Are Education Reforms Causing a Decline in Student Achievement?
Education reforms are designed to boost student achievement, but what if they are producing the exact opposite result? According to research published in the scholarly journal Physics Education, entering freshman at England's University of Bristol are less prepared for college level work than they were nearly 40 years ago—despite decades of efforts to improve secondary education.
A generation ago, Bristol's physics faculty began to worry that students weren't coming in the door with the math and science knowledge they needed to be successful. So in 1975, they began administering a "prior knowledge test"—designed to reveal areas of strengths and weakness—to incoming freshmen. Faculty used the PKT
