Whose Fault is it Anyway?
President Obama states that parents need to improve at preparing their children for school. He also offers the hope of universal pre-school.
Elementary school teachers are recognizing that young students are coming to them with lower reading skills, fewer academic skills, and less independent.
Middle school teachers say they do their best with what they get. They used to get better readers, but now they arrive two or three grade levels behind.
High school teachers wonder what the middle school teachers do and wonder why we still hold to social promotion.
College professors send more than 1/3 of students into remedial coursework because the students lack the appropriate skills.
Jay Mathews covers the debate between "breadth or depth" in his WAPO column. More important than "breadth or depth" is skill and content mastery. In both scenarios we can overlook whether students actually perform the skill competently.