Public schools fail to improve reading skills

From Stateline.org:

In the latest snapshot of how well American schoolchildren are learning, national test results showed a small gain in math proficiency in the past two years but nearly zero improvement in reading scores since 1992 despite more than a decade of focus on boosting student achievement.

The achievement gap between students of different races narrowed slightly, but about 70 percent of students nationwide still are scoring below grade level on math and reading tests, according to the latest scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests released Oct. 19.

Only about 30 percent of the nation's fourth- and eighth-graders scored high enough to be considered proficient in reading in 2005, nearly the same average as in any year since state NAEP scores were first reported in 1992. In math, the number of students scoring at grade level rose to 33 percent in 2005 from 30 percent in 2003, compared to only 17 percent in 1992.

(Found via World Net Daily.)
Something must be wrong when, despite focusing on improving test scores for the past 13 years, the scores don't improve. Good heavens, in the private school I attended, we were done with learning to read by the third grade, and some of us by the first grade--it's not all that difficult to teach a child to read!

Maybe they just need to throw more money at it...