State black 8th-graders rank worst in nation in writing

[HereSince1628]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=735486

By ALAN J. BORSUK
[e-mail]
Posted: April 3, 2008

The classic three R's of education - reading, writing and arithmetic - became the three R's of educational alarm for Wisconsin with the release Thursday of nationwide data on eighth-graders' writing ability.

While Wisconsin students on the whole did better than the national average and better than in 1998, the last time the same tests were given here, Wisconsin's African-American students had the lowest average score in the nation, and the gap between black and white scores in Wisconsin was the second worst in the United States.

<snip>

...the Education Trust's Hall was critical of Wisconsin's efforts.

"Wisconsin needs to be looking long and hard at who's teaching its African-American students and what expectations those teachers have for those students," she said. "Are they writing every day? Or are they filling out worksheets? (my emphasis) All too often, we see, not just in Wisconsin, that classrooms in high-poverty and high-minority schools are doing low-level work."


<snip>



. . . . . .
Once upon a time Wisconsin was a leader in education. What a shame.

BTW. I'm required to use daily worksheets in the Intro Bio program I teach in at a Milwaukee women's college.

[sybylla]

1. This is one of the saddest things about our school system

As a state, we set some of the highest standards in the country. And yet we let an entire class of student down. I don't know enough about MPS or Madison schools to blame this entirely on them, but clearly we need to do something as a state to stop this injustice.

[midnight]

2. Reading and writing are two skills that should be practiced

together. Just curious, but when was the time when Wisconsin was considered the cream of the crop for Education?