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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

#761

Post by rayiner »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #729
poemxo wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cited findings, don't refute the culture argument though, and maybe even reenforces it. In US culture being illiterate is bad, being bad at math is not looked down up on. The stats show good at reading and bad at math. While there are STEM (Science Tech Engineering and Math) initiatives, I have yet to see one that actually includes math. You see results in science but not math.

The U.S. isn’t “bad” at math. I found some updated charts that break down the data for 2022 (the underlying data is all from OECD and NCES). White kids in the U.S. outperform non-immigrant kids from every European country except Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Estonia: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1732244690408214720?s=4.... Though to be fair, the US and Europe are all notable behind the developed asian countries (Singapore, Japan, Korea) which may indicate a lesser cultural focus on STEM.

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

#762

Post by seneca »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #755
jmpman wrote: post #693

My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the library bookcases”. “Why???” “Because they’re getting rid of the library”. Apparently the school board decided to save money by cutting the librarian, and then decided to just move the books out of the school library and into the “nearby” public library. In reali…

[flagged]

I'm not sure this is all that unpopular of an opinion anymore. Government schools have been in decline for decades, and a lot of people were exposed to the truth of just how dysfunctional they had become during covid lock downs. Perhaps before that more people still believed in the noble myth of public education, but I, at least, have seen more and more people agreeing with the sentiment you put forward, minus the statement about keeping teens out of the job market.

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

#763

Post by mathattack »

This is interesting data. For all the talk of bringing up the bottom and "No child left behind" this suggests we're still succeeding. And as anyone in California will tell you, schools are doing this at the expense of the top students.

I get that COVID is part of the cause. Forcing one instructor to teach to 30 kids of widely varied abilities makes it worse. In that model, nobody learns.

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

#764

Post by Aurornis »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #755
jmpman wrote: post #693

My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the library bookcases”. “Why???” “Because they’re getting rid of the library”. Apparently the school board decided to save money by cutting the librarian, and then decided to just move the books out of the school library and into the “nearby” public library. In reali…

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> The purpose of education past 8th grade is to keep young people out of the job market.

If not for that pesky education system we could all be hiring fully capable 14 year olds into our empty job postings!

Of course, they might have trouble getting to the workplace. Or doing anything that benefits from a high school education. Maybe shuttle them to the mines?

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

#765

Post by hamdingers »

etempleton wrote: post #654
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 the US there are a few obvious things, but everyone acts as if we are powerless to solve them: 1. Cell phones in classrooms. I don’t know how or why they were ever allowed. They should have to be in a backpack or in a locker and off during class. 2. Not removing students with bad behavior from classrooms and schools. The current thinking on how to handle a student who is seriously misbehaving and potentially viole…

> 4. Too many parents aren’t parenting

You attribute this to increased laziness, and that might contribute, but there are other factors at play.

For one, it takes significantly more hours of work from both parents just to provide basic food & shelter than it did a few decades ago. Calling parents who work more hours than any previous generation in history "lazy" is itself lazy and misses the point.

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

#766

Post by Fraterkes »

raincole wrote: post #688
Fraterkes wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is a favorite of a lot of people, but doesn’t make a lot of sense to me: how is your generation with the ostensibly correct culture producing a generation with the wrong culture? Parents are apparently raising their children wrong en masse, so was the parents’ generation rotten too? Which raises questions about the character of the generation that raised the parents…

If parents could perfectly pass their culture down to their children, no religious country would ever turn secular. Gay marriage would never have been legalized. Black people would have no right to cast vote today. All these things are not true in the real world, so the conclusion is that a generation doesn't copy the previous generation's culture like a spit image.

I don’t think you need to be able to clone yourself to raise a child with broadly similar values to yourself. My point is that I don’t think you can simultaneously argue that the older generations were raised in a way that was succesful at making them responsible individuals (in ways kids these days aren’t) and that that same generation is systematically failing at passing on responsibility to their children. Which leads me to believe these generational differences in responsibility don’t really exist

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

#767

Post by bpt3 »

jmpman wrote: post #693

My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the library bookcases”. “Why???” “Because they’re getting rid of the library”. Apparently the school board decided to save money by cutting the librarian, and then decided to just move the books out of the school library and into the “nearby” public library. In reali…

People keep talking about education cost. By and large, this isn't a cost issue. The lowest performing schools get the most funding per student, and while school boards and teacher's unions always are going to advocate for more money spent on education, spending in the US isn't low objectively or based on per-pupil averages elsewhere.

The issue is who is ultimately in charge of students and who is responsible for raising them (which should be the same thing, but doesn't have to be), making this ultimately a control issue.

Certain people want to use the school system to raise children based on their own moral system because they could be learning the "wrong" thing at home, and other people want the schools to defer to parents' wishes. Most people want their kid to get a good education and otherwise be left alone by teachers and administrators, but that group gets very little attention.

At the end of the day, parents are legally responsible for their children, and unless that is changed, schools play an important but secondary role in caring for and raising them. Until that is widely accepted or changed, conflict will continue.

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

#768

Post by 1970-01-01 »

spicymaki wrote: post #587

Almost all of the comments have someone’s pet theory about the cause of the decline in achievement. The truth is we don’t actually know why there is a decline or how to stop it.

FTA: "While the pandemic had an outsize impact on student achievement, experts said falling scores are part of a longer arc in education that cannot be attributed solely to COVID-19, school closures and related issues such as heightened absenteeism. Educators said potential underlying factors include children’s increased screen time, shortened attention spans and a decline in reading longer-form writing both in and out of school."

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

#769

Post by OhMeadhbh »

jbeam wrote: post #736
Spivak wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you didn't go to a football school. We had a multi-million dollar stadium that could hold a thousand-ish fans and it was packed every game. Most of them were season ticket holders. We also raked in $$ from other schools who wanted to host their events using our stadium. Also none of the people working the game are paid except for the ref (and the TV crew if you have one). It's all volunteers and students. Our pr…

The vast majority of high school sports teams aren't coming anywhere close to a profit. Your experience is unusual, which answers your question: > why do people constantly ignore this.

People also ignore how these football stadiums are financed. Some with public bonds, others with private agreements with outside organizations. (Looking at you, Flower Mound.)

You're always beholden to the person who pays the bills. If your football stadium is paid for by public funds, you're beholden to the voter (by way of elected representatives.) If your football stadium was paid for by the local Ford dealership who asks for a cut of concessions, well... you give them a cut of the concessions.

People in North Texas seem to trust corporations more than they trust local governments. I think that's because they're familiar with whom they elect to office. The local corporations might be run by sociopathic dorks, but at least they're SUCCESSFUL sociopathic dorks. And while it might seem that I'm dissing North Texans... I'm really not. We may be on the road to neo-feudalism, but at least they know what side their bread is buttered on.

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

#770

Post by arcfour »

stetrain wrote: post #754
stonemetal12 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 1 even true? I can't say I have ever heard of a school that allows phones out in class. Taking them till the end of school, or making a parent come claim them is the standard punishment I have seen.

This was the case in schools 15+ years ago, but recently a lot have had more problems with parents complaining about teachers taking away their child's phone. Part of it is that phones are more expensive, a $900 iPhone vs a $100 Nokia. Another is (perhaps founded) anxiety about their child needing to have a way to communicate to the outside world in an emergency situation like a school shooting. Also people get used…

> Another is (perhaps founded) anxiety about their child needing to have a way to communicate to the outside world in an emergency situation like a school shooting.

Yes, a situation less likely to happen than being struck by lightning. Very founded!

Not to mention you can just, I dunno, borrow anyone else's phone and have one or two phone numbers memorized? Assuming if they are in an emergency and alone they are not going to be saved by a phone.

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