51–60 of 256 posts
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?
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?
I gave it a quick look so perhaps I missed some stuff, but the worst performance was Grade 11 math, where about 55% of students did not meet standards. But as someone who was great a math, and went to do it in Uni etc, I do not think its concerning that 60% of people do not know how to do matrices, calculus, or logic formalism or any of the other topics we touched in AP Math.
Valuing education is important, and I think we are behind the curve in how we teach our kids, tools like Google make tons of memorization so silly to prioritise. But kids not being up to speed with 17-18 year old metaphor understanding in English in a state with tons of immigrants, or kids not mastering calculus at 17 and not needing integrals later in life is part of specialisation, we cannot all do everything.
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?
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?
Public schools are heavily funded by property taxes. So schools in upper middle class and above areas are (usually) pretty great while schools and low income areas are (usually) pretty not great.
Not in California.
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…
Notice that the "historical data" goes all the way back to... 2014-2015. I'd put money on this percentage being significantly higher 20, 30+ years ago.
> 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.
You may be both overthinking this and not understanding. The phrases "can read at grade level" or "can perform math at grade level" mean that a student can read/grasp mathematical concepts at the level expected of a normal person at the age equivalent to their grade (e.g., "can read at a 5th grade level" means "can read to the extent that is considered competent for a ten year old by educational standards"). The goal is for _100%_ of kids in a given grade level to be able to read/comprehend what is taught to them.
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?
You need the language to teach the math, basically. Also, not all of the kids I had were literate in their first language (A Mayan language, so most weren't) or even their second (often another Mayan language) or third (Spanish usually), so you can't just say 'Give them a workbook'
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. Why? I gave it a quick look so perhaps I missed some stuff, but the worst performance was Grade 11 math, where about 55% of students did not meet standards. But as someone who was great a math, and went to do it in Uni etc, I do not think its concerning that 60% of people do not know how to do matrices, calculus, or logic formalism or any of…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.