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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

#961

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would the school entangle students with a task to be performed by professional vendors. Why pay a vendor to do it when you can get the students to do it for free?

Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration. Also once again, this sounds like what someone would imagine they did in wood shop if they never took wood shop.

Well, this is what they did in wood shop. Happy to send proof. My son documented the full process.

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

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that “culture” explanation is that white kids in America do fine in international educational comparisons. In the 2018 PISA assessment, 15 year old white american students were near the top in reading (behind only Singapore and some Chinese SEZs) and in the top echelon in science (comparable to Japan). Their weakest performance was math, where they’re around the middle, behind the top asian countries…

> Insofar as the US had a “culture averse to education,” surely that affects white americans as much as it affects anyone else. Its like you've never lived in America. Obviously white people are extremely privileged and also have a different culture. Keep in mind that schools in predominantly black areas are typically significantly less funded than those in white areas.

Finnish people in Finland and Japanese people in Japan also have “white privilege” in the way you’re talking about—they don’t suffer from whatever disadvantages are associated with being black in America. White Americans have the ordinary range of privileges and disadvantages of people in any country (some are richer, some are poorer, etc). If you trying to evaluate American educational culture and schools in general, it makes sense to compare white people in the U.S. with Finnish people in Finland or Japanese people in Japan or non-immigrant French people in France. To the extent we have this data, Americans perform very well in such comparisons.

If what you say about racism, etc., is true, that is actually an argument against the cultural explanation. That would mean that educational underperformance compared to other countries is caused by internal racism in the U.S., not some anti-educational trend across American culture as a whole. If you somehow erased racism and brought everyone up to the scores of white Americans, then the U.S. would be right behind Japan in educational outcomes—even though the Americans care more about football than reading.

Also, only about 5 states have significantly more funding for white students once you consider federal funds. About twice as many have significantly more funding for black students: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/Measuring%... (see page 22).

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

#963

After moving my kids out of a bad elementary school and into a fantastic district with a highly ranked school, the differences are obvious. The good school has smarter kids with better parents. The bad school had dull kids with bad parents. The kids at the new school do their homework, read, play outside. The kids at the old school skipped homework, played call of duty, and could hardly read. The new school has fun e…

In my state, to live in an excellent school district is very expensive. We've been trying to move but always get out-bid and out-priced. Mind you we earn well above median but unfortunately, we were not "born early enough." Many folks living in the districts have been there well before it was expensive and probably cannot afford their own home if they had to buy it again. Shit sucks.

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

#964

The fact that there’s even a debate about banning smart phones in classrooms tells you all you need to know. Cell phones were de facto banned in school in like 2002, not sure when it became the norm but it seems like a no brainer.

Agreed. The argument "I want to know if my child is safe in an emergency" is incredibly flawed. God forbid there is a shooting, kids should be listening to their teachers to be instructed to safety not distracted. And their phones should not make noise when they are hiding.

If the emergency is on the outside of school, parents still need to go through the main office to pull kids out of school, so contacting them is also unnecessary. These helicopter parents smh

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

#965

After moving my kids out of a bad elementary school and into a fantastic district with a highly ranked school, the differences are obvious. The good school has smarter kids with better parents. The bad school had dull kids with bad parents. The kids at the new school do their homework, read, play outside. The kids at the old school skipped homework, played call of duty, and could hardly read. The new school has fun e…

How do you determine what is a good district or not?

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

#966

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I was the only kid in Texas who was vaguely interested in athletics but completely uninterested in football. I mean... I was never insulted for playing baseball or soccer, but yeah, we need a better game than football as the go-to for Texas sports.

>we need a better game than football as the go-to for Texas sports. Freestyle[0] FTW! Let's Jam! [0] https://www.freestyle-frisbee.com/index.html

Why the downvotes?

Just because it doesn't require a cup or serious risk of CTE/TBI doesn't make freestyle bad, does it?

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

#967

My completely unfounded theory about why education is declining: Teachers don't get to beat kids anymore. (I'm not saying they ought to). If it's one mentally completely exhausted adult doing nothing but "use their words" against 25 kids/teenagers with nothing but energy, and a feeling that the system, which the teacher is the agent of, is their enemy, the power balance flips radically. Forcing kids to go to school o…

Teachers still beat kids:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/01/19/it-is-sti...

and looking at state maps, beatings look negatively correlated with test scores:

https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1krxcco/oc_ranking_of_...

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

#968
post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my school the kids asked for donations to fund their equipment and they brought in money on the games for their budget. But once again… students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries.

Let's do away with the blackboards, school books, pencils, pens, and edutech. Replace all of them with tablets loaded with TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Minecraft, Roblox. I'm sure they'll see much more use than what they're replacing. Such efficiency!

Who said anything about replacing school time?

I agree - having an after school video game time would be a better use of resources than an unused library.

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

#969
post #961

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration. Also once again, this sounds like what someone would imagine they did in wood shop if they never took wood shop.

Well, this is what they did in wood shop. Happy to send proof. My son documented the full process.

Yeah please share his documentation.

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

#970

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yes, skin color itself is irrelevant, it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences No, its a terrible identifier. If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_cluste…

>If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else. There's only one sentient primate race: Homo Sapiens. There absolutely are genetic differences between groups that were geographically isolated from each other (as you note). However, when genetic variation is c…

This is not a place to spread your religious beliefs, let alone try to evangelize them or your various mystical rationalizations akin to proving god through muddling and intentionally misleading sophistry. You are doing nothing more than trying to prove how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; post modern version.

You people swapped one religion's mysticism for another.

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