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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

#221

Post by bxsioshc »

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…

Just look at HN. Nominally an educated crowd, but talk about physics, and you immediately see terms like "ivory towers" or "return on investment", despite the fact that most on HN doesn't understand in fundamental science works.

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

#222

Post by saagarjha »

cpursley wrote: post #107
throwway120385 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't intend this as a dig against Spanish-speaking students. But many school systems in the US have tons of Spanish-speaking students who know very little English. But all of the homework, readings, and classroom instruction are given in English. If you don't know the language of instruction then it puts you at an immediate disadvantage. This might be what they're referring to.

Even second generation Latin American folks who speak English fine often perform poorly. It's cultural but we're not supposed to talk about it. Saw a lot of it first hand via the family business; it's truly bewildering and even disheartening.

> It's cultural

How do you know?

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

#223

Post by soulofmischief »

potato3732842 wrote: post #219
soulofmischief wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And constraints. To call this a cultural issue is insane. I have firsthand seen the structural problems with institutional education. My scholastic experience was hell and anti-intellectual from day one, and it was all institutional issues.

And the institutions reflect culture. The fact that these institutions can exist at the low-performing state they do is a direct reflection of the culture of the people who run them, send their kids to them, pay taxes to support them, etc. The schools can only do what they do to the degree that people aren't willing to put up with it.

Institutions are supposed to protect culture, but they have failed due to the actions of a small elite class. It's like blaming a child for not having parents.

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

#224

Post by chrisco255 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #27

Just looking at the picture triggered me. Why are the students sitting in groups and cutting paper with scissors? There’s a huge teaching gap between USA and Asia. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/wIyVYCuPxl0?si=f6wFv2G3Iru7QFTy https://en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org/wiki/James_W._Stigler Edit: since it may not have been clear from the video, this is my interpretation: * in the Japanese math class the teacher teaches at…

If it's not clear, arts and crafts sessions are occasionally included in classroom material, especially at younger ages. A single picture is not indicative of how most classrooms operate, or even how this particular classroom operates most of the time. It looks like a quick group project for a basic presentation on some subject matter.

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

#225

Post by OkayPhysicist »

echelon wrote: post #80
stephendause wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jonathan Haidt has a lot of good material on this. He is leading the charge in encouraging parents to delay giving their child a phone until high school and not allowing them to have social media accounts until age 16. https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/family/story/author-sugge...

How do Asian countries and top-performing countries deal with this? We should do whatever they do. On that note, we should also segregate kids by academic desire and achievement like Japan and China. The bullies and underachievers hold back those who are academically excellent. We do this in limited instances, but not enough to really count.

I grew up a white kid in a very (90+%) Asian community. IMO, the biggest difference I observed comparing my white friends from other communities to my Asian friends in my community was the expectation of excellence. For the Asian kids, either they were succeeding, above and beyond, or they were a failure. "B is for 'Better not come home tonight', A is for 'Adequate'", as the jokes went.

And some of those kids still struggled. But the response was to push harder. Didn't get adequate grades that school year? You're not doing anything fun this summer, you're studying. Needless to say it was a culture shock going to college and meeting people who were shockingly cavalier about potentially failing classes.

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

#226

Post by chrisco255 »

throwway120385 wrote: post #60
chabons wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm missing something. What change in demographics are we talking about, and why would that influence math results?

I don't intend this as a dig against Spanish-speaking students. But many school systems in the US have tons of Spanish-speaking students who know very little English. But all of the homework, readings, and classroom instruction are given in English. If you don't know the language of instruction then it puts you at an immediate disadvantage. This might be what they're referring to.

Florida has a huge hispanic population but is ranked #2 in K12 education rankings. Kids are actually remarkably fast at picking up on English even if they were born and raised in Spanish speaking homes or in Spanish speaking countries.

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

#227

Post by chrisco255 »

Kapura wrote: post #23
jjice wrote: post #2

Curious what the causes are and how their weighted. Seems like it'd be too complex to actually figure out what's causing the most damage, but it's very interesting. There are so many factors I'd argue are probably negatives: - Always online phone access (and everything that comes with it) - Generative AI for doing assignments without thought - The COVID year or two that they had to learn from home couldn't have helpe…

early on in the bush (ii) administration, they passed a bill called "no child left behind" that would cut funding from schools that couldn't achieve desired standardized test scores. while this may seem to align incentives, in reality a school that has struggling students needs MORE resources, not less. the outcome, in reality, is an extreme desire to "teach to the test," where developing actual skills is secondary t…

I'm sorry but some F rated schools getting closed down needed to happen. There are institutions either so toxic at the administrative level or so heavily populated with kids with behavioral issues that it's impossible to fix without divvying up the student population into other schools that can better handle the load.

NCLB had some flaws but that wasn't one of them. Before NCLB you were stuck in the poor school district your likely single parent could afford to live in, inevitably doomed to poor education.

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

#228

Post by pixl97 »

bluGill wrote: post #61
pixl97 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I mean, I remember hearing this back in the 80s, so in itself is not a great indicator unless we can see something that would point at why parents stopped caring as much. Now, if someone came with a headline that said "Parents not involved in childrens education because they've been ragebaited into spending all their time yelling on social media" my biases would tend to lend me to believe it's true, even without…

It is just as true today as the 1980s - parents have long been the largest indicator of how well kids do in school. What isn't known is how to get parents to do better. Or lacking that, how to get kids to do better anyway. (there have been some successes, but nothing seems to be repeatable)

But that's just punting the original question. Obviously parents aren't getting better, they are getting worse. Why is the question.

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

#229

Post by WalterBright »

jimt1234 wrote: post #124
lucideng wrote: post #33

The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort. A major societal shift needs to happen for this to be reversed. It's many factors... the parents, the food system, various inequalities, social media, technology, healthcare... the solution is multi-pronged. But if I had t…

> The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. I resisted that narrative for years, thinking it was just a media-hyped scare tactic to get clicks. However, my niece started high school a few weeks ago (in mid-August, which is weird to me); her experience blew my mind. Her new high school is considered one of the better public high schools in the area. When I asked her how it was…

I went to public high school in the 70s. The honors chemistry class spent an entire semester on what a molar mass was.

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

#230

Post by mensetmanusman »

Nearly half of kids aren’t being raised with their parents in the home. This was rare 50 years ago, and all the research shows that home dynamics matters the most.

Education spending has shot up per student because people think it will solve cultural ills.

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