No surprise coming from govt controlled schools where thay don’t want the kids to know about the history of this country, the constitution nor any thing else pertaining to individual freedom…. the 2A in particular……

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http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020510/4101936s.htm
FAIR USE

Kids get ‘abysmal’ grade in history
High school seniors don’t know basics

By Tamara Henry
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Most U.S. high school seniors have a
poor grasp of the nation’s history, and their knowledge hasn’t improved in seven years, says a Department of Education report out Thursday.

At a time when the United States is at war in Afghanistan and under terrorist threat, seniors’ ”truly abysmal scores” on
the 2001 U.S. History Report Card are alarming, said Diane Ravitch, historian and education professor at New York University and a member of the test’s governing board. It’s especially grim considering how close these students are to voting age, she said.

”Our ability to defend — intelligently and thoughtfully –
what we as a nation hold dear depends on our knowledge and understanding of what we hold dear,” Ravitch said during the presentation of the report. ”That can only be achieved through learning the history we share, and clearly, far too many high school seniors have not learned even a modest part of it.”

Performance on the exam was scored as basic, proficient (at grade level) or advanced; ideally, all students should perform at grade level or better. Education Secretary Rod Paige defined ”basic” as ”the bottom of the achievement ladder.”

On the test:

* 57% of seniors could not perform even at the basic level.

* 32% performed at the basic level.

* 10% performed grade-level work, and 1% were advanced or superior.

Scores among seniors were essentially the same as in 1994, when this version of the test was first given.

”This is unacceptable,” Paige said. ”History is a
critical part of our nation’s school curriculum. It is through history that we understand our past and contemplate our future.”

Unqualified teachers are cited as one reason for the poor performance. Education Department statistics show 54% of junior and senior high school students in 1996 were taught history by teachers who neither majored nor minored in the subject, and a new study soon to be released shows similar results. The only subject worse than history is physical science, where 56% of students have teachers out of field.

The federally mandated test was administered to 29,000 fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders at 1,100 public and private schools. Fourth- and eighth-grade students did better than seniors, but not by much:

* 18% of fourth-graders performed at grade level or above in 2001, 49% performed at basic and 33% below. In 1994, 17% were at grade level or above, 47% at basic and 36% below.
* 17% of eighth-graders were at or above grade level, 48% at basic and 36% below in 2001. In 1994, 14% were at grade level or above, 48% at basic, 39% below.

* In fourth grade, both white and black students had higher average scores in 2001 than in 1994. Black students’ scores improved more than whites’.

* The average score for senior Hispanic students improved over 1994, narrowing the gap with whites.