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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

#71

Post by SoftTalker »

vel0city wrote: post #17
SoftTalker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assigne…

Agree, but I'm not sure how much worse this is today?

I avoided English Lit in college but thinking back to High School I recognize the "I don't know where he's getting this" reaction. I just rarely engaged with the so-called "classic" stuff we had to read, and like you say I had no trouble reading the words but struggled with deeper meanings or even just getting past the archaic language. And this was in the early 1980s, no chance it was influenced by social media or mobile phones or AI. My parents probably blamed television.

At least we now have AI, where a student could (if motivated) ask questions about the meaning of a passage and get back a synthesis of what other people have written about it. Back then I used Cliffs Notes to do that.

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

#72

Post by hx8 »

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?

I don't want to come off as supporting the grandparent comment, but ultimately there is at least some degree of heritability of IQ [0]. US IQ also seemed to have peaked in the 1990s [1].

It's quite a leap to claim that immigration is the cause of the US IQ decline. The best explanations seem to be that it's environmental [2]. The general decline in IQ is impacting several countries.

0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

1 https://nchstats.com/average-iq-by-state-in-us/

2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29891660/

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

#73

Post by treis »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #32
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.

Except for a brief blip around the housing crash inflation adjusted per pupil spending has steadily increased for decades.

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

#74

Post by barrenko »

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…

Disturbing % of people just consume tiktok style video and that's it.

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

#75

Post by jf22 »

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…

Is there any study or evidence supports that MOST parents "watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort?"

This is a common trope but I've never seen any evidence.

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

#76

Post by bluGill »

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…

When someone links to a video I assuming that the video was heavily edited and cherry picked to show whatever point they want. I'm not wrong often enough to bother clicking on yours.

I find it interesting that James W Stigler doesn't even have a wikipedia page. I'm not sure what that means, but he somehow isn't very notable despite having written popular books and being a university professor. (or he is so controversial that they can't agree on one - which is a sign to not take him too seriously)

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

#77

Post by sp1nningaway »

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?

[flagged]

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

#78

Post by tptacek »

sp1nningaway wrote: post #77
nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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?

[flagged]

The thing to do when this happens is to flag the comment, and, if you think it's really bad, mail hn@ycombinator.com. Writing about how the author is a "dumb asshole" is actually counterproductive; please don't do that!

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

#79

Post by tptacek »

hx8 wrote: post #72
nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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?

I don't want to come off as supporting the grandparent comment, but ultimately there is at least some degree of heritability of IQ [0]. US IQ also seemed to have peaked in the 1990s [1]. It's quite a leap to claim that immigration is the cause of the US IQ decline. The best explanations seem to be that it's environmental [2]. The general decline in IQ is impacting several countries. 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He…

Heritability != DNA.

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

#80

Post by echelon »

stephendause wrote: post #63
mrandish wrote: post #58

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 cat…

Jonathan Haidt has a lot of good material on this. He is leading the charge in encouraging parents to delay giving their child a phone until high school and not allowing them to have social media accounts until age 16. https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/family/story/author-sugge...

How do Asian countries and top-performing countries deal with this?

We should do whatever they do.

On that note, we should also segregate kids by academic desire and achievement like Japan and China. The bullies and underachievers hold back those who are academically excellent. We do this in limited instances, but not enough to really count.

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