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US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

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Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#11

Post by Night_Thastus »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #7
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

How about the quality of the education and curriculum itself?

The curriculum can be amazing, but it doesn't matter if the students don't care. And frankly, a lot of them don't.

Some of that is cultural, some of that is due to parenting. A lot of parents aren't involved in their kids education. Frankly, a lot of them are barely involved in parenting in general.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#12

Post by BeetleB »

SoftTalker wrote: post #5
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

Phones/screens is one I'm not sure about. On the one hand, to use a mobile phone, and social media, and messaging apps, you have to read and write. I certainly spent a lot less time reading and writing messages to my friends in the 1980s than the typical kid does today. We just talked, in person or on an old-fashioned phone call. On the other hand, it's shallow. Messages are short, and filled with shorthand and emoti…

There's a difference between reading and writing, and reading and writing well. I would expect the tests to expect higher proficiency than what is expected in your usual text messages.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#13

Post by pfannkuchen »

I know we’re not supposed to think about this, but is this controlled for region of origin? That has been changing, and so if that impacts school performance (schools designed by westerners, mind you, in a societal model designed by the same), then we would expect this to change as well right?

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#14

Post by ginko »

iteria wrote: post #6
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

As always with these things, I'm curious what are the results by state. I wish I could find it again, but I saw some results by state and some of our states scored the same as the top rank nations and some score with 3rd world nations. I would be interested if this is a nationwide trend or the bad performers are performing even worse. Especially since from my memory, this is mostly a poverty issue. Not a school fundi…

Sure, but you could do the same in pretty much any country.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#15

Post by Simulacra »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #13

I know we’re not supposed to think about this, but is this controlled for region of origin? That has been changing, and so if that impacts school performance (schools designed by westerners, mind you, in a societal model designed by the same), then we would expect this to change as well right?

It depends, is this a federal problem, or a local problem? Because I don't see the federal department of education has really done anything to improve scores. So this may be a local issue, and of local resources.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#16

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

I think it's all of the above and probably more. It might be difficult to find a biggest culprit since they all feed each other. As an example: COVID forced people inside onto their screens and now that people are more screen addicted they use more gen ai or lost the skills to solve things themselves. Gen ai reliance leads to more gen ai use as skills wither.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#17

Post by vel0city »

SoftTalker wrote: post #5
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

Phones/screens is one I'm not sure about. On the one hand, to use a mobile phone, and social media, and messaging apps, you have to read and write. I certainly spent a lot less time reading and writing messages to my friends in the 1980s than the typical kid does today. We just talked, in person or on an old-fashioned phone call. On the other hand, it's shallow. Messages are short, and filled with shorthand and emoti…

There is also quite a difference between being able to type out and read short messages to friends like "who wants to go to the park today" or read a menu and know if a sandwich has mustard on it or not and being able to have deeper inferential and evaluative understandings of written thoughts and ideas.

I think back to some college peers who even in some more basic classes could clearly read the words of the assigned writings, they couldn't then parse out the deeper meanings behind the assignments. They weren't illiterate, you could ask them to read a passage, and they'd be able to say all the words. You could ask them face value questions about the text, and they'd probably be able to answer most questions right. But any deeper analysis was just beyond them. So, when the professor would ask deeper questions, they'd say "I don't know where he's getting this, the book didn't talk about that at all".

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#18

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #13

I know we’re not supposed to think about this, but is this controlled for region of origin? That has been changing, and so if that impacts school performance (schools designed by westerners, mind you, in a societal model designed by the same), then we would expect this to change as well right?

Net immigration has been trending down for a decade, but I'm not cynical enough to think we're not churning out some pretty smart kids of our own!

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#19

Post by pixl97 »

bee_rider wrote: post #4
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

It started in 2013. If we have to blame technology, social media seems more likely than AI, I guess.

From 2011 to 2013 smartphone adoption in the US went from 35 to 55%, and by 2016 was 75%. While not proof of causation, the correlation is very strong.
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