Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by corimaith »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #533
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Take that to its logical conclusion and we'd have individual, personalized tutors for each student. We don't have the resources for that, so some groups are going to get shafted. The question is which.

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

#612

Post by bpt3 »

legacynl wrote: post #531
hintymad wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In my kids' schools, the textbooks haven't been removed due to cost, they have been replaced with even more expensive online material that no one properly consumes.

Educators have been brainwashed into believing "computers are the future!" and don't seem to be able to even contemplate that reading something on a screen is a poor substitute for physically interacting with something (a pen and paper, a book, or the actual thing being described in a video).

I regularly have to tell my kids to stop doing math and science problems on their computer and get out a pencil and paper to do the work so they can organize it and understand it. They argue at first because their teachers tell them not to (so they say), but stop when they actually see it working.

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

#613

Post by Dilettante_ »

My completely unfounded theory about why education is declining: Teachers don't get to beat kids anymore. (I'm not saying they ought to). If it's one mentally completely exhausted adult doing nothing but "use their words" against 25 kids/teenagers with nothing but energy, and a feeling that the system, which the teacher is the agent of, is their enemy, the power balance flips radically.

Forcing kids to go to school only works as long as you actually have any force at your disposal.

(And convincing them that going to school is in their best interest similarly requires that to actually be the case. Kids who start off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed will quickly reverse their position when they're either below or above the bell curve and their educational needs/welfare are being completely and obviously disregarded.)

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

#614

Post by graemep »

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'…

[flagged]

> And yes, skin color itself is irrelevant, it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences

No, its a terrible identifier.

If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering

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

#615

Post by ethbr1 »

PxldLtd wrote: post #580
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whose to say "cited findings" have any more value than "anecdata". The institutions that build these national and international statistics do so with bias and goals, or without complete data. For example, how can a bureau make a national statistics on crime accurate when cities intentional report crime incorrectly to look better in statistics. To think "cited findings" is gospel truth is naive. I know it's highly des…

Anecdotes are not a very useful tool in discussions about generalisations. They provide little evidence aside from saying that it's a category of event that can exist. No one at any point has said citations are gospel. Just that anecdotes aren't adding much to the discussion at hand. If you've got issues with the cited data, be precise instead of casting general aspersions on academia.

Given that this is just a discussion between random strangers on an internet forum, I personally find both statistics and clear anecdotes, which GP provided, valuable in creating the richest perspective.

This isn't Proceedings of Hacker News or parliament: we're writing ephemeral internet words and trying to enrich each other.

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

#616

Post by graemep »

pavlov wrote: post #529
eunos wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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.

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.

Lack of role models, right? What men do they look up to?

I guess primary school teachers in the US are predominantly women as they are in most countries? So boys without intellectually inclined men at home or in their social circles do not have role models for educated masculinity.

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

#617

Post by e40 »

kubb wrote: post #546
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 gene…

No jard data, but from talking to teachers there was a shift sometime in the last few decades were parents got really aggressive towards teachers when they should have been aggressive towards their children. This idea that their kids were no longer accountable and that poor performance or discipline had to be the fault of the teachers.

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

#618

Post by graemep »

kingkawn wrote: post #603
graemep wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 interpre…

[flagged]

Saying that skin colour is not important is racist? Or are you objecting to the idea that culture matters? Or are you saying that how people identify, and how society classifies them has no impact?

Really confused by what you are claiming is racist.

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

#619

Post by buu700 »

liveoneggs wrote: post #597
buu700 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good point. Personally, I'm not in favor of unfettered personal device access in schools. Back in my day, you used school computers on the (filtered) school network and cellphones remained off and out of sight during school hours. It was a pretty good system that moderated distractions and goofing off reasonably well. I'm not sure when or why that changed, but I don't think it was a positive change.

To your point, I would expect any sanctioned in-school student-facing AI usage to be through a school-provided platform on locked down school-owned hardware, in line with how computer/internet access already works (or how it worked 15 years ago). School-issued mobile devices with AI access could be a nice addition if they were locked down enough to sufficiently minimize distractions, but maybe sticking to laptops and desktops would work better in practice.

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

#620

Post by tw04 »

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…

In my community, it’s both. The referendum to continue funding the teachers who supported the advanced math and reading classes didn’t pass.

The referendum didn’t pass because a large swath of the community saw no value in having advanced math and reading classes. I have no doubt there was a lot of “I didn’t go to advanced classes and I turned out just fine, that’s a waste of money” thought process.

Post reply on HN