Oh, to be in Lake Wobegone, where all of the children are above average. Instead, North Carolina’s rankings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show our kids are ... well, average. At least in reading and arithmetic.
Lake Wobegone is the fictitious creation of longtime public radio storyteller Garrison Keillor. Keillor regularly described the mythical town in Minnesota as a place where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.”
Here in reality, North Carolina children scored slightly above average on fourth-grade tests in reading and math; slightly below average in eighth-grade reading; and right on average in eighth-grade math.
Taken as a whole and as noted above, the results seem pretty average.
Granted, that’s better than failing, and there’s some moral satisfaction to be garnered from a test taken in a school year when lawmakers were still going back and forth on funding for public schools. But we have high hopes that scores will improve in the years ahead.
The challenges facing public schools seem to multiply every year – from home-schooling to charter school funding to private school vouchers. It’s important for North Carolina students to continue to improve, particularly in the face of competition.
It’s also important for parents to remember that no other educational institution faces the kind of scrutiny that public schools do. Especially not the ones in Lake Wobegone.
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/opinion/our-views/average-scores-leave-room-improve-3032279
