The U.S. Department of Education released the results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in history today, and while the scores of fourth and eighth graders have modestly improved since 1994, the scores of twelfth graders were frustratingly low and showed no improvement. In twelfth grade, 57 percent of students still fall "below basic." In no other subject assessed by NAEP do more than half of high school seniors register below basic, noted historian Diane Ravitch, who spoke at a news conference organized by the Department. "Such poor results in U.S. history are cause for additional alarm at a time when the United States is under terrorist threat," she remarked. "Our ability to defend-intelligently and thoughtfully-what we as a nation hold dear depends on our knowledge and understanding of what we hold dear. That can only be achieved through learning the history we share, and clearly far too many high school seniors have not learned even a modest part of it." For more about the NAEP results, go to http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard.
