Few States, Including Kansas, Set World-Class Standards

by Bob Weeks on February 2, 2009

The federal No Child Left Behind legislation sets the standard that all children should be proficient in reading and math by 2014. While a federal law, it’s left to the states to set the standard as to what proficiency means, and to test for it. As you might imagine, there is considerable variation between the states when they judge the performance of their students on test.

The article Few States Set World-Class Standards explains in more detail and includes a table grading the states as to the strength of their proficiency standards. Kansas received an overall grade of C-. More troubling for Kansas is that the change in proficiency standards is down, meaning that standards for Kansas schoolchildren are becoming less stringent.

Additional coverage of this issue:
Every State Left Behind
Schoolchildren Will Be Basically Proficient
The Obama Education Agenda, Applied to Kansas

Related posts:

Tagged as: Education, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Government is essentially the negation of liberty. — Ludwig von Mises
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Barbra Streisand told Diane Sawyer that we're in a global warming crisis, and we can expect more and more intense storms, droughts and dust bowls. But before they act, weather experts say they're still waiting to hear from Celine Dion. — Jay Leno
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Late one night in Washington, D.C. a mugger wearing a ski mask jumped into the path of a well-dressed man and stuck a gun in his ribs. "Give me your money!" he demanded. Indignant, the affluent man replied, "You can't do this. I'm a United States Congressman!" "In that case," replied the robber, "give me my money!" — Related by Walter Block
The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives, who are often attached to the monarchical traditions of a happily obsolete European past, libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. Libertarians are the only genuine current heirs of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson, and the abolitionists. — From "For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" by Murray N. Rothbard
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. — H.L. Mencken
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The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one’s property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. — Walter Williams
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And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
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And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
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And by that time there was no one left to speak up. — Pastor Martin Niemöller
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After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. — Walter E. Williams
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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick. ... It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. — Adam Smith
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