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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

#31

Post by pixl97 »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #11
Fade_Dance wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But I mean, I remember hearing this back in the 80s, so in itself is not a great indicator unless we can see something that would point at why parents stopped caring as much.

Now, if someone came with a headline that said "Parents not involved in childrens education because they've been ragebaited into spending all their time yelling on social media" my biases would tend to lend me to believe it's true, even without sufficient evidence. There are other correlations, like cellphone ownership in the population.

Just having social media itself doesn't seem to be an exact fit, but that tells us nothing about the algorithms that social media was using at the time.

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

#32

Post by yoyohello13 »

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’s decades of defunding schools. I used to work in education and I have never in my career experienced “more” money coming in. It’s always, cuts, cuts, cuts.

That and the culture of anti-intellectualism in the US. I’m completely unsurprised we are falling behind.

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

#33

Post by lucideng »

The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort. A major societal shift needs to happen for this to be reversed. It's many factors... the parents, the food system, various inequalities, social media, technology, healthcare... the solution is multi-pronged. But if I had to choose id start with social media, smart phones, tablets, etc. Technoloy needs to be seen as a tool and a resource, not primarily as the brainwashing entertainment that it is, and brainwashing them with entertainment is how most people introduce tech to their kids.

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

#34

Post by username332211 »

Kapura wrote: post #23
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…

early on in the bush (ii) administration, they passed a bill called "no child left behind" that would cut funding from schools that couldn't achieve desired standardized test scores. while this may seem to align incentives, in reality a school that has struggling students needs MORE resources, not less. the outcome, in reality, is an extreme desire to "teach to the test," where developing actual skills is secondary t…

The no child left behind act was enacted in 2001. If you check the article, it has a nice little chart, showing a decline that starts in 2015. Prior to 2013, the results show a clear trend of improvement (in regards to the percentage of students achieving a minimum level of proficiency).

How would you explain that temporal gap? If the No Child Left Behind Act is the problem, why was the trend positive for the first 12-14 years of the time it's been in force?

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

#35

Post by coredog64 »

guelo wrote: post #29
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?

[flagged]

Fixing problems intelligently requires addressing root causes.

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

#37

Post by mushroomba »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #22
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?

[flagged]

Tabula Rasa remains the axiom upon which the entire post-war world is founded. Regardless of its truth, to question it is to question this world's fundamental belief. To speak against it is to speak against existence itself. The emperor's robes are fine indeed.

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

#38

Post by agentcoops »

ginko wrote: post #14
iteria wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m originally from a US state that currently sits at a 40% literacy rate, but I’ve lived for the last decade in various European countries. I say this only because, even if still anecdotal, I feel like I have a decent basis for comparison. Certainly there are educational disparities from center to periphery and across income brackets everywhere, but I have never lived somewhere that the division was as stark as the US.

France — with all its problems — ensures the same incredibly high standard of curriculum across the country and perhaps most importantly it is actually expected that top university performers who will become researchers teach at high school in the periphery. It’s even a nation-wide competition by discipline (look up the “aggregation”) to obtain these highly sought positions. The idea is something like you teach high school outside Paris while preparing your doctorate and then either return triumphant to the big research institutes or continue teaching in the provinces. Something like this in the US would have immeasurable impact, since probably one of the biggest issues is just convincing well-educated people to teach in rural areas.

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

#39

Post by m00x »

Kapura wrote: post #23
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…

early on in the bush (ii) administration, they passed a bill called "no child left behind" that would cut funding from schools that couldn't achieve desired standardized test scores. while this may seem to align incentives, in reality a school that has struggling students needs MORE resources, not less. the outcome, in reality, is an extreme desire to "teach to the test," where developing actual skills is secondary t…

The Obama administration reversed this in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015.

Many of the schools with the most funding per student, like Washington D.C. and NYC currently underperform.

NYC has a spending of $36-40k per student with only 56% ELA, ~47% Math. Washington DC has $27k-31k of spending per student and only 22% proficient in reading and 16% in Math.

Charter schools have been the best bang for the buck. The best all-income schools are catholic schools, averaging at 1 grade level higher. Then private schools do even better, but aren't accessible to everyone, and then the top spot is left to selective high-performing schools, unsurprisingly.

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

#40

Post by lagniappe »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #22
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?

[flagged]

Say it with your chest: the comment is implying USA has more immigrants, and the immigrants arriving have lower outcomes on IQ related tasks.
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