DECLINE IN IOWA STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND TEEN MIND DEVELOPMENT
Constructivists and constructivism infiltrated the Iowa teacher's union and primarily caused the decline in student achievement discussed herein. Constructivism started with educrat's desperate need to make excuses and assign blame for New Math failures. The teacher's union blindly bought into the excuses and blame doctrine and American students have suffered greatly as a result.
FLAWED, CONSTRUCTIVIST EXCUSES BETRAY "NO LONGER A LEADER REPORT"
Constructivists, people at the Iowa Fiscal Partnership/The Iowa Quality Project/ Child & Family Policy Center, who blame education failures on social conditions etc., have done it again. Their "No Longer a Leader Report" foolishly ignores the facts in the following chart--which clearly show the curriculum caused the failure in Iowa public schools. Cost per student, teacher pay etc., that the report claims has not kept pace, actually increased by $3 billion for the period cited, while class size, statewide enrollments and student achievement fell sharply. The Iowa Testing Program, Iowa Department of Education and others provided the data for the 65 year chart.
Constructivist perpetrators of the flawed report have no grounds for blaming Iowa school failures on free and reduced lunch, ethnicity, culture, parents, insufficient money, English language learners etc.-- rather than the flawed curriculum that no other nation in the world uses, including the nations trouncing Iowa and the U. S. in student achievement, for less cost.
65 YEAR CHART SHOWS AWFUL IOWA SCHOOL TRENDS
The following chart shows what employers, universities and the military already know--thinking skills of American high school graduates have fallen drastically from what they once were. But they have not fallen in foreign countries whose students are outscoring American students, and have been for many years. American employers and universities are now pushing 'diversity' as a means to better access and hire the thinking skills of foreign students. Anyone claiming to have better numbers is asked to provide them for evaluation and comparison.
TEEN MIND DEVELOPMENT CHART SHOWS AWFUL TREND
