US High school students' scores fall in reading and math • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by jajko » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

dzink wrote: post #294

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…

It’s culture led by phones and other screens. Most teens are addicted to the screens. The need them for school and for socialization with friends and they end up on TikTok or another network and zombie there for most of their best brain years. They lack the ability to focus necessary to learn because the brain is used to constant screen simulation. Letting your child be babysat by a screen is absolutely the worst thi…

Don't expect much when (from what I see) most adults are properly addicted to their screens. If parents are already not up to the bar kids will seldom be, leading by example and all that.

Now show me parents, hell even here on HN, who openly admit that they are addicted to the screens and various 'social' cancers and consider it something profoundly bad and damaging, and that they as parents should really do better and actually try. A rare sight, mostly its brushed off and some even brag how 'digital' and modern their kids are.

But its fine, we all know how these things really are. This is one area where even otherwise disadvantaged parents (ie due to their poor upbringing or ie coming from undeveloped places) can raise their kids to be well above sea of future desperate population with severe social anxieties and addictions (lets not forget addictions ball up since they change personality for the worse).

Think how much lack / minimization of those will give them various advantages in their adult lives, be it professional (focus on work, ability to better socialize and communicate in person) or personal (all kinds of relationships, and finding one's purpose and drive in life). I just mentioned basically whole core of adult existence, no small things by any means.

And its not that hard, we do it with our kids and often see it around us in their peers, just need to put a bit more effort and spend more time with them instead of doom scrolling or binge watching TV. Which are anyway good parenting advices, but one needs to start like that from beginning and lead by example.

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

#542

Post by hopelite » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #439

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…

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'…

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

#543

Post by bmacho » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:19 AM UTC

Scubabear68 wrote: post #103

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…

I live in the US in New Jersey, and here a big problem was the State flooded school districts with money during Covid with no material oversight of its spending. The end result was huge increases in spending. But not on education. The money was spent on more MacBooks, more iPads, more buildings, more smart TVs, more consultants, more School Bullshit System as a Service, more scoreboards, more $50,000 signs in front o…

> Schools have very little to do with teaching, and really are just about baby sitting and trying to correct social issues.

Is that wrong? The government takes away your kid for 12 years, every weekday all day, they might as well solve social issues in the country even if that means, say, kids are 1 year behind Asian kids, or their parents 30 years ago. If they figure out how to solve personal issues, that's even better.

I think there is a logical fallacy here. People assume that the only purpose of school is education. The more the education the better, even if that means deepening social issues, or making kids unhappy (BTW being a kid is like ~20% of someones life, not insignificant in itself). I think they assume it just because 'school' is called 'school', but I don't think the name of an object should determine its purpose.

- - -

When I look at the social issues in my country, I think the school system would be a very natural place to start to solve them (and arguably the current school system just worsens them). Even at the cost of "fall in reading and math scores".

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

#544

Post by halfmatthalfcat » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:21 AM UTC

non_aligned wrote: post #471

Aurornis wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 issue…

Your very last point though is where it all falls apart. If you have people who know what they're doing, co-mingled with "LLM cheaters", its very obvious they're cheating. Before long, they're found out and fired. It's not sustainable.

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

#545

Post by jajko » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:26 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #179

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…

> Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort. No? Most of the parents around me are busy each working a full time job and doing their best to raise their kids. They now spend some of their free time reading on the phones instead of a newspaper, magazine, or book. Some listen to books while they mow the lawn, clean the house, or do other chores like…

Yes? You mention it too - parents glued to their phones, part of the problem. Kids seeing their parents reading a book vs being glued to their phones really isn't the same thing, far from it. They can come and see pages of printed text in a book, vs some endless tiktok/instagram feeds of shallow video entertainment. Guess which they will stay around and stare endlessly without even blinking.

Screens and especially active content are incredibly addictive and small kids have no way of being rational and throttle their use. If they see the same behavior in their parents that's it.

Its not about having stay-at-home parent, but about spending the time with kids to be 100% physically there for them and them only, no running screen of any type anywhere in sight. Lets be honest, this is a rather rare sight.

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

#546

Post by kubb » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:39 AM UTC

obscurette wrote: post #504

As someone old (60+) who was a teacher in school and thinking a lot about it: - It's mostly a cultural shift in the western world – we don't value personal responsibility any more. When I was in school in seventies, it was my responsibility to study no matter what since grade 1. It didn't matter whether I liked a teacher, topic or whatever. It's not the case any more. - Since nineties there has been a shift in educat…

Personal responsibility, or lack thereof always seemed to me like one of these memes that are used to explain phenomena in a handwavy fashion.

Does anyone have any data points that could help me update my world model here?

I certainly feel personally responsible for things and so do many people that I know.

Additionally, it feels like people like to blame systemic issues on lack of personal responsibility in the general public, while ideally, elected officials should take personal responsibility for fixing the system.

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

#547

Post by miningape » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:42 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #192

echelon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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I do agree there's a disparity between educational outcomes in men and women - but I don't think you can immediately draw your conclusion:

Baked into it is the assumption that current education models fit both genders equally. Boys respond better to active learning and competitive techniques than the more passive techniques used currently. (Could we just as easily draw the opposite conclusion if our current educational culture was geared towards boys?)

Another thing to consider is the various programs that incentivise/enable girls to get into various subjects (in my n=1 experience I had much fewer programs (programming, robotics, maths, etc.) to join despite being already very interested and strong in those subjects).

By comparing age groups directly we are also not controlling for the fact girls mature faster making them better students earlier in life. We are also not considering tail effects of a normal distribution: e.g. top 5% of all students are male, but majority of students in the top 50% are female.

Maybe the solution is to segregate schools on gender, but that doesn't immediately equate to boys crashing and girls excelling.

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

#548

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:43 AM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #542

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'…

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> it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences

It's actually not. Skin color does not correlate well with the genetic diversity among humans at all. It's just one particular trait that is very easy to identify by eye.

> There is absolutely zero reason one would rationally conclude that biological differences would somehow magically stop at the brain.

There is absolutely zero reason to rationally conclude that a random physical trait that happens to be easy to distinguish by eye correlates with brain function at all.

On the other hand, there are massive socioeconomic disparities that arise from the history of slavery, which easily explain both the disparities and the reasons why racists such as yourself want to boil things down to skin color.

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

#549

Post by poemxo » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #439

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…

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'…

I don't appreciate reading anecdata in response to cited findings. It cheapens the discussion. Now everyone is going to spend time writing knee-jerk responses to you.

At least the parent commenter had the grace to reply with another source instead of falling for it.

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

#550

Post by ThrowMeAway1618 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

jjgreen wrote: post #532

nobody9999 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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

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

More songs about Ken Paxton[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUqTNDJjdLw