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Education Department data released on Wednesday showed that test scores in U.S. history and civics for eighth graders fell to the lowest levels on record last year. This is following data released last October that showed the lowest math test scores in history and a drop in reading skills that wiped out three decades of progress. . .

Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. history scores showed the lowest proportion of eighth-grade students reaching proficiency levels out of any subject assessed by the NAEP program, with civics being the second-lowest. Federal tests show scores in U.S. history and civics have consistently lagged behind those of reading and math.

Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics commissioner, said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday that she was shocked by eighth-graders’ U.S. history and civics scores, which she called “woefully low in comparison to other subjects.”

Dr. Carr added: “These data are a national concern. The health of our democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens.”

(Read more from “Eighth-Graders Have Never Scored So Low in American History and Civics” HERE)

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(CNSNews.com) – Three years ago, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that the Obama administration would spend $3.5 billion — including $3 billion in stimulus funding — on Student Improvement Grants. The money, he said, would “support the transformational changes that are needed to turn around the nation’s lowest-achieving schools.”

Now, after the Obama administration spent up to $2 million per school at more than 1,300 of the nation’s lowest-performing schools, the data shows that one third of schools receiving SIG funding had declines in achievement — a “not surprising finding,” the Education Department said, “given the steep institutional challenges that these schools face.”

“There’s dramatic change happening in these schools, and in the long-term process of turning around the nation’s lowest-performing schools, one year of test scores only tells a small piece of the story,” Duncan said on in a Nov. 19 news release.

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Eighth-Graders Have Never Scored So Low in American History and Civics

One Third of Schools Receiving Stimulus-Funded ‘Student Improvement Grants’ Showed Declines