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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

#591

Post by 0xdada »

foobarian wrote: post #309
linuxhansl wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed a different approach with my son. We gave him a phone pretty early, and didn't even have a lot of rules around it (no family controls, etc). The agreement I had with him: "Scroll all day, play video games, etc. That is my side of the agreement. And you also do your school work, learn, practice for exams, homework, etc. That is your side of the agreement. I'll trust you. If your grades get worse, i.e. you n…

We did something similar with our now 12yo. She self-regulates and tries to stay off the worst doom scrolling garbage sites, and tries to explore different sites and such like Pinterest cards and so on. She knows intellectually that the apps and services are designed to suck away attention. This kinda broke my heart but the other day she made a "bored jar" probably based on a Pinterest card which is a jar filled with…

Why is that a bad thing? Choosing to be bored instead of mindlessly scrolling is great. Boredom was an important part of growing up for me.

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

#592

Post by only-one1701 »

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…

That’s crazy man! Hey, I don’t suppose it was controlled for income as well as race, was it?

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

#593

Post by bjourne »

miningape wrote: post #547
bjourne wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 education…

I agree and I don't think gender-segregated schooling is a wise idea. But the argument is Kryptonite to those who favor school segregation because they realize that they more likely than not would end up in the loser group. Works wonders on race baiters too, who has to come up with "reasons" why girls beating boys is the result of "unfairness" while whites beating blacks is "natural".

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

#594

Post by philipallstar »

Meekro wrote: post #443
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'…

"Poverty blended with hopelessness" sounds about right. I'd like to emphasize that it's not just poverty, since there are plenty of recent immigrant families who live in poverty but the kids are at the top of their class. Unfortunately, though, there's a certain kind of degeneracy some families live in: the parents have largely failed in their every endeavor, and they'll become absolutely furious if they see the kids…

It's not the poverty; it's the learned helplessness.

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

#595

Post by rayiner »

bootsmann wrote: post #483
somenameforme wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an understatement. Sort that by at or above basic and the top 5 states in the US are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin.

Even in those states you mention, the number of students managing basic proficiency in maths fell by over 10 percentage points in the past 10 years. You can use the year selection on the site to see the picture change over the years. Texas dropped by over 20 points.

Nationally, seems to be mostly demographic change plus covid. For white 13 year olds, NAEP reading and math scores dipped a point from 2012-2020. Then they dipped 5-6 points from 2020-2023: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/

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

#596

Post by chongli »

Tarq0n wrote: post #581
JohnMakin wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter’s “source” makes no claims about race related performance whatsoever - it measures by just about everything but that, and then sorts by country. So maybe this is one of those darned reflexive knee jerk responses.

Pages 16, 32, 50 and 62 have breakdowns of mean score by ethnicity actually.

Ethnicity is way too coarse-grained to answer questions about culture and family wealth/connections. That’s lumping together a kid from an old-money family in New Haven with a kid from a trailer park in Virginia.

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

#597

Post by liveoneggs »

buu700 wrote: post #464
buu700 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So my anecdotal theory is that the (public) education system is optimized to the edges, abandoning the middle entirely, resulting in majority decline. Based on my anecdotal experience, this is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. I've been hearing constantly for at least a decade how atrocious American public education is, which I can't reconcile at all with my experience as a 2010 graduate of McLean High…

To expand on that a bit, based on my observations, I'd suggest the following conclusions: 1. Any reform effort needs to ensure that early education isn't overlooked. Elementary schools need capacity, processes, and expertise to appropriately deal with kids of all different knowledge/intelligence levels and backgrounds/skillsets in a personalized way, and they need oversight to ensure that lazy/incompetent/malicious t…

I'd learn zero just like every other boy who would be 100000% distracted by technology and currently uses up tons of willpower every day to avoid playing games on their mandatory-issue-device.

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

#598

Post by nobody9999 »

nathan_compton wrote: post #559
nobody9999 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one actual physicist who will provide you with appropriate counterpoint. Here they are. And you're welcome. a physicist responds: physics has done very little for like 70 years [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o4k0eLoMI

She is speaking about physics in a very narrow sense.

>She is speaking about physics in a very narrow sense.

In what respect? Did you bother to actually watch the video or read a transcript or did you just watch the first minute and a half and assume that was the point? It wasn't. the ensuing thirty-two minutes serve to debunk the idea that there hasn't been progress in physics over the past seventy years.

Which GP claimed was the case. GP is wrong.

And she covers a wide array of physics areas -- she even mentions that she could have gone year by year starting in 1953 and cover at least one advancement per year, but she limited it to just her top ten which was pretty wide ranging.

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

#599

Post by Aeolun »

CalRobert wrote: post #574
Aeolun wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s so weird that your level of education in the US (and most of the world really) seems to depend on which specific school you went to. The Netherlands has settled on three levels of schooling and within that level (according to capacity, and desire to learn) most of the schools show relatively little variation. The same thing continues into university, with pretty much 99% of all the universities in the Ne…

Dutch PISA scores have fallen badly, though. We moved here from Ireland and the basisschools seem kinda mediocre compared to what we had in Ireland. My eldest certainly learned to read much better. Schoelenopdekaart shows pretty wide variation in how many students go on to vwo etc.

Fair, my experience is pretty much 25 years out of date. At the time it was pretty good.

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

#600

Post by graemep »

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'…

> Skin color isn't it, actually.

Is contradicted by this

> My mixed race friend mentioned he was accused of "acting white" in school because he actually tried to get good grades.

Unless you are taking skin colour very literally, which is obviously not it (someone's academic performance is not going to change if they get a heavy tan or use s kin whitening cream or take a drug that changes skin colour etc.).

I interpreted "white" to mean an ethnic identity, not a literal description.

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