PROF. GIORDANO: Schools are failing students
Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano was a guest on “The Story With Martha MacCallum” to discuss students falling behind as education steadily declines in America.
Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano was a guest on “The Story With Martha MacCallum” to discuss students falling behind as education steadily declines in America.
“Something is broken within the K-12 system…and it really has become a problem that’s metastasized,” says Giordano, “I look at the proficiency levels and they’re at absolute historic lows now.”
As a professor of political science at Suffolk Community College in New York, Giordano gives his students a basic citizenship exam and asks them to read an excerpt from the Russian constitution.
Most of his students fail the exam, and cannot distinguish between the U.S. Constitution and the Russian constitution.
“These proficiency levels have been flat for about thirty years, [and] this is the first year we are seeing the decline,” according to Giordano.
However, while standards in education drop, students’ grades continue to rise.
[RELATED: GIORDANO: Academia must reform to save itself]
“All we’ve done is create a system where we cycle students through so that they get the piece of paper, and this is something that has a critical effect on our nation that we cannot survive. We need a robust public education system,” says Giordano.
“An education system is designed to give us a sense of civic obligation, to teach us how to be productive members within society and instill some type of human decency,” says Giordano, “without it, you don’t have a civil society, and that’s where we’re headed right now.”
Watch the full video above.
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