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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

#771

Post by bpt3 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #671
atwrk wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re point 2: In Germany, among other countries, you have social education workers (a college-educated job) in school for these situations. Such behavior has underlying causes, e.g. problems at home (fresh divorce, drugs, poverty-related stress) recent trauma (accidents, death of a loved one, abuse), mental illness (AHDS etc.). Treat the cause and the behavior changes.

Most schools here have those too. The problem is in the United States children are treated just a hair better than chattel slaves and their parents can basically do anything they want up to the line of actually killing them, and the state does very little. And, even in the cases where the state should and could do something, the line for those services is incredibly long and the child will be properly fucked up by th…

So the state, which is incompetent/ineffective in your description above, should be given even more power in this situation?

Parents in the US don't have any more rights than those elsewhere.

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

#772

Post by rayiner »

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]

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

#773

Post by fooqux »

sleepyguy wrote: post #715
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…

Here in North Texas, school districts drop tens of millions on artificial turf for junior high and high school football fields. Some even run bond elections to build stadiums and training facilities that would make an NFL team jealous. Meanwhile, academics sit dead last on the priority list—kids are walking across the stage barely able to read or write. Honestly, if AI came in and torched the whole education system,…

I presume if AI does come in, it won't be replacing those "geniuses running things now". They'll be fine; it's all the teachers who will be replaced. They're expensive, and all that money can go towards more sports!

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

#774

Post by jjani »

monkeyelite wrote: post #719
Rooster61 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it. This is not a joke. At all. There are a LOT of high schools that actively prioritize football facilities over education. I grew up in one. It's very frustrating, and that's coming from someone who DID play football.

At my school the kids asked for donations to fund their equipment and they brought in money on the games for their budget. But once again… students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries.

Let's do away with the blackboards, school books, pencils, pens, and edutech. Replace all of them with tablets loaded with TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Minecraft, Roblox. I'm sure they'll see much more use than what they're replacing. Such efficiency!

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

#775

Post by donkeybeer »

sgc wrote: post #356
mercutio2 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard anyone say freshman physics is the hardest class in high school! Memorize 6 equations, 15 terms of art, and be competent at super simple algebraic expressions and you’re done. Physics in US high schools is taught long before calculus and usually before trig, which is dumb, but they compensate by making the calculation requirements something 6th graders routinely do. AP Calculus is even easier assumin…

Most schools do biology > chemistry > physics, which is from funnest and easiest to most technical and hardest (plus digging in to the building blocks of the previous class). Physics first is very much throwing them in at the deep end of the pool when they have never taken a high school class at all. Frankly, I never got the details of the curriculum due to lack of printed materials. Parenting is not easy, and it's a…

At the high school level of presentation and rigor, Biology is hard and boring full of memorization without anything that reduces or compresses the data. Chemistry is very hard, lots of memorization and also lots of mathematical thinking. Physics is easy, very few basic laws that are quite intuitive and whose proofs you are not expected to learn and links in most directly to real life things you can feel and experience such as levers, moments etc.

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

#776

Post by OhMeadhbh »

monkeyelite wrote: post #702
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…

I went to a high school with lots of kids that read and nobody ever checked out a book from the school library. Their interests were specialized and they got their books online or from larger collections not offered at a school. It’s fine - libraries aren’t sacred. If nobody uses them we don’t need them. The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it. > “Disassembling the library boo…

Libraries are more than checking out books, but your point is well made. I prefer printed books, but absolutely use e-books when they're more convenient. I still think it's useful to have a librarian AT THE SCHOOL to help students with all the things libraries do that aren't related to circulation or lending. Having the librarian at the point of use increases the chance that students, faculty and administration will make best use of the library's services.

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

#777

Post by bpt3 »

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…

On 2, the US DOEd has decided for at least the last couple decades that it is inherently racist if a school's punishment metrics are misaligned with their demographics (e.g. white kids are 50% of the school population but receive only 40% of suspensions).

That environment makes it risky to punish anyone, and a lack of order causes or compounds almost every other item on your list (which I largely agree with).

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

#778

Post by OhMeadhbh »

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…

The ironic bit here is the local high school where I live in the Pacific North-West doesn't have a copy of Homo Ludens (either in print or as an e-book for lending) which is sort of the Sine Qua Non text on the philosophy of sport (which would explain why having a Football Team is important.)

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

#779

Post by porridgeraisin »

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…

I think a major issue is the lack of a feedback loop. Cheap money in america means that no matter what country you're currently in, it's financially beneficial to migrate to the US. One of the happy paths towards this end is migrating for college or higher education.

In other countries' colleges without this unlimited input second to local students, there is a feedback loop connecting the college back to the local schools. This ensures that schools keep up. In america this is not required, since no matter what standard say UW sets, the corresponding tutoring centres in India, China and Singapore will adapt to that within weeks. And they can send as many students as UW can possibly ever want.

It also doesn't help that international students bring in more money than local students.

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

#780

Post by parpfish »

scherlock wrote: post #575
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…

I think social norms in child rearing have changed drastically, though I think, at least in my neighborhood, they are swinging back. Growing up in the 80s, I remember having a lot of free time and autonomy. I had soccer or baseballaybe twice a week and guitar lessons once a week, but the other days, I was doing what I wanted, I was expected to get my homework done, but once that was done,I was free to roam the neighb…

Unfortunately, I don't think we can every really go back.

It wasn't just that kids had autonomy, it's that they also needed to take the initiative to fight boredom and go do something.

Let's say that you give kids today all that autonomy to wander around their neighborhood and explore like they did back in the day -- would they wander and explore, or would they stare at their phones?

And to be clear -- this isn't the kids fault. We've let social media companies peddle their addictive slop and they've eradicated boredom, but it came at the expense of short attention spans, no motivation, no sense of fulfillment.

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