Student Engagement Still Low in U.S. Schools

I don't often repost other bloggers' content, so when I do...

Scott McLeod shared on his blog survey results from Gallup about the level of engagement in learning that secondary students are experiencing. When almost 1 million students state that they become less engaged the more years they spend in school, this is a cause for alarm. These results say more about education than any test score might reveal. Below is his post.

The latest results are available from the annual Gallup poll of middle and high school students. Over 920,000 students participated last fall. Here are a couple of key charts that I made from the data:

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The biggest indictment of our schools is not their failure to raise test scores above some politically-determined line of ‘proficiency.’ It’s that – day in and day out – they routinely ignore the fact that our children are bored, disengaged, and disempowered. We’ve known this forever, but we have yet to really care about it in a way that would drive substantive changes in practice. The disenfranchisement of our youth continues to happen in the very institutions that are allegedly preparing them to be ‘lifelong learners’.

Why do you think students continue to become more disengaged as they progress through our school systems? Please share your ideas in the comments.