71–80 of 256 posts
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.
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?
The federal No Child Left Behind law, and the state-led Common Core initiative, were both major efforts to improve education in the U.S. They both also created massive national backlashes.
California tried to do something as simple as refactor a few math classes and somehow it got turned into fodder for some ideological battle. The College Board tried to offer a new optional AP class and the Florida governor nearly called the National Guard on them.
Everyone says they want to fix education until actual change starts to happen. Then there is a huge freak out about how (insert group) is trying to ruin schools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When there's no incentive for the teachers and schools to get kids to grade level, they aren't. I've proposed before having a bonus to the teacher for every student that reaches grade level at the end of the year.
Not saying incentives are totally the wrong approach, but they're also easily gamed, especially in the hands of people who are already criminally underpaid and overworked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is not like we don't do research into effective teaching methods. It is not also like some schools have 90% of kids above grade level.
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.
Having been in a German school for several months where I did not know German, the only subject I did well in was math. I'm not so sure your assertion is correct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, more interested parents + more money can make a huge difference even if they use the same basic textbooks/standards/etc.
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…
Ties in with this data too:
https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
~50% of the entire US is at a 6th-grade reading level.
Update: Sorry, I didn't put the hyphen that is in the text of the article. "sixth-grade level"
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.
This is not about the bell curve, it’s about a lot of US schools not actually teaching students successfully.
A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is not like we don't do research into effective teaching methods. It is not also like some schools have 90% of kids above grade level.
Ex: I went to Bronx Science, a specialized high school in NYC where 98% of the students are above grade level and go to college. The principal at the time was known to be an obvious subject of nepotism and generally made poor decisions often. The guidance department was a joke. Teachers were above average because schools full of smart kids attract smart teachers, but not so amazing that they'd make up for kids who started below grade level if there were any.
My wife actually went to the same high school and got depression, she dropped out of BX Science and went to a much lesser rated school. The teachers there were actually better in many ways (more organized, better processes, really useful classes work skills and stuff were available due to grants) but the students were still generally below grade level and less than 1/3 went to college according to the stats. She was effortlessly at the top of her class even though she was severely depressed and missed days all the time.