Student Achievement in Core Subjects of the School Curriculum. Student Achievement in Core Subjects of the School Curriculum. In February 1990, the President and state governors proclaimed a set of six national education goals to prompt profound improvements in schools and student achievement by the year 2000. These six goals reflect widely held concerns that most Americans have not been receiving the kind of education they need to meet the challenges of twenty-first century life.
Most students seem to develop basic skills, which involve low-level cognition.
Furthermore, performance on tasks requiring high-level cognition has declined since the early 1970s. A similar pattern of deficiency in knowledge achievement is revealed by the NAEP studies of mathematics, history, literature, geography, and civics. Large numbers of students appear to lack knowledge and skills usually associated with responsible citizenship in a constitutional democracy. The United States ranks near the bottom among economically developed countries on international assessments of students' knowledge of mathematics and science. The gap in achievement between American students and their counterparts in other countries increases as students move through the grades in school.