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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

#41

Post by njovin »

stcroixx wrote: post #28
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.

It's not even state-wide. There are some really good schools in California (and not just wealthy areas).

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

#42

Post by Scubabear68 »

In our rural public school in NJ, both our kids were routinely socially promoted with B’a and C’s even though they were very below average on State testing.

We tried fighting this but the inertia of “do nothing and pass anyway” was too great.

When we moved them to private school last year (5th and 9th grade), they had a brutal adjustment period of catching up from being so far behind, and for learning studying habits from scratch.

Public schools in the US have problems due to the unions giving too much protection to lousy teachers, and school boards throwing away money like water on things like laptops and athletic fields while not focusing on attracting and paying really good teachers with a track record of success.

It really is a travesty.

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

#43

Post by zozbot234 »

jmathai wrote: post #17

As a California resident, I'm surprised there's no mention of % of ESL (english as a second language) students. There's a very large population of ESL students in California that drag down these statistics as the students catch up. If english isn't your primary language, learning math that is taught in english will also be more difficult.

Math is language independent. Shouldn't ESL students be able to use workbooks in their native language?

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

#44

Post by fnordpiglet »

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.

Why? Because they used the phrase “grade level” to describe their threshold? This metric appears to be defined as “greater than the median scoring when the metric was first established.” This years results are a little less than before the pandemic but greater than when the metric was established. It appears you can’t compare this to any other state or region, so by what measure is it “not good?”

The term grade level was picked to induce a sense of “not good,” because presumably the goal is 100%. But it was picked to be in the first sample less than 50%. We will never shift a metric on a presumably normal distribution that far to the right. So it’ll always look “not good.” The fact that it’s relatively stable over time means “it’s better than it was 8 years ago” and that’s about all you can really say. Given it’s seen improvement over time, albeit with slippage after the pandemic, that seems pretty excellent.

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

#45

Post by cm2012 »

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.

There's not much the education system can do here. When you look into educational research its grim - its really really hard to move the needle even a few % on outcomes in a school system, even with large grants and volunteers and special projects.

Kids on the bottom half of the bell curve, especially without parental support, are always going to struggle at school.

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

#46

Post by throwayyy479087 »

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?

California doesn't maintain order in schools or their major cities. If you want to live somewhere nice, that's liberal and has good schools move to Boston. If you want to live somewhere nice that's conservative and has good schools move anywhere in East Texas.

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

#47

Post by justin_oaks »

jimbob45 wrote: post #2

According to state testing? I was an A student (as were many of my peers) but you'd best believe we dicked around with anything that we were told wouldn't affect our letter grades (e.g. state testing).

This is an underrated comment. I remember taking a Golden State Exam [1] in high school. It was for English and it required some essay writing. I didn't think I'd be in the top group so I wouldn't win any award, and I knew it wouldn't affect my letter grade. I spent the time writing random stuff that would fill the page instead of what I was supposed to write about.

It would be interesting to get data on how much students don't even try on exams that don't affect their letter grade.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Exams

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

#48

Post by hellothere1337 »

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?

as automatization becomes an ever larger share of the economy, math skills and thinking skills in general become a liability for the ruling class. Consumers dont really need to be smart.

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

#50

Post by bcrosby95 »

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.

Are they extremely low?

I have kids in elementary school and so far, I would say "grade level" expectations are a bit higher than what mine were 35 years ago. But maybe things change as they get older.

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