Why does No Child Left Behind require 100 percent proficiency by 2008? Why not let states set their own goals? Because they’ll cheat, writes Kevin Carey on The Quick and the Ed, citing Education Trust’s report on states’ graduation goals. With the freedom to set a goal and a trajectory for improvement, many states have set the bar very, very low.

Welcome to the state of Nevada, where all manner of sins are legal and the statewide high school graduation rate goal is 50 percent. In other words, as long as your odds of graduating are better than what you get when you slap down $20 on red at the roulette wheel, you’re doing fine. Alaska chose 55.58%, because apparently 56% even was just too heavy a cross to bear. And so on.

Other states have been a little more clever. Instead of setting the bar at knee height, they adopt a putatively high bar but give schools centuries to get there. Maryland, for example, theoretically has a 90% graduation rate goal. But it will accept any improvement as sufficient progress, even 0.01%. At that rate, the state’s African-American students will all be graduating by the year 3117, by which time we’ll all be cursing in Mandarin Serenity-style and learning will take place via coaxial cables jammed into the back of your head.

Impossibly high goals will be ignored, Carey writes. But “realistic” goals won’t push schools to change.

Britain is “dimming down,” a new survey shows. From the Daily Mail:

The intellectual ability of the country’s cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools.

The ‘high-level thinking’ skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976.

However, more students are earning top grades on national exams due to “dimming down,” a researcher said.

Students with learning disabilities lose support from parents and teachers when they go to college, reports the Washington Post. It’s a tough transition.

Many students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia or memory troubles have had years of education shaped by intense parental support, involved teachers and legally mandated school safety nets . . .

But what colleges must do is far less defined legally, and professors and administrators at some schools seem to remain skeptical about the needs that students might have. Schools must provide assistance to students, but only if the students disclose their disabilities.

Most students do not. Some want to shed the label; others don’t want the hassle of proving they’ve got a learning problem.

More learning-disabled students are going on to two- or four-year colleges, reports the Post. Those living away from home have the freedom to stay up all night playing video games, cut classes, postpone their term papers till after the last minute . . . If they learn to manage their time and meet expectations, they’ll be employable.  Otherwise, not.

Highlighting is Like Wearing a Bikini advises The Reading Workshop.

As a struggling writer, Nick Mamatas supported himself by writing term papers for “dumb clients,” (use  simple English and underline the thesis statement), chemistry majors trapped in poetry class and well-educated immigrants with poor English-language skills.

. . . I know why students don’t understand thesis statements, argumentative writing, or proper citations.

It’s because students have never read term papers.

Imagine trying to write a novel, for a grade, under a tight deadline, without ever having read a novel. Instead, you meet once or twice a week with someone who is an expert in describing what novels are like. Novels are long stories, you see, that depict a “slice of life” featuring a middle-class protagonist. Psychological realism is prized in novels. Moral instruction was once fairly common in novels, but is now considered gauche. Novels end when the protagonist has an epiphany, such as “I am not happy. Also, neither is anybody else.” . . . Start writing! Underline your epiphany.

There’s another reason I never felt too badly about the job, though I am pleased to be done with papers. The students aren’t only cheating themselves. They are being cheated by the schools that take tuition and give nothing in exchange.

Of course, students who buy their term papers aren’t giving anything of themselves — except their credit card numbers.

Dy/Dan asks: What Can You Do With This Schrute Bucks video from The Office.

Learn how not to motivate students?  Teach math via currency manipulation?

Four out of five college students in remedial classes had a 3.0 average or better in high school, notes Michael Kirst’s College Puzzle blog, citing Diploma to Nowhere by Strong American Schools. Ninety-five percent said they did all or most of their assigned high school work. Eighty percent had assumed they were ready for college.

The cost of remediation for each student is estimated at $2,000 for two-year and $2,531 for four-year public colleges. These are the high range estimates, but seem low to me.

Colleges need to publicize how many students from local high schools end up in remedial classes. How many were “B” students?

Instead of making low-performing fourth graders repeat the year, schools in Jefferson Parish Louisiana have created a “4.5 transitional class,” reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Students do intensive catch-up work in math and language arts, while also taking fifth-grade courses.

To advance to sixth grade the next year — as opposed to a traditional fifth-grade class — students must score a combination of basic/approaching basic in language arts and math and attain a composite score of 1200 on all four components of the LEAP, the Louisiana Education Assessment Program. They also must pass fifth-grade reading, English, math, social studies and science.

This makes more sense than making students repeat fourth grade with the “same stuff, same classrooms, often same teacher,” writes Education Gadfly.

Students at a suburban St. Louis middle school are in trouble for “Hit a Jew Day.”

About a quarter of the school’s 35 Jewish students were struck were hit;  at least one student was slapped in the face.

It began with an unofficial “Spirit Week” among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a “Hug a Friend Day.” Then there was “High Five Day.”

Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was “Hit a Tall Person Day” and, finally, “Hit a Jew Day.”

Five students have been suspended for hitting Jewish classmates. “Others who weren’t directly involved but taunted Jewish students or egged on classmates could face lesser penalties,” reports AP.