The Nation - News from Feb. 15, 1989

The traditional classroom, with its lecturing teachers and workbooks, is turning out students with basic skills but little more, a new report said. The National Assessment of Educational Progress called for major changes in how and what American students are taught, based on 20 years of evaluations funded by the Education Department. The group credited “relatively traditional” classrooms with gains at the lower levels of achievement. But it said teachers will have to become less authoritarian and students less passive if more sophisticated learning is to occur. The group has studied the math, science, reading and writing performance of 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds for 20 years under the auspices of the private Educational Testing Service.