Thursday, October 24, 2013

Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal - Julia Ryan - The Atlantic

Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal - Julia Ryan - The Atlantic:

Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal

Students in Massachusetts are doing great compared to their international peers, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Students in Alabama, Mississippi, and D.C., however, are languishing.


 


Jeff Pioquinto, SJ/Flickr


It’s so common to see studies about the United States’s lackluster academic performance compared to other countries, it’s barely newsworthy anymore. The American education system, the story goes, is mediocre. A new report from the National Center for Educational Statistics complicates that picture a bit. It attempts to rank how individual states compare internationally, and ends up showing a wide gap between the highest-performing states and the lowest: Massachusetts does quite well against other countries, while Mississippi, Alabama, and the District of Columbia do poorly.

The report evaluates 2011 math and science scores from two sources: the National Assessment of Educational Process, which was administered to eighth graders in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense 






Study: Childhood Poverty Linked to Less Emotional Regulation Later in Life

Problem: Childhood poverty is associated with a whole host of problems that can follow people throughout their lives, including physical illness, sychopathology, and an inability to handle stress. Previous research has suggested that a lot of these problems stem from the chronic stressors that children face in that challenging socioeconomic environment. And that stress can cause serious, lasting