Nearly half of Florida high school students failed the reading portion of the state’s new toughened standardized test, education officials said on Friday.

Results this year from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test showed 52 percent of freshman students and 50 percent of sophomores scored at their grade levels.

Students in the 10th grade must pass the exam in order to eventually graduate but can retake it if they fail.

The results came days after the Florida State Board of Education voted to lower the standards needed to pass the writing part of the test, known as FCAT. The test is administered in public elementary, middle and high schools.

via Yahoo! News Canada.

#1.  This is just plan embarassing.

#2.  Why is this being reported by Yahoo! News Canada and not here in the U.S.A.?

#3.  When are we going to have a national discussion about how our educations system is fundamentally, philosophically, and systematically broken?

#4.  Note the “proposed solution” is NOT to actually teach the students how to read.  The solution is to reduce the testing standards so that more dummies can pass.

We are failing as a society.