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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

#891

Post by kulahan »

whoiskevin wrote: post #684
etempleton wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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This article mostly talks about a program for girls in developing countries, not US students in general, and it barely touches on the topic of food. What happened to NPR? They were my favorite a few years ago, but man this is a bad article.

As an aside: I’m fine ending literally any girls’ program that doesn’t have a boys’ equivalent. Boys are in huge trouble.

Anyways, this doesn’t support your point well, since it ends by saying they ended up coming to an agreement in ‘16 that still focuses on fruits, veggies, and whole grains.

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

#892

Post by kulahan »

constantcrying wrote: post #889
kulahan wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not been in a library in like 50 years? It’s a hell of a lot more than a “small building which doesn’t have the resources they need”.

Without a doubt in my entire academic life the books have been the least useful thing libraries contained. Getting rid of them provides space for the good and productive things people do in a library. It is important that students have quiet space to study. But libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.

Ah, from that point of view, I can agree. It’s shocking how few books I can find in my local library. Not a single one by GK Chesterton, and half a million people live in my town. Wtf?

Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible.

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

#893

Post by rayiner »

bootsmann wrote: post #810
rayiner wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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That’s just how the educational data is reported in the U.S., because 55% U.S. K-12 students are part of subpopulations that are differently situated sociologically (e.g. recency of immigration, immigration filtering effects, etc). It usually misleading to look at the averages without accounting for that.

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

#894

Post by [deleted] »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #823
rayiner wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Texas is in the lowest decile in terms of high school graduation rates and the lower half of post-secondary educational attainment. It is not a paragon of educational achievement. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/educational...

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

#895

Post by rayiner »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #851
everybodyknows wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graduation rates can be raised to nearly whatever ratio is politically desirable, simply by easing requirements. https://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-high-school-graduati...

Not disputed. But what's not disputed is they haven't done that. They are still in the lowest decile in terms of graduation rates.

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Texas does well on nationally standardized tests. Whose to say their graduation standards are too high, rather than other states’ being too lax?

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

#897

Post by rayiner »

mattnewton wrote: post #841
rayiner wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The criticism is more that the money on football doesn’t show up in test scores, not that it harms test scores, and the believe that their tax dollars would be better spent on something that does contribute to test scores. (Reasonable people can disagree about that) Texans scored highly on Texas state tests, but generally below the national average on national tests like the SAT https://legacyonlineschool.com/blog/te…

The NAEP scores cited in my link above are nationally standardized tests from the federal department of education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educati.... SAT scores are hard to compare across states because they are optional and states have different participation rates.

The steel man version of what you’re saying is that American kids do really well on tests, accounting for factors like the large immigrant population. And they choose to invest their significantly greater financial resources in sports rather than improving score even further. Which is a fair argument!

But the formulation of the argument made by OP is just cultural chauvinism. Being culturally open minded has little to do with reading and math scores. Utah performs similarly to states like Minnesota in reading scores, and better than almost any other state in math.

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

#898

Post by apparent »

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…

You're sort of not allowed to mention culture in the context of education. Otherwise people might realize that different cultural groups have very divergent education outcomes. For example, Asian students study 2x as much as white students and 3x as much as black students. It is likely not unrelated that Asian students have much better educational outcomes, regardless of class. For example, Asian students whose parents have no HS degree perform better on the SAT than black students whose parents have a doctoral degree.

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

#899

Post by DanTheManPR »

Projectiboga wrote: post #824
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…

Ugh, I was born in 68 and I always advocate for doing some research in libraries. The important factor is the serendipity of finding random stuff as you walk around and the narrowed part when you get to your target's area on the shelves and seeing other volumes in the same subject area.

I'm much younger than you, but I had the experience of having a difficult-to-find-info-on-the-internet subject for a high school paper, and the opporunity to researching the subject at a well stocked library. There was a lot of friction to the process that I wasn't used to, but the serendipity aspect was absolutely revelatory. There is something fundamentally unfiltered about walking past shelves of books with titles on subjects you never even knew existed.

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

#900

Post by constantcrying »

kulahan wrote: post #892
constantcrying wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a doubt in my entire academic life the books have been the least useful thing libraries contained. Getting rid of them provides space for the good and productive things people do in a library. It is important that students have quiet space to study. But libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.

Ah, from that point of view, I can agree. It’s shocking how few books I can find in my local library. Not a single one by GK Chesterton, and half a million people live in my town. Wtf? Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible.

>Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible.

I agree. But it is obviously far more cost effective and useful to have that access be digital first.

Do not understand me wrong, I like physical books. But for doing research it is almost always preferable to have the books be available digitally. And students should learn to make use of that.

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