25% of 17 year old Americans don't know who Hitler was, and there are many similar stats. What ideas do you

I agree that parents play a huge role. That being said, I think improving access to affordable child care and health care could make a huge difference in terms of parents having the time and resources to spend on their children. What parent do you know that doesn't want to help their kid succeed? (Well maybe you do know a couple, but I don't think anyone would argue with the assertion that most parents care about their kids.) A single mother with two or three jobs just isn't going to have the time she needs with her children. It's a problem for two parent homes as well since both parents now need to work to maintain the standard of living or sometimes just to make ends meet.

There are other (positive and negative) factors involved as well. Pre-k and NCLB are examples.

Universal Pre-k, so long as it is good quality, could also go a long way in making things better. Controlling for other socio-economic factors, there is still a higher graduation rate for children who attended Pre-k compared to those who did not. According to Pre-k Now, every one dollar ($1) invested in high-quality Pre-k saves taxpayers up to seven dollars ($7) down the road.

On the other hand, No Child Left Behind is a disaster. A girl I know who is studying Urban Education at Temple explained to me why it doesn't work in a very simple way. Basically, NCLB catagorizes students in three ways: the children who are so bright they don't need your help, the average children who can improve, and low performers who will not achieve beyond a certain base level. The teachers then only concentrate on the average students and leave the gifted students (and all their potential) and the low performers to fend for themselves. [rant]Nevermind, the couple of young adults I know who were told they are not "college material." I cannot imagine what would have happened to them if they were ignored when they were young and still developing. The ones I'm referring to are brilliant and did graduate college.[/rant] The school then find ways to fudge the numbers so it does not show the results of the kids who cannot improve. Unfortunately, my friend also told there is a lot of data around about what is wrong with NCLB (including arguments about other subjects being ignored such as the referenced NYT article and arguments about how kids are reading segments of books- not entire works), but not that many solutions are being proposed. *sigh*

Hopefully, we'll see some better ideas soon!

I agree with you, it is usually the parents. I have met plenty of kids like this on a college campus. It always seems like the kids that are lazy and don't do homework never get punished from the parents. The parents always seem to blame it on their pier group rather than the child. As far as the standardized testing goes, it is just dumb, a waste. I received an 1840 of 2400 and it was a waste. I also think a contribution is the teachers. I still go to college and have a 4.0, but my math professor was awful. He knew nothing, I managed the A in his class because I taught all of the material to myself in the book. Some teachers are great, don't get me wrong. It seems like every semester I have at least one that is there for themselves and not the students which really hurts.

I always wonder about the validity of stats--like the one about "87% of stats are made up to prove a point." And who can you blame for kids' not doing their homework? What about the kids themselves?