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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

#51

Post by medvezhenok »

nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #46
ninetyninenine wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>>IQ is highly linked to genetics. Citation desperately needed. How can you prove that empirically? What is your methodology for controlling for environmental factors in making that assertion, including factors associated with access to resources, tutors, having a full belly every morning, and not being constantly flooded with stress hormones as a result of grappling with the daily reality of living in poverty?

Whether its genetic or environmental doesn't matter here.

Existence of a correlation is enough reason to break down any analyses by demographic data to have a clearer picture of what's going on. That's just basic data science.

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

#52

Post by chabons »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #36

Unless this accounts for the change in population demographics, it's a pointless study, or are we still pretending that doesn't exist at a macro level?

I'm missing something. What change in demographics are we talking about, and why would that influence math results?

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

#53

Post by Nicook »

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 does. I went down a rabbit hole for this once and yes children of immigrants underperform for math and reading testing v immigrant groups. Can go dig up the .gov links assuming they didnt go away

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

#55

Post by aeve890 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #27

Just looking at the picture triggered me. Why are the students sitting in groups and cutting paper with scissors? There’s a huge teaching gap between USA and Asia. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/wIyVYCuPxl0?si=f6wFv2G3Iru7QFTy https://en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org/wiki/James_W._Stigler Edit: since it may not have been clear from the video, this is my interpretation: * in the Japanese math class the teacher teaches at…

I'm not smart enough to understand what are the conclusions of the patterns observed in the video.

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

#56

Post by bluGill »

m00x wrote: post #39
Kapura wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The best all-income schools are catholic schools, averaging at 1 grade level higher. Then private schools do even better

These are not equal comparisons. People who send their kids to a private school are choosing that, and thus care about the education their kids get. While Catholics are all income and choosing for religion reasons, generally catholic implies cultural care for education. Public schools take everyone including those who don't care about education.

In general public schools in the US are very good. However a small number in every school are kids that would be kicked out of private (including catholic) schools. There are also significant variation between schools with richer areas of a city doing better - despite often spending less on education.

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

#57

Post by AlwaysRock »

lucideng wrote: post #33

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 t…

> Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort

The point is that students are doing worse, even though ^ is likely true today just like it was true 5, 10, and 20 years ago.

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

#58

Post by mrandish »

There's a longer trend but also a clear inflection point around the rise of mobile phones and social media. N=1 but we delayed getting a phone for our kid until a few months after she turned 13, which was a good choice because now we wish we'd gone longer. We can see how social media and app snacking clearly have negative effects on attention span, attitude, etc.

Also choosing to close schools during COVID was as catastrophic as many predicted. Our kid was in 7th grade during COVID and teachers each year report the effects are still being felt across many students. Of course, naturally great students recovered quickly and innately poor students remained poor but the biggest loss was in the large middle of B/C students.

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

#59

Post by realo »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #24
BeetleB wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The quality of most text msgs is higher than what passes for “quality literature” in many lit classrooms. Texting is unironically a better use of time than reading infinite jest, or gravities rainbow, etc.

Hum... "R U OK" is sooo much better than

... “How do you feel, Jake?” “Fine, it doesn’t hurt much.” “Are you all right?” ...

(Hemmingway)

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

#60

Post by throwway120385 »

chabons wrote: post #52
EcommerceFlow wrote: post #36

Unless this accounts for the change in population demographics, it's a pointless study, or are we still pretending that doesn't exist at a macro level?

I'm missing something. What change in demographics are we talking about, and why would that influence math results?

I don't intend this as a dig against Spanish-speaking students. But many school systems in the US have tons of Spanish-speaking students who know very little English. But all of the homework, readings, and classroom instruction are given in English. If you don't know the language of instruction then it puts you at an immediate disadvantage. This might be what they're referring to.
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