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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

#531

Post by legacynl »

hintymad wrote: post #486
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…

> There is more and cheaper education available than ever before. The real issue isn’t the availability of learning materials, but the healthy pressure and right push from experienced teachers. People tend to overestimate how self-driven most students are. The truth is, most students aren’t naturally motivated to learn. They need society to give them a sense of purpose, and they need teachers to challenge them with p…

> The real issue isn’t the availability of learning materials

Well, some people claim in these comments that their children don't get textbooks. Not saying that you're wrong, but it's gonna take a lot of 'healthy pressure and right pushes' to account for the fact that they don't have educational material.

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

#532

Post by jjgreen »

nobody9999 wrote: post #501
Aurornis wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either this is a bizarre backwards school, or your niece is exaggerating for effect. > kids in the US are doing active shooter drills and staring at the Ten Commandments. USA! USA! USA! Not a thing at public schools (despite some attempts to force it) Between this and the prayer comment, I suspect this comment is either exaggerated or mixed with internet anecdotes rather than actual experience.

>> kids in the US are doing active shooter drills and staring at the Ten Commandments. USA! USA! USA! >Not a thing at public schools (despite some attempts to force it) >Between this and the prayer comment, I suspect this comment is either exaggerated or mixed with internet anecdotes rather than actual experience. Actually, it is a thing in Texas. And unfortunately, it's not exaggerated at all. From Wikipedia[0]: "S.…

dismantle the solid foundation on which America’s success and strength were built

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

#533

Post by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #361
rayiner wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And different individuals within those cultural groups also have different values and priorities. A good education system supports everyone equally in achieving their goals.

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

#534

Post by fragmede »

csomar wrote: post #512
rayiner wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not what the article is discussing (decline over time). We (all?) know white American have over average performance due to whatever reasons. The question is: Are they declining alongside the overall group. That might suggests that the reason(s) for this decline is cross-culture/ethnic/race.

> We (all?) know white American have over average performance due to whatever reasons.

[citation needed]

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

#535

Post by safety1st »

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…

I don't think that disproves the culture argument. American culture is segmented. (Modern marketing and politics have leaned heavily into this segmentation by the way.) For example, if you grow up exposed to ghetto culture you will probably not value education. The PISA assessment doesn't tell us that white kids who grew up in the ghetto are magically competing with Singapore's best. And we know that the ghetto is less white than the rest of America. Ergo in aggregate, US whites outperform. There are of course a million exceptions to this i.e. grow up in a certain type of Asian immigrant household and you will probably do great on these tests and maybe learn piano, violin etc. as well.

Now whether ghetto culture or ghetto economics is the main contributor to poor academic performance... I will leave that finer point up for debate, but my point here is the US has big differences in educational outcomes based on NEIGHBORHOOD, if your neighborhood is high crime and the schools are broke, your educational outcomes tend to be bad.

If there is a culture related problem, I think it's that the people pushing this trashy culture, for example music that glorifies rape, drugs and gangs, code it as black culture and use that as a way to deflect criticism. You're a racist if you don't like hip hop! It would be an understatement to say that many black Americans want nothing to do with that lifestyle or image and have evolved well beyond it, yet it still gets called black culture. It is a cultural weakness that we don't see rape, drugs and gangs as bad stuff to promote and reward, full stop, and not a thing we should be educating the next generation with, regardless of the skin color of the performer, or its roots.

BTW for whatever it's worth I'm white and I grew up in the ghetto. My parents forced me to take a public bus for an hour each morning to a magnet school in the rich part of town. Years later I met up with my white childhood friend from down the road who had gone to our local high school. I had a bunch of academic achievements and a college scholarship, he had a gunshot wound in his stomach. He was a smart guy when I knew him but the ghetto had its own plans for him.

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

#536

Post by theF00l »

Yokolos wrote: post #515
noobermin wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've related this story here before. I was a first year in physics grad school, and my professor told me he heard rumours of students telling each other memorising formulae was a waste of time, and that as a physicist one should just be good at deriving results. The professor scoffed at that and sardonically surmised that may be the person who said that was intentionally trying to stiffle their competition in the cla…

I grew up being told by my peers in school that memorising things was a waste of time and critical thinking was all that mattered. Now I use Anki to literally memorize programming language syntax and ideas and facts that are relevant to my job (like data structures and algorithms). I wish I'd valued memorization when I was in school, because it's such a foundational thing to have knowledge upon which to build everyth…

I find that very interesting and also thought of using Anki for that but decided it wouldn't be useful for me now.

Could you give me an example and how it helped you? Thank you :)

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

#537

Post by lozenge »

eunos wrote: post #522
zdragnar wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin color isn't it, actually. I knew (second hand) a teacher in a rural area of a low population state. All white kids, she'd have kindergartners cussing her out. Very little hope for any academic future for the other grades as things didn't get better with the older kids. I knew a white kid who lived in a trailer park whose mom was upset he was getting tutoring after school for his dyslexia because she told him he'…

>"acting white" Honestly this is one of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard. Assuming that this mentality is quite widespread(not necessarily universal) among non White, then any attempt to introduce affirmative action or other equalizer practice would be futile. That kind of mentality must be purged hard from yesterday.

How do you propose to do that?

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

#538

Post by Brybry »

chabons wrote: post #129
throwway120385 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intuitively, I can understand that English Second Language students would struggle in classes other than English, but are the demographics really shifting enough to explain the drop in attainment shown in the article? The best demographic data I can find is here: https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/103-child-population... The best data I can find on language spoken at home is here: https://datacenter.aecf.org/dat…

The NAEP site has performance by student group sections. It includes breakdowns for Hispanic and English/non-English learners and includes a section on demographic changes (ctrl+f Group Population Percentages).

Reading: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g12/p...

Math: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/mathematics/2024/g...

Hispanic population has shifted (+3-4%/report) and English learners have shifted (1-3%/report). [Note that reports have variable number (~2-5) of years between them]

English learner scores went up (or stayed the same) and non-English learner scores went down.

The big caveat of course that the English learner average score is still much lower than the non-English learner so if that population increased enough it still drags down the average. (Click the English learners to see their scores or see the National Student Group Score Distributions section for graphs that make this apparent).

But it has to be more complicated than "the English-learning Hispanic population increased" because if you look within racial groups: all groups except Asian are down within their own group.

Or, for example, girls' scores are down more than boys' scores even though girls' scores are still better than boys' on average in Reading (but worse in Math).

I think it's probably multiple factors all adding together. For example, % of public charters has increased but public charter schools have worse scores than public non-charter. % of economically disadvantaged has increased and economically disadvantaged students have worse scores than those not. % of students with disabilities has increased and students with disabilities have worse scores than those without.

The weirdest thing to me is how the population statistics are different between reading and math. From 2019->2024 the reported Hispanic 12th Grade population shifted 3% for Reading but only 1% for Math?

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

#539

Post by lan321 »

Outside of the US but past the daycare, covid, etc issues that have been mentioned everywhere I see a focus on money making. Highschoolers are still kids but I feel the new generation is more aware of the fact that the end goal is making as much money as possible, so if they feel like learning something they lean more towards reading/watching about investing/hustling which doesn't translate well into academia.

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

#540

Post by 0xEF »

eunos wrote: post #530
pavlov wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teenage boys everywhere have a widespread bias against putting in the effort to get good grades. They might call it "gay" or "sissy" or "acting white" or whatever, but the root cause is usually their perception of what masculinity should look like. The men they look up to are anti-intellectual. This exists in all communities, race is not the main problem here.

That must be dealt with full spectrum crackdown on national level.

I'd like to see what a "full-spectrum crackdown" on anti-intellectualism in the US would look like, given that most of its population struggles to discern fact from fiction in the news cycle, healthcare and legal proceedings. The introduction of generative AI has only made that worse, pushing more distrust of any information that didn't come from a source counted among "one of us." Our problem stems from an intentionally poorly educated populace that still heavily relies on idolatry, allowing whatever demagogue with the means to rise and essentially manipulate the masses.

I'm pretty sure, at this point, this was intentional, individuals and orgs with the resources to create finely tuned systemic problems having been at it since the country's inception.

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