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My Students Can't Read

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Re: My Students Can't Read

#61

Post by cjbgkagh »

pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

And what if the 35% failure rate had a disparate impact, would you still fail them?

Re: My Students Can't Read

#62

Post by duped »

ngriffiths wrote: post #20

> The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow. Obviously literacy is super important but these are examples of things where literacy plays very little role, because ~nobody can read a bill, or follow a written legal argument. I mean a very literate person can get something out of reading it, which…

Bills are not hard to read. Especially the closer to local government you get. The problem is that bills are worth the paper they're written on until courts affirm what the language means in the context of the legal system.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#63

Post by andai »

>I do what I can in my own classroom to address the problems. I break 20-page articles into two halves and assign the first half with explicit analytical tasks. I require exploratory writing before formal drafts. I model (visibly, on the board) how to track an argument across pages or distinguish a source’s claim from my own analysis.

I recorded some tutorial videos for some kids a while back, to help them prepare for an exam.

The feedback I got was very positive, but I suspected they weren't learning as much as they thought. So I made a practice exam for them, and they failed it.

This was a wake-up call for them. They revisited the material, and got a good score on repeating the practice exam, and a good score on the actual exam.

So, there needs to be a forcing function. The brain will generally be as lazy as it can get away with, in any situation. So if you want to develop some skill or faculty, you need to create a situation which demands its use.

(Ditto for if you want to retain a skill or faculty!)

Re: My Students Can't Read

#64

Post by cindyllm »

observationist wrote: post #12
satvikpendem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI detectors are all garbage, with very high false positive rates.

They use, unwittingly, proxies for "AI" stylometry, with no specific or explicable features they can point to and say "Look! That is evidence that the text is written by AI", as if there were such features in the first place. The best they can do is validate the very lazy one-shot patterns that humans should be able to highlight in the first place. Anything beyond that - even telling your AI to go use a "humanizer" s…

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Re: My Students Can't Read

#65

Post by yourapostasy »

foolfoolz wrote: post #33
pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

we have a school system that rewards graduation and punishes punishment. our public school especially is geared around progressing the lowest common denominator forward at all costs. private schools can run how they want, public schools are paid to do 2 things: 1. get butts in seats 2. have kids move up when the year is over

> private schools can run how they want...

This cuts both ways. Very well-known, competitive private schools conservatively financed have a waiting list a line around the block long and can enforce high standards. Private schools that are struggling for funding can find the compromises more tempting than they can bear. Finding that difference in the moment instead of as past historical anecdotes is surprisingly hard, though if someone has come up with a formula I’m all ears.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#66

Post by floxy »

jimbob45 wrote: post #45
pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

Is the problem participation? Or is it that entire years are devoted to reading ancient books with bad English and unrelatable themes simply because of tradition? Shakespeare wrote some neat plays but they’re not helping the reading epidemic. Math teachers had the balls to radically revamp their curriculums with Common Core and now their teachings are no longer formulaic but instead stimulate original thought and cre…

Citation needed for American public high schools that have a Shakespeare-heavy curriculum.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#67

Post by pclowes »

pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

Additionally any college grad that:

1. Takes out six figures of loans for a degree in a field with no hope of commensurate income

2. Pays minimum payments below interest

3. Whines on social media that after X years of not even covering the interest payment they now owe more than ever

Should:

1. Lose both their college and HS degrees. They clearly dont understand HS math.

2. Their college’s accreditation should be investigated

3. Same with their HS

Re: My Students Can't Read

#68

Post by [deleted] »

jimbob45 wrote: post #45
pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

Is the problem participation? Or is it that entire years are devoted to reading ancient books with bad English and unrelatable themes simply because of tradition? Shakespeare wrote some neat plays but they’re not helping the reading epidemic. Math teachers had the balls to radically revamp their curriculums with Common Core and now their teachings are no longer formulaic but instead stimulate original thought and cre…

[deleted]

Re: My Students Can't Read

#69

Post by D-Machine »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #61
pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

And what if the 35% failure rate had a disparate impact, would you still fail them?

Requiring years of schooling that is essentially worthless / provides credentials with no information also has disparate impacts, possibly worse than just properly failing people and letting them sort themselves / be sorted into positions that are actually suitable for them and allow real growth. Schooling is a huge percentage of a modern person's life now.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#70

Post by kys11 »

XorNot wrote: post #40
pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

What do you plan to do with the people who don't pass though? Everyone's very excited to have failure rates or whatever and then mute on the real problem: those people don't just go away.

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