States should pay more attention to Mississippi on how they were able to revamp education in under a decade.
https://oxfordeagle.com/2025/01/30/mississippi-4th-graders-n...
Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
121–130 of 320 posts
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#122People 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…
>Averaged across the general student population, there was no statistically significant correlation between a school’s spending levels and its students’ academic performance in 27 of the 28 academic indicators used in the model. In the only category that did show a statistically significant correlation — seventh-grade math — the impact of spending more was very small. https://www.mackinac.org/S2016-02#results
I'm not sure how to square that with the very well-studied result that areas with higher income tend to have better schools. Students from lower income brackets also do better than their income peers at schools in less affluent areas. And because local property taxes are a major funding source for schools, those are also the schools I'd expect to spend more because they have more.
Michigan notably does not fund schools through homeowner property taxes. I suspect that's probably the difference here and a reason we shouldn't use it as a representative example.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
>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
i dont think this is true.
there is an art to educating (especially the ~10-15 year old range) that does not just manifest itself because you are smart: how to engage students, how to keep them engaged, how to adjust the message to the audience's level and communicate it effectively (which changes kid to kid), how to earn a kids respect without becoming over-bearing (or too friendly), and dozens of other things that your PhD in compsci or whatever does not teach you.
some of the smartest PhD holders i know would be very shitty elementary/high school teachers.
(context: i teach at the college level. its a lot easier than teaching at the high school level.)
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Averaged across the general student population, there was no statistically significant correlation between a school’s spending levels and its students’ academic performance in 27 of the 28 academic indicators used in the model. In the only category that did show a statistically significant correlation — seventh-grade math — the impact of spending more was very small. https://www.mackinac.org/S2016-02#results
I'm not sure how to square that with the very well-studied result that areas with higher income tend to have better schools. Students from lower income brackets also do better than their income peers at schools in less affluent areas. And because local property taxes are a major funding source for schools, those are also the schools I'd expect to spend more because they have more. Michigan notably does not fund schoo…
Could it be that people with higher incomes are a lot more likely to actually care about their kids getting a good education, and to put pressure on the school to that effect?
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#125People 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…
The US has been continuously defunding and deprioritizing education for decades. This is the result of a culture that doesn’t value education.
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Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
My non-controversial theory: It's all the attention-span-shortening stuff. - tech apps starting with infinite scroll (facebook, 9gag, Instagram, etc.) - media/tech shortened content: shorter tv shows, short video content, etc. (Tiktok is the "state of the art" of those 2 trends pushed to the max) Specifically, we're getting more & more addicted to things that increase the dopamine spikes frequency, making it increasi…
I wonder if there's research on short form but educational content or if that's fundamentally impossible. For example I remember reading a lot of science magazines / articles growing up (granted popsci but for a kid it still teaches some things) and as I grew up things like the Economist. Similarly I also played games like math blaster as a kid and have realized I need to intentionally provide games like this to my k…
Last time I dove into its research, I found that Math Blaster had no impact on student learning.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how to square that with the very well-studied result that areas with higher income tend to have better schools. Students from lower income brackets also do better than their income peers at schools in less affluent areas. And because local property taxes are a major funding source for schools, those are also the schools I'd expect to spend more because they have more. Michigan notably does not fund schoo…
Could it be that people with higher incomes are a lot more likely to actually care about their kids getting a good education, and to put pressure on the school to that effect?
There'd still be a correlation between spending and academic scores regardless of the actual causative mechanism.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#128Much 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…
I don't know why I was so surprised when my kids told me there was nothing called a "computer lab" at their school... why would there be when each kid has their own device?
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
> 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 i dont think this is true. there is an art to educating (especially the ~10-15 year old range) that does not just manifest itself because you are smart: how to engage students, how to keep them engaged, how to adjust the message to the audience's level and communicate it effectiv…
~10-13 mostly comprises the junior high range. By the time the kids are 14, they're plenty old enough to benefit from a "college-prep" educational approach. Sure, some PhDs will be better, others will be worse. But you solve that by throwing out terrible teachers and rewarding the best ones. There's no guarantee that an Education-credentialed teacher with negligible education in the actual subject they're supposed to teach would be any better.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Averaged across the general student population, there was no statistically significant correlation between a school’s spending levels and its students’ academic performance in 27 of the 28 academic indicators used in the model. In the only category that did show a statistically significant correlation — seventh-grade math — the impact of spending more was very small. https://www.mackinac.org/S2016-02#results
I'm not sure how to square that with the very well-studied result that areas with higher income tend to have better schools. Students from lower income brackets also do better than their income peers at schools in less affluent areas. And because local property taxes are a major funding source for schools, those are also the schools I'd expect to spend more because they have more. Michigan notably does not fund schoo…
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