The most recent PASS scores are out, and it doesn’t look good. Our students are getting stupider.
The Greenville News’ Ron Barnett reports:
Students in grades 3-8 took PASS tests in five subjects — writing, English language arts (reading and research,) math, science and social studies. Statewide, scores fell in 22 of 30 grade levels and subject areas.
And that’s not the only bad news. The PASS report also notes that in South Carolina, male students in grade 3-8 are a heckuva lot more stupiderest than their less stupider female counterparticle de-excellerators.
Out of those 30 categories, boys score less than girls in all but two — science and social studies for 5th graders. Writing and English Language Arts are particularly troublesome for boys, with the girls often outpacing boys by 10 percentage points.
Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has grown up in South Carolina. With its misguided ideas about masculinity, our state is one that champions the physical prowess of the male sex over mental fitness. The upper echelons of society don’t believe this line of BS, but it works to their advantage if the lower classes, including a substantial portion of the vanishing middle class, do. After all, the uneducated male mind is a mind that doesn’t question. And so we’ve fostered a system where it’s acceptable for high school boys to read at a fifth-grade level, dooming them to a life of menial labor, chronic unemployment, and crime.
If these PASS results are any indication, these problems aren’t going away any time soon.
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