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To assess the changes in student achievement caused by major social and educational upheaval;
• To define the problems that must be solved before educational excellence is ours again.
To discharge its duties, the commission used both new and existing information. Members of the panel, (listed in detail in the report), commissioned more than sixty papers from experts in various educational fields and held countless hearings in all regions of the country. Any school system that wanted was invited to communicate with the group. As might be expected, most of the information gathered was from hearings in urban rather than rural locations, a bias that should not affect the findings or their application to Rappahannock.
After 18 months of asking for and receiving information on curriculum, administration and student achievement, the commission looked over its mountain of paper and came up with its report. The results are disturbing, and, in many different forums have been published, criticized and rebutted. But even most of the report’s critics do agree that our educational standards are not what they once were: the evidence is just too damaging. Some, but not all of the statistics making up this alarming picture:
• International testing - in nineteen academic tests completed ten years ago by students of industrialized nations, American children' never came in first or second and were last seven times.
• Illiteracy - at least 23 million adults in this country are illiterate; at least thirteen percent of all 17-yearolds, up to 40 percent of minority youth are illiterate.
• Neglect of gifted students - over half of them fail to match their tested ability with achievement in school.
• College entrance exams- scores have dropped steadily since 1963, falling over 50 points in verbal and 40 points in math testing.
70.9%