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Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

nationsreportcard.gov

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Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#81

Post by pixelmelt »

tdb7893 wrote: post #16
letsbehonest1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, you'll get him with that one!

Haha, I wouldn't actually say anything (sarcasm never transfers on the internet). More of it's interesting that many baby boomers I know in real life think the sky is falling based on metrics that are better than they were when they were kids, and they didn't even have COVID as an excuse.

I opened this thread expecting a bunch of "kids these days..." posts, kind of surprised not to see any. People have been raising themselves up by putting down other generations since the very first I assume, the temptation towards the fallacy of composition is too irresistible.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#82

Post by zozbot234 »

mlyle wrote: post #69
zozbot234 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. Public education has vast amounts of funding in the U.S. compared to other developed countries. If it does badly despite that, it's very likely that "more funding" is not the answer.

It's worth pointing out that wages in the US are vast compared to other developed countries, though, too. We outspend OECD by 35-40%, but our average national wage is also higher than OECD by 35-40%.

Labor compensation in the U.S. is also extremely unequal, which pulls the average up in a way that isn't very informative as to this particular issue. The average starving PhD would be a much better and more knowledgeable teacher to high school students in the subject she took her PhD in, than the typical high school teacher with nothing more than an Education credential. Are you sure that you need to pay such high wages to existing teachers?

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#83

Post by win2k »

raincole wrote: post #23

I know the knee-jerk reaction is social media, but from the graph in the article, it seems to just get back to the same level as 90s.

Shows a lot of people haven't read the article and just made assumptions based on the headline.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#84

Post by cyberax »

zozbot234 wrote: post #48
crabbone wrote: post #38

Being a parent, I ask myself this question: is it worth it to struggle to get my child to try for better grades? And I don't have a definitive answer. The reasons to doubt are perfectly known: meritocracy is on a decline in the Western world, there's an ever improving safety net for losers, there's a price to pay for forcing my child to study vs the child spending time with their friends who were left to roam free as…

Why do you want to force your kid to study? Kids are naturally curious, it's likely that your kid will be curious about something . Introduce them to study and scholarship as a means of figuring these things out, so that it becomes natural to them.

Because _real_ study is boring. Watching videos on Youtube or playing "educational games" is not studying.

You need to repeatedly solve multiple practical problems to internalize the knowledge. And you'll eventually need to do stuff that you don't really like at all.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#85

Post by declan_roberts »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #71
japhyr wrote: post #22

People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…

I'm not hearing a whole lot of talk about No Child Left Behind or the near-total elimination of analysis and synthesis from modern curricula either, but having watched a 14 year old navigate what passes for elementary and middle school currently I'm unsurprised that test scores continue to slip.

Parents watching what their kids were learning (or not learning) was probably the largest acceleration into home and alternate school in history. That's what happened to nearly every family in our home school co-op.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#86

Post by havaloc »

Much ink has been spilled in the comments already, but as a child of the 80s, computers were a class, and not a lifestyle. If I had gone through school with what's available today, I doubt I would have done as well as I did. Most things were handwritten, I learned cursive, and computer class was Oregon Trail and basic programming essentially.

Looking back, I don't think Chromebooks, iPads and the like would have been beneficial to my elementary/middle/high school education at all.

Our primary instrument of learning was the teacher and really thick textbooks that were passed down student to student, and you could see that journey inside the in front cover where you signed it out for the year.

As someone who would protest at learning long division when a calculator was around, in retrospect, the teacher was right.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#87

Post by CSMastermind »

godelski wrote: post #7

The peak was in 2012 2012 2020 2023 Reading 263 260 256 Math 285 280 271 So people are looking at Covid and that's probably not enough. The scores are closer to those of the 80's than those in the 90's and 00's

Demographic change is the obvious explanation.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#88

Post by zozbot234 »

cyberax wrote: post #84
zozbot234 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to force your kid to study? Kids are naturally curious, it's likely that your kid will be curious about something . Introduce them to study and scholarship as a means of figuring these things out, so that it becomes natural to them.

Because _real_ study is boring. Watching videos on Youtube or playing "educational games" is not studying. You need to repeatedly solve multiple practical problems to internalize the knowledge. And you'll eventually need to do stuff that you don't really like at all.

The proper response to that is still not to force your kid to study though. Instead, she should be made aware that in order to consistently do well, she is ultimately expected to gain the ability to force herself and defer the immediate gratification of watching a YouTube video (unless that YouTube video is a boring recorded college lecture that's relevant to her studies, I suppose).

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#89

Post by rcoveson »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #19
biscuits1 wrote: post #5

I grepped for "covid" and "COVID-19" on all presented text. 1 result found. ". . . did you ever attend school from home or somewhere else outside of school because of the COVID-19 outbreak?" Can someone else confirm? Not enough investigation there. Of course, the trend was already going down, but the new slope is obvious. Prediction in next three years will be same or greater - technology, ai, screentime.

> technology, ai, screentime Significant parts of our society and government are actively hostile to education. Blaming the students is convenient, but probably not accurate.

Who is blaming the students? If 13 year olds were smoking and we blamed poor sports performance in that age group on the smoking, we wouldn't be "blaming" them. We don't model 13 year olds as little islands of free will.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#90

Post by forgetfreeman »

declan_roberts wrote: post #85
forgetfreeman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not hearing a whole lot of talk about No Child Left Behind or the near-total elimination of analysis and synthesis from modern curricula either, but having watched a 14 year old navigate what passes for elementary and middle school currently I'm unsurprised that test scores continue to slip.

Parents watching what their kids were learning (or not learning) was probably the largest acceleration into home and alternate school in history. That's what happened to nearly every family in our home school co-op.

Funny you should mention that, we're currently looking for a home school co-op in our area. It has become apparent that my child has learned basically no analytical skills whatsoever so I'm planning on homeschooling for a year to see what improvements that makes before making a final decision about what to do for high school.
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