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Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

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Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#21

Post by fnordpiglet »

babypuncher wrote: post #11
pessimizer wrote: post #4

Wouldn't the grade level be defined by the median student?

I presume "grade level" was defined by the median student some time ago and has not been adjusted since. The fact that it's going down seems like bad news. EDIT: It seems the headline is misleading and my take is not accurate.

It’s not really going down. There are years it was worse and years it was better. It seems like it’s staying fairly consistent around the original threshold, which appears to be close the median. But I’d note the first year observed was lower than this last year observed, so it couldn’t have been the actual median. They probably intentionally picked a level below the median as the threshold to convince people to freak out and “send funding now”

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#22

Post by anoonmoose »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #18

The failure of public education in this country is a national scandal. It should be the number one concern of everyone, and yet there's no outrage, no political wedge issue, no media -- what's going on?

One simple explanation would be that the problem just isn't as bad as you think it is.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#23

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

mistrial9 wrote: post #7

close to thirty percent of Oakland Public Schools students did not graduate High School last I looked.. spectacular levels of genuine confirmed illiteracy, plus dozens of non-English native languages; very high violence rates among and between some groups

I think at this point Oakland is a failed city. Or at least very close to it.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#27

Post by bmitc »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #19

Looking at the history this doesn’t seem abnormal, and it hovers around 49%. This implies to me median is determined to be grade level (essentially) and it hasn’t moved materially beyond this point since the data was compiled and the entirely arbitrary definition of “grade level” was declared. Would be interesting to see other states but it wasn’t immediately obvious if a similar dataset exists for anywhere else. Giv…

If it's "normal", isn't the conclusion then that the normal is not good?

The threshold is extremely low already, and that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. It isn't that they aren't capable. It's that the social support structures are not there.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#28

Post by stcroixx »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #18

The failure of public education in this country is a national scandal. It should be the number one concern of everyone, and yet there's no outrage, no political wedge issue, no media -- what's going on?

It's not country wide in my experience. When I lived in CA with 4 kids in public school, my opinion was that they were total garbage, enough so I moved out of state. Where I am now, the public schools my kids go to are great.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#30

Post by singlow »

bmitc wrote: post #27
fnordpiglet wrote: post #19

Looking at the history this doesn’t seem abnormal, and it hovers around 49%. This implies to me median is determined to be grade level (essentially) and it hasn’t moved materially beyond this point since the data was compiled and the entirely arbitrary definition of “grade level” was declared. Would be interesting to see other states but it wasn’t immediately obvious if a similar dataset exists for anywhere else. Giv…

If it's "normal", isn't the conclusion then that the normal is not good? The threshold is extremely low already, and that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. It isn't that they aren't capable. It's that the social support structures are not there.

If nearly 50% of people perform below average is that bad?
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