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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

#141

Post by crises-luff-6b »

The answer NYC schools have come to is to relax /TEACHER/ basic knowledge requirements: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teach...

Without bonus points, DEI-hires at the school would not survive; these racist school districts need a way to ensure these lousy teachers create entire generations of people hostile to learning! The whole system needs to have an emergency cut over to vouchers.. $27k/year/pupil in NYS to get a teacher that looks like me but is functionally illiterate.

These public teachers aren't heroes, they are actively keeping us behind with their pro-union/anti-student behaviors.

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

#142

Post by julienchastang »

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…

Parent here with school-aged kids. I think this sub-thread blaming the parents is particularly depressing and not founded in reality. Here is the way I see it. The social media companies with quasi infinite resources have won. They hired the best and the brightest engineers to hack our minds and steal our attention and they have succeeded beyond expectations. As evidence look that the market capitalization of Meta, etc. The data showing that children are reading way less compared to when I was growing up is consistent with what I see, but I did not an infinite ocean of distractions available via device that has become indispensable for modern living (i.e., the smart phone). By the time I was thirteen, I had read the Lord of the Rings to completion, but if I had grown up in present times I doubt that would be the case.

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

#143

Post by jf22 »

jihadjihad wrote: post #82
jf22 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Go to any park/playground sometime and observe the benches. Go to any sports field/venue and observe the bleachers. What you find may astound you, even if the percentage isn't literally 50%+.

I'm at those things. I don't see even 10% of people on their phones. Yeah people check in but I see involved parents.

Plus, these activities aren't causing missed education. I'm not teaching my kids math while they go on slides.

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

#144

Post by jimt1234 »

staticman2 wrote: post #134
jimt1234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

Among other things an entire day on active shooter drills? Is it possible your niece was joking?

Unfortunately, no. My niece's mom, my sister, called her school to ask wtf was going on. They gave her a lame, lawyer-approved response about their responsibility to protect children and the drills are mandated by the state, blah blah blah. So yeah, my niece said they practice how to respond (call 911, not your parents?), what to do if the teacher is shot (they don't use the word "shot", though), and they talked about tactical gear, like bullet-proof backpacks, which my niece wants now.

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

#145

Post by jf22 »

jimt1234 wrote: post #124
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…

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

I don't like the comparisons to other schools or cultures where memorization is the priority.

What kids do with what they learn in school matter more than whether or not they memorized a calc function.

Besides, who cares if you know cal functions in a post-phone, post-AI world. You look that shit up now.

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

#146

Post by el_memorioso »

jimt1234 wrote: post #124
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…

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

In what state are public high schools allowed to "how to pray"? It sounds like her new high school isn't that good. I have a daughter at a good public high school in California in a quite liberal area. There was none of what you mentioned. One day of reviewing the syllabi and rules and quizzes in most subjects starting less than a week later.

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

#147

Post by koolba »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #121
koolba wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is because Asian governments want their populations to more educated and American governments want their populations to be less educated. On the American side it’s not that they want people to be less educated. It’s the adversarial system of education being run by people whose interests are not aligned with students excelling. Teacher’s unions, which predominantly exist in the public school system, are…

It's easy to blame the teachers unions, but if their goal was to only raise their own salaries and benefits, they are doing a very poor job at it. Teachers do not get paid well. They also tend to get paid more at the elite private schools. So if you want to compare, then you would be advocating for public schools to match private school salaries. While not always the case, "measuring progress" makes things worse beca…

> It's easy to blame the teachers unions, but if their goal was to only raise their own salaries and benefits, they are doing a very poor job at it.

They do a pretty good job at it when you factor in long term pensions and health care.

> Teachers do not get paid well.

Teachers get paid too much. They create artificial barriers like requiring multiple years of certifications to purposefully limit the pool of competition. Most teachers unions are closed shops that mandate membership.

> They also tend to get paid more at the elite private schools. So if you want to compare, then you would be advocating for public schools to match private school salaries.

If I could waive a wand to immediately increase public teacher’s salaries by 25% in exchange for the elimination of all tenure (which does not exist at K-12 private schools), I would do it immediately.

> While not always the case, "measuring progress" makes things worse because they tried this and what you get is standardized tests and teachers teaching to the test (Goodhart's law).

There’s plenty of objective things to measure in math and science. If little Johnny can’t do basic arithmetic or solve 3x+2=11, you can’t fake that during an exam.

At least with teaching to the test, the kids learned the material on the test.

If you don’t measure things, you will not improve it. And teachers unions are adamantly against measuring things. Because they know it can and will be used against them. It’s an inherent conflict of interest.

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

#148

Post by tptacek »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #128
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don’t see where race comes in, necessarily. We just need to compare with country of origin performance. If a family relocates from a place with low scores to a place with high scores, can you explain why you think we would expect their scores to rapidly increase to match the new place? I can think of many factors that would work against this that have nothing to do with race or genetics. If the study is not control…

I don't think it necessarily does come in! I just think you have to be careful about this stuff, and the comment you wrote wasn't careful. I wouldn't care, except it spawned a gnarly thread --- that thread is what I noticed first, not anything you wrote.

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

#149

Post by desolate_muffin »

jf22 wrote: post #145
jimt1234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

I don't like the comparisons to other schools or cultures where memorization is the priority. What kids do with what they learn in school matter more than whether or not they memorized a calc function. Besides, who cares if you know cal functions in a post-phone, post-AI world. You look that shit up now.

Why think when your phone or the AI can do it for you? I imagine there are a few people in this forum who might have some thoughts about that.

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

#150

Post by nosianu »

jf22 wrote: post #145
jimt1234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

I don't like the comparisons to other schools or cultures where memorization is the priority. What kids do with what they learn in school matter more than whether or not they memorized a calc function. Besides, who cares if you know cal functions in a post-phone, post-AI world. You look that shit up now.

At the early stages memorization is essential for some subjects. I still benefit greatly - like many - from very early having to memorize the complete lower multiplication table (12x14, 15x15 and all that, the 20-square). I actually need that in daily life all the time (and I'm old and skeptical about teaching too much stuff that just drowns kids and prevents deeper understanding because they are always chasing the next subject with little time to let anything sink in deeper). What is sine, tangent, cosine. At least a few digits of pi. Language and grammar too.

Lots and lots of stuff that just has to be memorized. It becomes easier the more experiences one gets over time using those, merely memorizing the words alone ofc. is useless and also very inefficient, without other knowledge to create a network the brain will throw pure sentence-memorization out. So you still start the lessons with some memorization, then deepen it by using it in class. But in the end you will still remember those many little "facts".

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