American Education

By Paul Bruno | Published: June 9, 2014

Here is a chart of educational attainment in the United States since 1940: When you look at that chart, do you see a crisis? No? Me neither. How about in these charts of reading and math achievement on the NAEP for 17-year-olds, broken down by race? Still hard to see a crisis, at least to […]

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Nobody Likes Good News About Education

By Paul Bruno | Published: October 29, 2013

After Politifact rated as “mostly false” Diane Ravitch’s claim about rising student achievement until NCLB, Andy Rotherham reluctantly came to her quasi-defense: Of all the false claims she’s lobbed out over the past few years, I’m not sure why they chose to go after her on that one where she’s more or less right.  She […]

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Three Cheers for the NCES

By Paul Bruno | Published: June 4, 2013

Coming off of last week’s post about high school graduation rates, I’ve got a more detailed (with graphs and everything) post up at This Week In Education. The basic idea, again, is that over the last 40 years we’ve not only seen graduation rates increase substantially, we’re also seeing significantly higher achievement (at least according to […]

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Rising Graduation Rates Probably Reflect Improved Achievement

By Paul Bruno | Published: May 28, 2013

Bryan Caplan asks whether increases in the graduation rate are really good news: In the pure human capital model, rising graduation rates are good if they reflect increased learning.  But they are not good if they reflect lower standards.  For all its faults, the human capital model is no rationale for social promotion – handing out diplomas based on age […]

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