A new report has educators cheering: most Washington students are above the national average in reading and math proficiency for grade level! The bad news is less than half of Washington students are proficient at grade level.

After state-wide tests of 4th and 8th graders, 47 percent were proficient in reading and 39 percent were proficient in Math. How are these kids going to succeed in our highly-competitive global economy when the MAJORITY are not even at grade level?!?!

Perhaps the tests are too hard, you say. Perhaps standardized tests should be done away with. I won't argue with that position, but take a moment to learn about what schools taught 100 years ago versus today. It is incredibly disturbing how much more advanced kids used to be in reading and writing by the time they reached high school. Many knew basic Latin and they read and reread books educators now reserve for college classes. Math? I don't know. We might be more advanced in math. I was never good at math.

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