We are watching the intellectual and human capital decline of the USA in real time:
President Obama has bragged about his supposed revolution in education over and over during this election cycle. He says he’s interested in upping standards while simultaneously appeasing teachers unions. But the performance of American students continues to sink to all-time lows.
2012’s high school seniors have the worst SAT reading score since 1972; they scored 486 on reading, out of a possible 800. In writing, students also dropped dramatically, down to 488. That’s a nine-point drop since 2006.
The tendency from leftists is to challenge the efficacy of the SAT in measuring performance – but it’s a standardized test with great care taken for consistency. Instead, the Washington Post’s Emma Brown suggests that more and more minority students are taking the SATs. “More than 1.66 million graduating seniors last year took the test, the highest number in history. Nearly half were minorities and about a quarter reported that English was not exclusively their first language.
The problematic thing about this is that the SAT has been dumbed-down considerably since 1972; it is now an achievement test rather than an aptitude test. And yet, the supposed demographic saviors, despite trillions in spending, the best education that the public schools can provide, and the huge increase in college attendance, have repeatedly demonstrated that they are simply not as capable as the Americans they have been brought in to replace.
It is more than a little ironic that the very people who preached the need for a more intelligent and better educated 21st century labor force have, with their blind enthusiasm for replacing the native population, ensured that the 21st century USA will possess a dumber, less educated, less capable labor force with which to compete. Look at what Southern California is like these days. That’s what life in your town is going to be like within the next 20 years.