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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

#471

Post by non_aligned »

Aurornis wrote: post #408
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. I always find it interesting that the anti-schooling mentality is so prevalent here on HN, too. It’s most obvious in threads about cheating, where a popular topic of discussion is to defend cheating as a rational reaction because school doesn’t matter, a degree is “just a piece of paper”, and you’ll l…

The difference is that you can, quite successfully, keep "cheating" with an LLM while at a job. And people do, not just in lower-importance roles, but at law offices, etc.

I work in tech and I see this more and more every day. By "cheating", I mean deciding that you don't want to do the thinking or even spot-check the result; you just ask an LLM to vibe-write a design doc, send it out, and have others point out issues if they care.

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

#472

Post by cyberax »

bxsioshc wrote: post #221
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…

Just look at HN. Nominally an educated crowd, but talk about physics, and you immediately see terms like "ivory towers" or "return on investment", despite the fact that most on HN doesn't understand in fundamental science works.

There are _plenty_ of areas in physics where investment is paying off. Condensed matter physics, optics, material research and so on.

We mostly question the fundamental subatomic particle physics that is not producing any returns on the investment. E.g. the galvanic effect was discovered in 1780, and there were long-distance telegraph lines by 1845 - so 65 years.

The last major theoretical advance in particle physics was around 1965 (Higgs mechanism). That's already 60 years ago.

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

#473

Post by abenga »

cyberax wrote: post #454
KPGv2 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

OK, here's a question. Should every sportball team in the US be prohibited from being selective? Everyone, regardless of their capability, should be able to play on the same field. Including paraplegics because it's not their fault. It's a lofty ideal, don't you think?

If playing sports was essential to living to everyone across the board, yeah, they would be prohibited from being selective.

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

#476

Post by bxsioshc »

nradov wrote: post #403
bxsioshc wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at HN. Nominally an educated crowd, but talk about physics, and you immediately see terms like "ivory towers" or "return on investment", despite the fact that most on HN doesn't understand in fundamental science works.

A lot of the complaints here about physics have to do with focusing so heavily for decades on string theory (or M-theory) which hasn't produced much in the way of practical results. At some point we have to quit throwing good money after bad and redirect funding towards other lines of inquiry.

[dead]

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

#477

Post by bxsioshc »

cyberax wrote: post #472
bxsioshc wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at HN. Nominally an educated crowd, but talk about physics, and you immediately see terms like "ivory towers" or "return on investment", despite the fact that most on HN doesn't understand in fundamental science works.

There are _plenty_ of areas in physics where investment is paying off. Condensed matter physics, optics, material research and so on. We mostly question the fundamental subatomic particle physics that is not producing any returns on the investment. E.g. the galvanic effect was discovered in 1780, and there were long-distance telegraph lines by 1845 - so 65 years. The last major theoretical advance in particle physics…

[dead]

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

#478

Post by lelanthran »

KPGv2 wrote: post #376
weitendorf wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racial achievement gap is probably one of the most significant problems educators in the US think about. I think one of the biggest obstacles to improving it (not causing the problem, but making solutions difficult or ineffective) is that low-performing urban school districts tend to correlate strongly with strong teachers' unions and big, mismanaged school administrations where things are too bureaucratic and in…

[flagged]

> the schools are able to kick out any underperforming students

Being able to kick out disruptive students has a pretty big influence on the remaining students.

How do you distinguish between underperforming-non-disruptive students and under-performing-disruptive students, especially as the almost all the disruptive students are going to be underperforming anyway.

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

#479

Post by inemesitaffia »

shagie wrote: post #368
sgc wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are calculus free science programs

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

#480

Post by phil21 »

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.

The vast majority to all Catholic schools in the US have no requirement of you being Catholic.
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