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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

#231

Post by ghostpepper »

k2enemy wrote: post #214
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…

Maybe. I've definitely seen that anecdotally in some cases. But the school system is also problematic for the families that do value education and the kids that could excel in the classroom. Our district has eliminated programs for the kids at the top end in the name of equity. They've also eliminated separate spaces for kids with learning and behavioral issues for the same reason. So everyone is in the same classroo…

do you live in Canada or is this happening elsewhere?

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

#232

Post by mensetmanusman »

soulofmischief wrote: post #223
potato3732842 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#233

Post by mensetmanusman »

jimt1234 wrote: post #144
staticman2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things an entire day on active shooter drills? Is it possible your niece was joking?

Unfortunately, no. My niece's mom, my sister, called her school to ask wtf was going on. They gave her a lame, lawyer-approved response about their responsibility to protect children and the drills are mandated by the state, blah blah blah. So yeah, my niece said they practice how to respond (call 911, not your parents?), what to do if the teacher is shot (they don't use the word "shot", though), and they talked abou…

lol, our legal system helping to destroy education via risk mitigation.

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

#234

Post by chrisco255 »

username332211 wrote: post #90
agentcoops wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m originally from a US state that currently sits at a 40% literacy rate, but I’ve lived for the last decade in various European countries. I say this only because, even if still anecdotal, I feel like I have a decent basis for comparison. Certainly there are educational disparities from center to periphery and across income brackets everywhere, but I have never lived somewhere that the division was as stark as the…

That's by design. France has a cabinet with full control over education in the entire nation. In the United States, education is in the hands of locally elected school boards and the role of the federal and state secretaries of education seems to be mostly limited to dumping money on those people. (And attaching conditions to that money in general seems to be fairly controversial, as the present discussion shows.) Th…

The US has always had a state-run or private education system, since even before it was founded as a country. And the U.S. is among the top 10 most educated countries in the world, with over 50% of population having at least a bachelor's degree.

It's pretty simple to vote on local offices: are you happy with the current state of education in your district? Good, keep the incumbents around. Otherwise change out school board members until you achieve the desired results.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232951/university-degree...

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

#235

Post by rootusrootus »

jimt1234 wrote: post #144
staticman2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things an entire day on active shooter drills? Is it possible your niece was joking?

Unfortunately, no. My niece's mom, my sister, called her school to ask wtf was going on. They gave her a lame, lawyer-approved response about their responsibility to protect children and the drills are mandated by the state, blah blah blah. So yeah, my niece said they practice how to respond (call 911, not your parents?), what to do if the teacher is shot (they don't use the word "shot", though), and they talked abou…

That's wild. My daughter just started public high school last week and they haven't had any meaningful talk about safety, no active shooter drills, nothing like that. They did waste several days on orientation and how class will be organized, stuff like that, but since she's a freshman I guess maybe that makes sense. This week she's been assigned homework.

But this is a boring suburban town on the edge of a midsize metro in the PNW, which is not exactly the most exciting place in the country.

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

#236

Post by verteu »

teachrdan wrote: post #201
vondur wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where my wife works the average salary is over 100K per year, so not bad for 9 months of work. This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation. I would not lean too hard at political party affiliation, California politics is heavily influenced by Teachers Unions, and yet we score near the bottom of the entire US.

> This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation I read your post and thought it was BS, so I did a little research. According to this, California public school test scores are better than Texas and closing in on New York and Florida. > California politics is heavily influenced by Teachers Unions, and yet we score near the bottom of the entire US. California scores better than Texas,…

Maybe California just has more rich people. When you control for demographics/SES, Texas schools seem far superior:

https://www.chadaldeman.com/p/which-states-actually-have-the...

https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/States_Dem...

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

#237

Post by tptacek »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #22
pfannkuchen wrote: post #13

I know we’re not supposed to think about this, but is this controlled for region of origin? That has been changing, and so if that impacts school performance (schools designed by westerners, mind you, in a societal model designed by the same), then we would expect this to change as well right?

[flagged]

There is in fact not good evidence for IQ being "highly linked to genetics".

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

#238

Post by netsharc »

jimt1234 wrote: post #144
staticman2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things an entire day on active shooter drills? Is it possible your niece was joking?

Unfortunately, no. My niece's mom, my sister, called her school to ask wtf was going on. They gave her a lame, lawyer-approved response about their responsibility to protect children and the drills are mandated by the state, blah blah blah. So yeah, my niece said they practice how to respond (call 911, not your parents?), what to do if the teacher is shot (they don't use the word "shot", though), and they talked abou…

> they don't use the word "shot", though

Can I guess.. "bulleted"? Similar to how the creators of brainrot content say "unalive" or "seggs" because they want to make sure their content can go viral, and there's the belief words like "kill", "died" or "sex" will trigger Zuck and Co.'s censorship?

2025, what a year to be alive...

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

#239

Post by rootusrootus »

mrandish wrote: post #58

There's a longer trend but also a clear inflection point around the rise of mobile phones and social media. N=1 but we delayed getting a phone for our kid until a few months after she turned 13, which was a good choice because now we wish we'd gone longer. We can see how social media and app snacking clearly have negative effects on attention span, attitude, etc. Also choosing to close schools during COVID was as cat…

We did something similar. My daughter got her first phone last month, just in time to start high school. And I'm happy to say that the school district adjusted their mobile phone policy this year from being pretty restrictive, to an outright ban. I completely support that.

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

#240

Post by mothballed »

bsder wrote: post #200
vondur wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where my wife works the average salary is over 100K per year, so not bad for 9 months of work. This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation. I would not lean too hard at political party affiliation, California politics is heavily influenced by Teachers Unions, and yet we score near the bottom of the entire US.

> This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation. This is an easily disprovable statement that calls into question your credibility. California schools generally score right at or just below the median for the entire US. That doesn't make them good , but they sure aren't the worst. > I would not lean too hard at political party affiliation In the US, it's not hard to look at a map of…

It's not hard to be in the median yet one of the worst states, if NY/CA/FL/TX all have shit scores (I have no idea if that's the case). You could conceivably be at the median while being one of the worst 5 or 10 states.
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