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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

#361

Post by Mountain_Skies »

rayiner wrote: post #329
tenarchits wrote: post #198

Most of the comments are focused on the supply of education. But I don't think the supply side is the problem, irrespective of teachers and high schools. There is more and cheaper education available than ever before. Nearly every highschooler has more access to learning that kings and emperors would have fought wars for less than 200 years ago. However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to h…

The problem with that “culture” explanation is that white kids in America do fine in international educational comparisons. In the 2018 PISA assessment, 15 year old white american students were near the top in reading (behind only Singapore and some Chinese SEZs) and in the top echelon in science (comparable to Japan). Their weakest performance was math, where they’re around the middle, behind the top asian countries…

Only if the US is a monoculture but we're a diverse multi-cultural society. Different cultural groups have different values and priorities.

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

#362

Post by ironman1478 »

The article mentions the chronic absenteeism which is mind blowing: https://apnews.com/article/school-attendance-sick-day-chroni...

I don't see how somebody can learn when they're missing school so much. Math and reading require so much repetition and if you're not in school, you're not getting that time to sit down and do the exercises required to ingrain these topics. It doesn't even matter how a school teaches if the student isn't in class. They're just not going to retain things well.

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

#363

Post by erosenbe0 »

rayiner wrote: post #329
tenarchits wrote: post #198

Most of the comments are focused on the supply of education. But I don't think the supply side is the problem, irrespective of teachers and high schools. There is more and cheaper education available than ever before. Nearly every highschooler has more access to learning that kings and emperors would have fought wars for less than 200 years ago. However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to h…

The problem with that “culture” explanation is that white kids in America do fine in international educational comparisons. In the 2018 PISA assessment, 15 year old white american students were near the top in reading (behind only Singapore and some Chinese SEZs) and in the top echelon in science (comparable to Japan). Their weakest performance was math, where they’re around the middle, behind the top asian countries…

Culture argument can be argued effectively as follows:

If a cohort in Japan has a median score of X at median household income Y, the American cohort with same median score X has income closer to 1.25Y or 1.5Y.

Whether you want to define your American cohort based on geography or ethnicity doesn't really matter-the result will be preserved up to a point.

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

#364

Post by Mountain_Skies »

paulddraper wrote: post #292
tenarchits wrote: post #198

Most of the comments are focused on the supply of education. But I don't think the supply side is the problem, irrespective of teachers and high schools. There is more and cheaper education available than ever before. Nearly every highschooler has more access to learning that kings and emperors would have fought wars for less than 200 years ago. However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to h…

> However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to have fostered a culture averse to education. !! The rate of college graduates has increased nearby 50% over that timeframe. A rather unexpected result for a cultural aversion to education.

Do you believe the average degree awarded today requires as much rigor as the average degree awarded half a century ago?

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

#365

Post by Jensson »

sgc wrote: post #356
mercutio2 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard anyone say freshman physics is the hardest class in high school! Memorize 6 equations, 15 terms of art, and be competent at super simple algebraic expressions and you’re done. Physics in US high schools is taught long before calculus and usually before trig, which is dumb, but they compensate by making the calculation requirements something 6th graders routinely do. AP Calculus is even easier assumin…

Most schools do biology > chemistry > physics, which is from funnest and easiest to most technical and hardest (plus digging in to the building blocks of the previous class). Physics first is very much throwing them in at the deep end of the pool when they have never taken a high school class at all. Frankly, I never got the details of the curriculum due to lack of printed materials. Parenting is not easy, and it's a…

> Most schools do biology > chemistry > physics, which is from funnest and easiest to most technical and hardest

More like from what women prefer to what men prefer, they probably do it since most teachers are women and prioritize what girls want. Physics is "hard" as in not soft, not "hard" as in not easy.

The reasonable order is the opposite, physics underpins chemistry and chemistry underpins biology.

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

#366

Post by emmelaich »

m00x wrote: post #167
FireBeyond wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charter schools have been the best bang for the buck. That is a lot easier when you can require a transcript from the prospective student, review it, and say, "Uh, no thank you". There's a private technical college near here that offers EMT and paramedic training. They "guarantee" "100% success in certification and registration" for their students. How do they get there? They boot students out after they fail ( I'm…

Yeah, that's very selective. Catholic schools on the other hand just require you to be Catholic and be somewhat involved in the Parish and score much higher. I believe this is not only restricted to Catholic schools though they are the most common. Most religious schools have higher scoring students.

Catholic schools in Australia don't required you to be Catholic. Although, I'm sure most kids are. And enrolling there will expose you to Catholic teaching.

I wonder if USA schools are similar. It's next to impossible to require belief.

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

#367

Post by zozbot234 »

programjames wrote: post #263
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Culture" is downstream of incentives.

Particularly, the biggest incentives are test scores and passing rates, which incentivize attention only to the bottom 50% and 20% of students (respectively). This means: - You do not diversify classrooms by academic ability---the high-performing students can be free tutors to the low-performing students. - You inflate the GPAs and implement no-zero policies. - You teach to the standardized tests, and don't worry abo…

Needless to say, these are not effective ways of teaching remedial and underperforming students.

Those pupils will generally need very structured lessons that directly provide clear information (often in a form that can easily stick in memory and be repeated, even word for word), and straightforward instructions that can immediately inform their practice no matter what their level. I.e. the exact opposite of a so-called "fun and engaging" approach. (Which of course ignores the fact that such students tend to derive the most fun and engagement from being taught in a clear and effective way!)

The underlying issue is that the "progressive" educational strategy taught in Ed Schools is very explicitly a "sink or swim" approach where the student is supposed to be teaching themselves and the teacher isn't doing any real work. The hidden attitude here, coming directly from the "Progressive" era of the late 19th and early 20th century, is that many students will indeed fail but this is not an issue because clearly they were not worthy of entering the educated class with the very best.

(Special Ed is the one remaining niche that still teaches more effective educational methods, but obviously not every remedial student is a Special Ed student, and we should not expect them to be.)

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

#368

Post by shagie »

sgc wrote: post #356
mercutio2 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard anyone say freshman physics is the hardest class in high school! Memorize 6 equations, 15 terms of art, and be competent at super simple algebraic expressions and you’re done. Physics in US high schools is taught long before calculus and usually before trig, which is dumb, but they compensate by making the calculation requirements something 6th graders routinely do. AP Calculus is even easier assumin…

Most schools do biology > chemistry > physics, which is from funnest and easiest to most technical and hardest (plus digging in to the building blocks of the previous class). Physics first is very much throwing them in at the deep end of the pool when they have never taken a high school class at all. Frankly, I never got the details of the curriculum due to lack of printed materials. Parenting is not easy, and it's a…

Physics also tends to expect some understanding of calculus... which tends to be a junior or senior level class. Having someone take a physics class when they're still struggling with single variable substitution in equations would be torturous to student and teacher alike.

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

#369

Post by eli_gottlieb »

soulofmischief wrote: post #223
potato3732842 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the institutions reflect culture. The fact that these institutions can exist at the low-performing state they do is a direct reflection of the culture of the people who run them, send their kids to them, pay taxes to support them, etc. The schools can only do what they do to the degree that people aren't willing to put up with it.

Institutions are supposed to protect culture, but they have failed due to the actions of a small elite class. It's like blaming a child for not having parents.

As a member of several of the {{{small, elite class[es]}}} you might be describing, which of us do you mean? Certainly those of us with a PhD don't want the schools to be shitty for our kids.

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

#370

Post by sdsd »

moduspol wrote: post #321
sdsd wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an empirical claim and there's statistics already available. Almost every study of student performance dramatically favors homeschool over American public school. I'm not saying this in support of homeschool, but as an indictment of public school. It's wild that schools spend many millions of dollars on hundreds of professionals, materials, and centuries of institutional knowledge, and yet are trivially outco…

To be fair: that mom gets to pick and choose which kids to teach. She probably wouldn’t get the same result if she had to apply the same techniques to inner-city Detroit kids six hours a day and five days a week.

>She probably wouldn’t get the same result if she had to apply the same techniques to inner-city Detroit kids six hours a day and five days a week.

I think you're thinking of it backwards. Inner city Detroit kids probably struggle in school precisely because there maybe isn't a mom at home who's passionate and available to educate them (among plenty of other reasons, to be sure).

Inner city Detroit kids (not gonna lie, feels like a euphemism) aren't just inherently hard to teach for no reason

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