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

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

#191

Post by boringg »

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…

No one has discussed that lack of rigour in public education anymore. In my neighborhood the kids don't have homework until grade 7. Literally not a piece of homework came home from grade 1-6.

While I am not saying give kids more homework for the sake of work -- you do need to have some rigour. There was a movement about 10 years ago to let kids be kids and have lots of free time for exploration etc, remove competition at schools. These are all great things worth pursuing but not at a complete lack of work.

Also add in all the other things including funding - though funding doesn't solve all woes.

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

#192

Post by jjk166 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #161

I’m curious how does it track with class sizes and tracks (remedial, regular, honors, “gifted”). The level is so low in my local elementary school that the single track math class is still doing addition within 20 for first grade. The funny thing is that the state standard actually measure 2 and 3 digit addition for K and 1st graders, and proficiency at that level would be p75 for a 1st grader. So why is the actual c…

> tracks (remedial, regular, honors, “gifted”)

The decrease is consistent across performance levels which should be a pretty decent proxy for tracks.

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

#193

Post by vor_ »

jvanderbot wrote: post #62
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…

Funding per student is on the rise, or level on inflation-adjusted $ https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... The funding for dept of ed has _exploded_ after 2000 https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... At the same time, school scores started to sag after 2014 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ There are highly politicized blogs which can discuss…

> When DJT talked about cancelling the Dept of Edu, I got ahold of all the teachers I knew and asked them what impact it would have, and their response was mostly that they would lose their school lunch benefits.

Not the most convincing sample size.

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

#194

Post by mold_aid »

zozbot234 wrote: post #105
troosevelt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries. Teachers get paid peanuts.

That's not so low when you account for the fact that school is not in session during summer, and teachers get these months off.

You sure they're not on 20 pay contracts? Everybody tells me "it must be so nice, getting summers off" and I'm like "actually I look for summer courses because I don't get paid."

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

john_strinlai wrote: post #123
zozbot234 wrote: post #82

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by jjk166 »

dessimus wrote: post #27
nh23423fefe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead of gpt did it, ill lazily say covid did it

Covid doesn't explain the drop from 2012 to 2020 though, as the tests were administered Fall of 2019 and therefore pre-Covid.

The decrease from 2012 to 2020 was much less and generally not statistically significant. Further 2012 was the all time high, you'd expect some regression to the mean.

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

#197

Post by usefulcat »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #122
weberer wrote: post #37

Earlier 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…

> 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.

It depends on the state. In Texas, property taxes from wealthier districts are redirected to poorer districts to ensure more equitable funding (search for "texas robin hood").

The result is that most public schools are funded about the same regardless of where they're located.

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

#198

Post by cameldrv »

tommica wrote: post #34
kpw94 wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

Absolutely, we are feeding kids so much attention-span killing things. Even as an adult I'm having hard time with YouTube shorts, and i cannot imagine a kids brain having the ways to deal with all that.

Also the parents using too many attention-span killing things which is hurting the attention they give their children.

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

#199

Post by phil21 »

JPKab wrote: post #154
jedberg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funding per student is on the rise, or level on inflation-adjusted $ That's at the state level. But that doesn't account for the explosion in admin salaries and positions. The actual money a district spends on each student has been going down every year. Those funds are going more towards admin activities. > I got ahold of all the teachers I knew and asked them what impact it would have, and their response was most…

Student/teacher ratios have gone down, not up over the last few decades. This isn't a lack of funding. Teachers are put in an impossible position with students who come from homes where the parents don't do their proper jobs. It's never been easier to be a neglectful parent. Your child will be entertained non-stop by an iPad and a video game system. They won't get bored and bother you. You can send them to their room…

The single variable that actually matters when it comes to school - and nothing else matters until this one is fulfilled: The quality of the peers who make up the student body.

Or put another way: The quality and involvement of the average parent.

A school can absorb an extremely small minority of "problematic" students if the rest of the student body is stellar, but that's about it.

There is not a single thing any public education system can do to counteract that simple fact. If the average student in the classroom is uninterested at best and troublemaking at worst, it doesn't matter how good the teachers are or what the ratios are, or if the classrooms are old and busted or brand new.

Until society becomes serious again, this problem will only get worse as education continues to be a political and culture war football. The best realistic thing I can think of is take a look at nearly all other western social democracies who have much better outcomes and immediately implement student academic tracking. But that would be politically impossible to do in the current state of the US.

I fear that things are going to get far worse before they get better. You could 10x the primary school education budget and likely continue to see worsening results.

When I went from private (poor) primary and middle school, to a rich suburban high school, to a poor inner city high school back in the 90's this was self evident. I didn't think it could get much worse than that, but the administrative and political classes figured out how to wildly beat even my exceedingly low expectations.

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

#200

Post by gamerDude »

jcims wrote: post #178

My wife taught first through fifth grade from ~2004 until 2017. One thing that was evident to me from the sidelines was how much admin work was continually added to her workload without any consideration for the amount of class time she had. The focus on data derived from continuous testing of the students resulted in her and her peers sticking ever more closely to a continuously disrupted and rotated collection of c…

I worked for a couple of years in education and I think this sentiment is so harmful:

> It's also difficult to experiment or strike out on your own as an educator when the future of the students in front of you could be negatively impacted by any mistakes made (not to mention job/test scores/etc) so most just ride the rail all the way down.

It's pervasive and makes things move so slowly. The biggest issue I have with it is that the system is so protective of doing no harm, but doing no harm to a system that is failing students is a poor decision imo. We should be more experimental if things are generally bad. Be protective of the mechanisms when we have good results, not when we have bad ones.

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