|
What we know
Graduation
rates recently decreasing
Little
change in student/teacher ratio
Little
change in number of 11th grade students meeting minimum high
school proficiency
Access
to higher education shows little recent change
|
What
we don't know
•
We can test students on reading, writing, and arithmetic. We
do not have information on characteristics that are harder to
test for, including the ability to work with others, to think
in innovative ways, and whether students care about being productive
members of society.
•
We have no consistently available measures of disparities in
the education received by students from rich and poor families,
of different genders, and from different ethnic groups.
•
To sustain our quality of life, it is imperative that our children
are taught to understand the basic systems that support us:
the economy, the environment, government, and society. We currently
have no way to measure how well our children are taught what
they need to know to manage these systems.
•
There is currently no comprehensive means of tracking lifelong
education. Given the quickening pace of economic change, it
appears that continuing education long past traditional graduations
will become more important. |
school education than any other state in 1999. We are at the
national forefront of new educational initiatives, such as charter
schools and standards-based reform. New Jersey also ranks among
the best states across all categories in a recent study on higher
education.* Yet there has been little change in the number of
students meeting minimum high school proficiency standards and
we have spent years arguing in the courts about the disparities
that exist between our rich and poor districts. Such issues
are critical not only to parents. An educated citizenry is the
foundation of a productive economy and a fully functional society.
New Jersey produces fewer higher education degrees relative
to population size than many other states, although we have
one of the highest percentages of college-educated adults.
