New numbers showing falling standards in American schools.

[lfromnj]

Yeah lol at East Asian sub 1 TFR. I am not in the mood for an auto genocide.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Big issue is schools stopped holding people back in the 90s when boomers started the Karen trend of throwing a fit. They just want to pass kids along so they don’t have to deal with the parents.

I'm highly critical of this as well, but my wife works as an administrator in public education and they argue once you're past a certain grade (maybe 2nd), that it's negative for a kid's end education to be held back while all his peers move on. I will disagree with it's due to Karens. Helicopter parents tend to have the highest achieving kids because they care about their kids' education and help them succeed. The ones you have to worry about are absentee/don't give a damn parents.

Some thoughts:

1. Education statistics in the U.S. are highly gamed. My wife's school gets a lot of Guatemalans, a few of which can't even speak Spanish, and whom their parents are largely in don't give a damn category and those all count. Comparing to example east Asian schools, there is one single demographic that all grew up in the exact same culture speaking the same language. That's not close to true for the U.S. (I was also told once how disabled/kids with mental deficiencies are treated in the stats and it's completely ridiculous.)
2. For referencing Scandinavia and tying into point 1, how does education go in Malmo, Sweden? Are they the same high achievers? I read their school system is now majority Arab/Maghrebi.
3. It's going to be hard to get rid of items that nationalize education (e.g. No Child Left Behind) when people have nationalized politics. Education should be ran at a state level but if you're going to blame Trump/Biden/Congress for education instead of your Governor/state legislature, that's how laws like No Child Left Behind happen.
4. I know people hate standardized testing, but with grade inflation rampant (and some high-functioning school systems intentionally trying to make their students incomparable by changing grading scales), I need to have a way to be able to compare the aptitude of 2 kids that went to different school systems. Tell me what that is. (Part of the issue with grade inflation is you can't even separate kids that went to the same school if everyone in the class gets an A.)
5. The impact of Covid on students is completely understated. Education thinkers railed on achievement gaps for decades, we get Covid and those same education thinkers took all that research on achievement gaps and threw it in a trashcan. I expect come early 2030s we'll see a rebound in real measurement of students' education achievement because that is when the Covid impact on our kids' education will dissipate as everyone affected will graduate out. You can't remove a few months to a couple years in the case of some school districts of less effective education with a snap of the fingers. There should've been some kind of mass entrance exam at the end of Covid impact of where do students stand developmentally, and if in 2 years you only progressed forward 1, sorry, held back. But they didn't do that of course (in part it would show how much the education of that time was ineffective or failed), so now those kids are going to be behind for the rest of their secondary education, or you're forced to do wholesale curriculum changes of a 4th grade class now teaches more 3rd grade than they were planning to.

[Yelnoc]

Yeah lol at East Asian sub 1 TFR. I am not in the mood for an auto genocide.

English, please.

[jojoju1998]

We have to repeal No Child Left Behind. Let teachers fail students. If students fail classes, hold them back. If they continue to fail, flunk them out. They can get a GED and go to trade school if and when they want. In the meantime, the presence of those students in schools drags down the curriculum, makes learning difficult for the rest of the student body, and makes the job of teaching impossible.

Everyone does not need to go to college. Everyone does not even need a high school diploma. The US would benefit greatly from switching to an East Asian model of entrance exams for high school. Let the kids who cannot or will not keep up switch to a vocational track.

Sounds sensible.
The problem is that there always be studies supporting the contrary.

You can find a study in favor of every position under the sun, just like you can use statistics to tell any story you want. The truth is, the past two decades prove the NCLB approach to education is a failure. There is no way around that. Meanwhile, those East Asian countries I referenced are doing far better educationally--and, I would argue, socially-than the United States.

You know the saying, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results?" Well, let's stop being insane.

East Asian Birth rates hve crashed. South Korea's birth rates have collasped to just around 0.8. They're going to die out. And many people have credited the intense toxic, educational, and work, mantra that South Korea has, and well it doesn't help that their education System, and essentially their economy as a whole is dominated by Chaebols. Chaebols. Which means, if that one flops those tests, they'll be screwed FOR LIFE. And blue Collar jobs are looked down. And there's only 3 Universities in South KOrea, that gives people a chance of getting a good job with Chaebol. The Sky Universities. If you graduated from a lower tier University, you're not going to get a job either.

" An increasing number of young adults, dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities commensurate with their degrees, have given up looking for work altogether. A government survey in June recorded 357,000 people in their twenties who were unemployed and not actively seeking jobs, an 11% increase from last year."

https://time.com/6292773/south-korea-crackdown-hagwons-cram-schools-competition/

Suicide Rates among Youth in South Korea are up alot. And ironically, people think the American SAT is terrible at measuring critical thinking skills. The East Asian Model like South Korea is even WORSE.


That's not a healthy culture.

[Stranger in a strange land]

One of the most pressing public policy issues in the US, Canada and most Western countries is the refusal to hold teachers & educators (who are often unionized, go on strike and are highly paid) accountable for the falling standard of education. What are our tax dollars being spent on? Evidence shows a lot of education spending goes to waste or bureaucracy. Time to increase standards for teachers & stop dumbing down curricula.

I don't know about Canada, but US teachers are dealing with out of their hands circumstances in many districts, especially poor districts.

If you're teaching at a low income school in North Highlands Near Sacramento, you're basically hoping that these kids don't end up in jail by the end of the day, never mind the fact that they have to learn as well.


Want to encourage kids to read more ? Oh, well the parents aren't taking responsibility for their child's education at home, and leaving them at home with ipads and iphones. ( Although this seems to be common place, every school these days, rich and poor.).


But even in rich schools, you have politicized school boards, a dumbed down curriculium, that by the way teachers have relatively no input in, everything. Everything.

You're right, I didn't consider some aspects specific to US society like social inequality/poverty/ghettoization, but these issues have always been a problem. Why is, for example, adult literacy falling now in particular?

Part of the issue of the 'parents aren't taking responsibility' argument is, maybe you're right, and they should, but this has always been an issue. In the 1970s and 1980s, the era of latchkey kids, many parents certainly didn't pay much attention to their kids' education. Why are standards falling so precipitously now?

You're right that the problem may be more about the school boards/bureaucracy rather than the teachers themselves, but that's why we need accountability for the public sector & our tax dollars.

Because the System for the most part, managed to keep everything afloat.


Up until Covid. Covid was when everything turned to crap for American schools.

Like before Covid, kids, even if they were not doing that great in a low income classroom, at least teachers were able to keep their education afloat.

When Covid happened however, that ability turned into crap. There was no way, a teacher could have kept track of kids during Covid.

Do you think that schools being closed/online school (during COVID) contributed to the problem?

Yes, absolutely, and the sooner people admit this the better. Closing schools and switching to online learning in March and April of 2020 made sense since the virus was poorly-understood at the time and time was needed for social distancing and sanitation protocols to be implemented, but online learning went on for way too long in many places, and caused a huge disruption to childrens' education and development. This was doubly so for special-needs students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Like it or not, school-aged students need to be physically present in a building with their teachers and peers, and online education cannot replace this.

[jojoju1998]

We have to repeal No Child Left Behind. Let teachers fail students. If students fail classes, hold them back. If they continue to fail, flunk them out. They can get a GED and go to trade school if and when they want. In the meantime, the presence of those students in schools drags down the curriculum, makes learning difficult for the rest of the student body, and makes the job of teaching impossible.

Everyone does not need to go to college. Everyone does not even need a high school diploma. The US would benefit greatly from switching to an East Asian model of entrance exams for high school. Let the kids who cannot or will not keep up switch to a vocational track.

Sounds sensible.
The problem is that there always be studies supporting the contrary.

You can find a study in favor of every position under the sun, just like you can use statistics to tell any story you want. The truth is, the past two decades prove the NCLB approach to education is a failure. There is no way around that. Meanwhile, those East Asian countries I referenced are doing far better educationally--and, I would argue, socially-than the United States.

You know the saying, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results?" Well, let's stop being insane.

East Asian Birth rates hve crashed. South Korea's birth rates have collasped to just around 0.8. They're going to die out. And many people have credited the intense toxic, educational, and work, mantra that South Korea has, and well it doesn't help that their education System, and essentially their economy as a whole is dominated by Chaebols. Chaebols. Which means, if that one flops those tests, they'll be screwed FOR LIFE. And blue Collar jobs are looked down. And there's only 3 Universities in South KOrea, that gives people a chance of getting a good job with Chaebol. The Sky Universities. If you graduated from a lower tier University, you're not going to get a job either.

" An increasing number of young adults, dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities commensurate with their degrees, have given up looking for work altogether. A government survey in June recorded 357,000 people in their twenties who were unemployed and not actively seeking jobs, an 11% increase from last year."

https://time.com/6292773/south-korea-crackdown-hagwons-cram-schools-competition/

Suicide Rates among Youth in South Korea are up alot. And ironically, people think the American SAT is terrible at measuring critical thinking skills. The East Asian Model like South Korea is even WORSE.


That's not a healthy culture.

Furthermore, you're going to exclude people like myself in a East Asian System. I did crap in high school and if it was the East Asian Model, my life would have been over.



I got into comunity college meanwhile, and transferred.

[lfromnj]

Yeah lol at East Asian sub 1 TFR. I am not in the mood for an auto genocide.

English, please.

East Asian culture has caused a culture where sub 1 Total Fertility rate exists. Aka less than 1 child per woman while you need like 2.05 to maintain population parity. South Korea's population if nothing is fixed could fall as low as like 15 by the end of the century from 50 million. Its basically a culture where success is driven so much that the country is effectively killing themselves which is why I am using the term auto genocide.

[Open Source Intelligence]

One of the most pressing public policy issues in the US, Canada and most Western countries is the refusal to hold teachers & educators (who are often unionized, go on strike and are highly paid) accountable for the falling standard of education. What are our tax dollars being spent on? Evidence shows a lot of education spending goes to waste or bureaucracy. Time to increase standards for teachers & stop dumbing down curricula.

I don't know about Canada, but US teachers are dealing with out of their hands circumstances in many districts, especially poor districts.

If you're teaching at a low income school in North Highlands Near Sacramento, you're basically hoping that these kids don't end up in jail by the end of the day, never mind the fact that they have to learn as well.


Want to encourage kids to read more ? Oh, well the parents aren't taking responsibility for their child's education at home, and leaving them at home with ipads and iphones. ( Although this seems to be common place, every school these days, rich and poor.).


But even in rich schools, you have politicized school boards, a dumbed down curriculium, that by the way teachers have relatively no input in, everything. Everything.

You're right, I didn't consider some aspects specific to US society like social inequality/poverty/ghettoization, but these issues have always been a problem. Why is, for example, adult literacy falling now in particular?

Part of the issue of the 'parents aren't taking responsibility' argument is, maybe you're right, and they should, but this has always been an issue. In the 1970s and 1980s, the era of latchkey kids, many parents certainly didn't pay much attention to their kids' education. Why are standards falling so precipitously now?

You're right that the problem may be more about the school boards/bureaucracy rather than the teachers themselves, but that's why we need accountability for the public sector & our tax dollars.

Because the System for the most part, managed to keep everything afloat.


Up until Covid. Covid was when everything turned to crap for American schools.

Like before Covid, kids, even if they were not doing that great in a low income classroom, at least teachers were able to keep their education afloat.

When Covid happened however, that ability turned into crap. There was no way, a teacher could have kept track of kids during Covid.

Do you think that schools being closed/online school (during COVID) contributed to the problem?

Yes, absolutely, and the sooner people admit this the better. Closing schools and switching to online learning in March and April of 2020 made sense since the virus was poorly-understood at the time and time was needed for social distancing and sanitation protocols to be implemented, but online learning went on for way too long in many places, and caused a huge disruption to childrens' education and development. This was doubly so for special-needs students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Like it or not, school-aged students need to be physically present in a building with their teachers and peers, and online education cannot replace this.

If there was online learning. Fort Wayne Community Schools - largest school district in the state of Indiana because Indianapolis is so splintered - did effectively nothing those 2 months because due to social circumstances they couldn't ensure everyone in their school system had online learning capabilities and internet access. They might've had "encouraged work" but if you didn't do it they didn't do anything about it. I imagine other school districts around the country reached the same end state for the conclusion of the 2019-20 school year.

I agree with everything else you state.

[Liminal Trans Girl]

Yeah lol at East Asian sub 1 TFR. I am not in the mood for an auto genocide.

English, please.

East Asian culture has caused a culture where sub 1 Total Fertility rate exists. Aka less than 1 child per woman while you need like 2.05 to maintain population parity. South Korea's population if nothing is fixed could fall as low as like 15 by the end of the century from 50 million. Its basically a culture where success is driven so much that the country is effectively killing themselves which is why I am using the term auto genocide.

That's just depressing

[Associate Justice PiT]

I think someone else said it, but what we are likely seeing is a widening bimodal distribution between the top 20-25% of students and the rest.

The highest achieving kids appear to be continuing to excel and outdo their predecessors each year while the average student struggles. In larger high schools like the one I went to, it really does feel like there are two distinct high schools in one facility. I remember taking an easy English class in senior year because I didn’t need anymore credits+colleges already had my transcripts and being stunned at how ridiculous it was. I felt like I was in elementary school honestly, and my classmates (whom I had never met before at all in my years at the school) seemed to be struggling. I am guessing Covid-19 has exacerbated this divide.

There are a couple people in my family that lost a year or two of education to COVID and I'm not joking or exaggerating when I say that they have, at best, the equivalent of a sixth grade education even though they received high school diplomas. And I'm really just thinking of literacy there. I would bet that they would struggle with fourth or fifth grade math and social studies. It wasn't just COVID, because the schools had failed them for years before that, but 2020 and 2021 were basically yearlong summer vacations. It's incredibly sad.

     I remember reading a study once (I am really doing great at providing cites in this topic lol) that found that socioeconomic education gaps opened when children were out of school. Children of the wealthy and of the poor advanced comparably while studying, but during vacations the former group were provided with educational opportunities while the latter were not. It's not an exaggeration to say that the COVID lockdowns opened up very deep gaps in educational achievement that have sabotaged an entire generation. Given the extent to which these skills are communicated down the line, the reverberations of this effect could be felt for much longer in the form of future children being saddled with less effective teachers who were intellectually damaged in their formative years.

[SInNYC]

A big part of the problem is cultural and would have happened with or without COVID. Today's kids (and adults too) confuse information for education. Looking something up is information and has little to do with education, which involves actually understanding the concept being taught.

[GP270watch]

 We have a bunch of admins on top of admins turning kids into test taking robots who learn nothing and still fail badly on useless standardized tests.

 Kids barely read now. I used to have an entire library in my public school, which was in the ghetto. We would get reading time where we could just read whatever books we wanted. So everybody in my class could read even though most of the kids were not native english speakers and were immigrants or first generation Americans.

Among many U.S. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows