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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

#991

Post by aidenn0 »

eunos wrote: post #522
zdragnar wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin color isn't it, actually. I knew (second hand) a teacher in a rural area of a low population state. All white kids, she'd have kindergartners cussing her out. Very little hope for any academic future for the other grades as things didn't get better with the older kids. I knew a white kid who lived in a trailer park whose mom was upset he was getting tutoring after school for his dyslexia because she told him he'…

>"acting white" Honestly this is one of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard. Assuming that this mentality is quite widespread(not necessarily universal) among non White, then any attempt to introduce affirmative action or other equalizer practice would be futile. That kind of mentality must be purged hard from yesterday.

I have seen the pattern with latino students in SoCal as well.

Anecdotally the pressure can be worse with people who have a white parent (either mixed-race or through adoption); I am unsure if the cause more is internal (insecurity about self-image) or external (teenagers can be ruthless when they see differences).

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

#993

Post by llamasushi »

arcfour wrote: post #787
ACCount37 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell no. Making attendance optional sacrifices way too much. It's like reducing incarceration rates by never jailing people for anything short of murder. Sure, it improves on that one metric. Obviously. But the adverse effects elsewhere make it a nonstarter. If you could trust self-selection to only ever stop the "lost causes" from attending? The absolute worst, most disruptive, least likely to ever benefit from educ…

But going to jail and getting an education are completely different things...nobody wants to go to jail.

You'd be surprised. America is an incredibly fucked up society. Free meals, Healthcare. Hell, even cheaper tattoos. There is a certain segment of the population where "jail" does not have the same meaning as it does for you or I.

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

#994

Post by exoverito »

legacynl wrote: post #552
exoverito wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still amazes me that people believe that intelligence has no link to genetics. Down's syndrome is not simply a social construct, Trisomy 21 is a genetic disorder from a third copy of chromosome 21, distorting gene dosages and resulting developmental pathways. Nearly all phenotypes are a mixture of genetics and environment, yet some traits have a much higher degree of heritability. For example, height has a heritab…

> The most elegant proof of IQ being linked to genetics: > > The same person taking an IQ test twice has mean correlation of 0.85 or above in their scores. Identical twins reared together: 0.86 Identical twins reared apart: 0.76 Biological parent and child: 0.42 Adoptive parent and child: 0.19 And of course, any two random people will have a correlation close to 0. How is this proof of IQ being linked to genetics if…

First of all, you misread the figures. The correlation between identical twins reared together is 0.85, while adoptive parent and child is 0.19.

Second of all, correlation coefficients do not scale linearly. A correlation of r=0.85 means r^2 explains 0.72 of the variance, while a correlation of 0.19 explains 0.03 of the variance. In other words, adoptive parents have 0.03/0.72=4% of the effect on IQ as being an identical twin does.

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

#995

Post by exoverito »

benmw333 wrote: post #982
exoverito wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a number of good teachers at the various public schools I attended, though the best ones were at a private school. Instead of defunding, we should institute a voucher system where parents can choose between a local public school if it's good, charter schools, or towards a private school tuition and pay the difference.

What characteristics of the teachers and/or student body made the private school experience better?

The teachers were all highly motivated and skilled, with a great interest in each student on a personal level. This was the Dunn Middle School, located in the Santa Ynez Valley. The classrooms were repurposed bungalows on a large ranch. I remember my history class was taught by a recent Stanford graduate, and we took notes on couches in a living room. A few times she had brought her hippie dad to teach us how to make bagels from scratch, and shared various musings about how without bacteria / fungi all the dead organic matter would keep piling up forever. The student teacher ratio was about 10:1, and there were lots of character building activities like week long backpacking trips near Joshua Tree, mandatory triathlons, hobby classes on Fridays like woodworking / cycling / hiking. There were about 20 students per grade, and it skewed high income as you can imagine. None of the students were really toxic or a problem, I remember one kid was either autistic / severely introverted, but otherwise a nice dude.

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

#996

Post by giardini »

naet wrote: post #909
giardini wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a reasonable decision to me: let the schools teach and let the city/county maintain the library separately. But disassembling the library bookcases is hardly an appropriate woodworking project.

Having a library on location at a school is valuable. You can do research, you can discover new books, you can have a quiet place to study... I have loved every school library I've ever been in. Any library is a nexus of knowledge and learning. They should be in schools.

The libraries in the schools I attended were primarily used to detain misbehaving students in quiet. The public library was much larger and was indeed worthwhile as a library per se. But our school libraries were small and poorly funded. That was fine: they still served a useful purpose.

It appears that today's school libraries and libraries in general have become a means for activist liberal political groups to introduce children to political/social ideas that, perhaps, those children are not yet prepared to deal with (YMMV). As a child I went to the public library for science and they had it in spades. Nowadays the science is still there but the librarians would rather you read something else.

My inclination is to de-fund any organization that pursues a political/social agenda by taking control of established institutions of government (schools, libraries, etc.). If necessary, I would de-fund the institution being abused.

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

#997

Post by ToDougie »

bdcravens wrote: post #857
ToDougie wrote: post #819

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 your discussion of "bad kids", it seems like there's a subtext you're not saying out loud.

Go ahead and make your accusation, you wimp.

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

#998

Post by timacles »

captainkrtek wrote: post #43
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…

Not to be too pessimistic, but it feels like this is impossible given how hyper-optimized our devices are to retain our attention. They’re beyond “tools” now and profits of countless companies are tied to our fixation on our phones.

One day we will look at social media, end less scrolling algos, 5 second clips as we do at cigarettes.

It might not be causing cancer, but there is going to be a generation of people lacking emotional regulation because their dopamine circuits have been fried since they were 3 years old

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

#999

Post by wing-_-nuts »

constantcrying wrote: post #889
kulahan wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not been in a library in like 50 years? It’s a hell of a lot more than a “small building which doesn’t have the resources they need”.

Without a doubt in my entire academic life the books have been the least useful thing libraries contained. Getting rid of them provides space for the good and productive things people do in a library. It is important that students have quiet space to study. But libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.

>libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.

Great, let's pass laws that give parity rights to digital goods, including ebooks. You have a copy? You can lend that copy. Yes, forever.

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

#1000

Post by wing-_-nuts »

GrinningFool wrote: post #276
araes wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a couple thoughts to that general idea: - There's also a reward issue, in that reading, especially long form is "soft punished." It's not directly punished, yet there's very little reward, mostly a lot of struggle, not much of the candy feedback of TV, movies, and video games. It requires personal imagination and visualization of often difficult concepts rather than simply taking what someone else has "imagined c…

I wonder how much of the YA uptick is driven by adults who prefer less-challenging reading. If that's the case it just makes the picture appear even more bleak.

Man don't gate keep reading. I don't care if an adult is reading 'see spot run' so long as they're reading and enjoying it. Reading begets reading. It's a muscle that must be exercised.
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