US students' reading and math scores at historic lows: 'Devastating trend'

[Bradskii]

It has been going on for a long long time, the same applies to Australia as well.

With the advent of the internet, this situation is getting better, since the internet is a storage house of knowledge, right? No, worst.

The politicians pretend they got nothing to do with it, hoping we will think it's the students' faults. They are the ones who need re-education, their heads are full of futile ideas and principles.

Did you purposely write that post in a way to add weight to your argument?

 

[Pommer]

US students' reading and math scores at historic lows: 'Devastating trend'

High school students, especially 12th graders, are reading and learning math and science at historic lows, according to a new report.

abcnews.go.com

The political climate was been like a constant picnic in Crazytown for a solid decade. Not having a fully-functioning society puts stress on all members of that society, especially (probably) children.
If we could concentrate on fixing the incessant rancor in the society, the test scores will likely take care of themselves.

 

[Larniavc]

Alot

Not a real word.

 

[Larniavc]

keeping the children uneducated meant more future votes for them.

But less educated people have been shown to vote more GOP than Democrat.

 

[Bradskii]

But less educated people have been shown to vote more GOP than Democrat.

From here: Partisanship by race, ethnicity and education

'About six-in-ten registered voters who have a postgraduate degree (61%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 37% associate with the Republican Party.'

Looks like it would be the GOP who would benefit from a drop in educational standards. But most of us knew that already.

 

[Nithavela]

No need to think, AI is doing that for you.

 

[Bradskii]

No need to think, AI is doing that for you.

It's worse than Wiki. At least with wiki you get links to where the original information comes from. Using AI to bolster an argument is no more than saying 'A guy in the pub told me...'

 

[Nithavela]

It's worse than Wiki. At least with wiki you get links to where the original information comes from. Using AI to bolster an argument is no more than saying 'A guy in the pub told me...'

Which is how most people come to their conclusions, too.

 

[Tuur]

The political climate was been like a constant picnic in Crazytown for a solid decade. Not having a fully-functioning society puts stress on all members of that society, especially (probably) children.
If we could concentrate on fixing the incessant rancor in the society, the test scores will likely take care of themselves.

Here a suggested project to which I don't have a solid answer to, but might be instructive: Compare test scores from the desegregation era to test scores now. You want rancor? That was rancor. So if test scores were higher then than now, rancor doesn't have much to do with it.

 

[Tuur]

I see your point to a certain extent. What I'm talking about is a small central organization that recommends only the core curriculum. But you can look at your logic in another way, if one's state school system superbly succeeds and they teach the basics there (math, science, english grammar, history, health and economics and they use good old fashion memorization techniques) and the other 49 state school systems use untried unreliable new fangled teaching techniques and their students turn out so-so, you've just lost a good portion of a generation of students. Never getting a chance to go back and learn it again. And that's what seems to happen when you have red states vs blue states.

We need at least a small core idea that is universal to all the states on what should be taught (math, science, english grammar, history and economics) so every student has a well rounded background. This central system won't tell you how you teach just what needs to be taught. Every student needs and deserves to have a well rounded education in America. And if they have to stay in a class that they repeatedly fail for years, so be it.

Also, the pay has to be universal and it has to be very good. We are raising the next generation of leaders of this country. The students learning are worth it.

Central; planning is too high stakes. It's all or nothing, and based on the assumption that those doing the planning have a clue. Teachers used to have view "Those who can, teach. Those who can't, go into administration." There is nothing so bad that central planning can't make worse.

 

[Nithavela]

Central; planning is too high stakes. It's all or nothing, and based on the assumption that those doing the planning have a clue. Teachers used to have view "Those who can, teach. Those who can't, go into administration." There is nothing so bad that central planning can't make worse.

Isn't the saying "those who can do, those who can't teach"?

 

[Tropical Wilds]

US students' reading and math scores at historic lows: 'Devastating trend'

High school students, especially 12th graders, are reading and learning math and science at historic lows, according to a new report.

abcnews.go.com

I mean, not to be blunt, but a gander to these forums could have told you that.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

Now perhaps more of you can understand why the Department of Education, as it was, needed to be dismantled. The liberal approach to education essentially gave up on the children in the poor neighborhoods of cities like Chicago and Baltimore and Washington D.C. The lack of discipline along with DEI and CRT-like curriculum instead of a focus on English and basic math meant the kids had scant chance to succeed. There was little incentive to change among radical leaders, keeping the children uneducated meant more future votes for them.

Looking at the report, every grade from grade 4 to 12 is testing lower than historical averages last pulled in 2019, but grades 4 and under are showing steady or improved scoring to the 2019 average. One of the declared barriers is absenteeism and reduced classroom times for the grades 5 and above.

The Nation's Report Card

provides national results about students' performance; access to state and district results, data explorer, questions tool, item maps, and other NAEP resources

www.nationsreportcard.gov

Can anybody think of a reason kids from grades 5-12 have less in-class hours than their peers would have had in 2019 in the same grade, as well as more absences? It had to have been something big to impact every child in school regardless of grade... And kids in grade 1-4 don't have the same barriers and are testing at above 2019 standards, so whatever it is must have happened around 4 years ago, when those kids weren't in school and thus not impacted in the same way.

I wonder what happened. Do you think we'll ever know?

 

[Tropical Wilds]

And I'm equally surprised that you'd admit that.

I suspect he doesn't realize what he said.

 

[Hvizsgyak]

Not a real word.

It's like the Mandela Effect with this word. I could have sworn that I've seen it spelled this way all my life but everytime (and here is another instance) I use it this way, the spell checker corrects me. Am I from another universe, maybe ?

 

[Tuur]

Isn't the saying "those who can do, those who can't teach"?

Not among the teachers I knew back then. It was also evident when the state sent down advisors with all these odd ideas, and then, as now, there was no shortage of such. If the odd ideas worked, that wouldn't have been so bad. But when you had teachers who had worked at their jobs for years being told by someone who hadn't taught in years how they should teach, there was considerable skepticism.

 

[Hvizsgyak]

But less educated people have been shown to vote more GOP than Democrat.

Party Affiliation Fact Sheet (NPORS)

Explore trends in partisan identification among U.S. adults using data from Pew Research Center’s National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS).

www.pewresearch.org

I don't know, I think this says otherwise. Yes those 18-29 year olds may come out of college "all smart and cocky" in their newly founded liberal ways and lean more Democrat but once they meet the real world and get their heads out of their rear ends, they turn Republican. Both parties have their "not so smart" fan clubs which are there because they can't stand one thing or another in the opposing party but really have no clue as to why they hold that position.

The problem with students not learning these days is all about distractions: social media, video gaming, sports. Make these kids only watch Scooby Doo on Saturdays, play Monopoly, Battleship, Scrabble or Clue or run around outside or riding their bicycles the rest of the day and back to the books for studying (like we did when we were kids). No cell phones, no PlayStations and no professional sports for youngsters. Just have fun with the neighbor kids doing simple things.

When they are in school (especially elementary school) strict guidelines on how to act, what needs to be learned ad smoking only in the bathrooms (sorry, just kidding about that last statement ). Seriously, the students need to learn order at a young age (because a lot of times, they don't get it at home like they should) so when they reach the upper grades, they don't act like wild animals (like a lot of them do now and disrupt the class for all).

 

[Tropical Wilds]

Party Affiliation Fact Sheet (NPORS)

Explore trends in partisan identification among U.S. adults using data from Pew Research Center’s National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS).

www.pewresearch.org

I don't know, I think this says otherwise. Yes those 18-29 year olds may come out of college "all smart and cocky" in their newly founded liberal ways and lean more Democrat but once they meet the real world and get their heads out of their rear ends, they turn Republican. Both parties have their "not so smart" fan clubs which are there because they can't stand one thing or another in the opposing party but really have no clue as to why they hold that position.

The problem with students not learning these days is all about distractions: social media, video gaming, sports. Make these kids only watch Scooby Doo on Saturdays, play Monopoly, Battleship, Scrabble or Clue or run around outside or riding their bicycles the rest of the day and back to the books for studying (like we did when we were kids). No cell phones, no PlayStations and no professional sports for youngsters. Just have fun with the neighbor kids doing simple things.

When they are in school (especially elementary school) strict guidelines on how to act, what needs to be learned ad smoking only in the bathrooms (sorry, just kidding about that last statement ). Seriously, the students need to learn order at a young age (because a lot of times, they don't get it at home like they should) so when they reach the upper grades, they don't act like wild animals (like a lot of them do now and disrupt the class for all).

Statistically older people are Republican and younger Democrat, but they're not switching parties as they age... It's that older people tended towards life-long Republican voting and younger people are poised to life-long Democrat voting. As the older Republicans die and the younger Democrats age, the balance is shifting to Democrats holding the majority among the oldest as well. When broken down by birth year, you can see that everybody post 1970s leans Democrat, with 1970s-90s being the most emphatic. Only Gen Z is showing the swing back to more evenly split with a higher representation of Republicans, but with not all of them at voting age yet and a large bubble working through now, who's to say?

Age, generational cohorts and party identification

The Democratic Party holds a substantial edge among younger registered voters – a pattern that has been in place for more than a decade.

www.pewresearch.org

Though, as the link points out, what it meant to be a Democrat and what it meant to be a Republican used to mean vastly different things in 1970-2005ish, so viewing as an even exchange spectrum is kind of a fallacy. The me I am today back in 1990 would have made me right leaning moderate. The me I am today, same views, makes me a pretty solid Democrat. My father was a die-hard Republican in the 80s-90s, but is now a hard-line Democrat... But still registered Republican.

 

[Hvizsgyak]

Statistically older people are Republican and younger Democrat, but they're not switching parties as they age... It's that older people tended towards life-long Republican voting and younger people are poised to life-long Democrat voting. As the older Republicans die and the younger Democrats age, the balance is shifting to Democrats holding the majority among the oldest as well. When broken down by birth year, you can see that everybody post 1970s leans Democrat, with 1970s-90s being the most emphatic. Only Gen Z is showing the swing back to more evenly split with a higher representation of Republicans, but with not all of them at voting age yet and a large bubble working through now, who's to say?

Age, generational cohorts and party identification

The Democratic Party holds a substantial edge among younger registered voters – a pattern that has been in place for more than a decade.

www.pewresearch.org

Though, as the link points out, what it meant to be a Democrat and what it meant to be a Republican used to mean vastly different things in 1970-2005ish, so viewing as an even exchange spectrum is kind of a fallacy. The me I am today back in 1990 would have made me right leaning moderate. The me I am today, same views, makes me a pretty solid Democrat. My father was a die-hard Republican in the 80s-90s, but is now a hard-line Democrat... But still registered Republican.

But getting back on topic, in my humble opinion, both Democrats and Republicans are not taking a strong enough stance in getting our children back to learning. There are too many cowardly school administrators who just want their schools recognized as good schools. These administrators see too many failing grades in the school and they are on the teacher's back to have those kids pass so the school looks good overall. The teachers fall into three catagories: good teachers who teach well and can control their classrooms and have students learn; teachers who don't teach well and the students don't learn but these teachers pass the students anyway; and teachers who teach well but the kids are very unruly so most of them don't learn the curricullum and admin forces those teachers to do something about the failing kids.

How do you teach those kids who don't want to learn? How do you catch those teaches who aren't teaching but they are passing the kids? And how do you get the school administrators to wake up and realize the problem at hand and fix it (boldly if necessary)?

My wife (a teacher) has met parents of students who are very close minded - "no, Johnny would never do that in school, how dare you say that". These parents are both Democrats and Republicans (but more Republican) or "hey, my kid isn't the problem; it's you the teacher". These parents are both Democrats and Republicans (but more Democrat). How can one tell? Everybody has bumper stickers on their cars and word gets around.

Unfortunately, students need strong guidance and discipline at school (especially in elementary school) because many times they get nothing at home. And if the student has learning diabilities then he/she needs to have special teaching methods applied to him/her. If you don't want your student singled out, sorry, the school isn't running a popularity contest. The school is there for the student to learn.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

But getting back on topic, in my humble opinion, both Democrats and Republicans are not taking a strong enough stance in getting our children back to learning. There are too many cowardly school administrators who just want their schools recognized as good schools. These administrators see too many failing grades in the school and they are on the teacher's back to have those kids pass so the school looks good overall. The teachers fall into three catagories: good teachers who teach well and can control their classrooms and have students learn; teachers who don't teach well and the students don't learn but these teachers pass the students anyway; and teachers who teach well but the kids are very unruly so most of them don't learn the curricullum and admin forces those teachers to do something about the failing kids.

How do you teach those kids who don't want to learn? How do you catch those teaches who aren't teaching but they are passing the kids? And how do you get the school administrators to wake up and realize the problem at hand and fix it (boldly if necessary)?

My wife (a teacher) has met parents of students who are very close minded - "no, Johnny would never do that in school, how dare you say that". These parents are both Democrats and Republicans (but more Republican) or "hey, my kid isn't the problem; it's you the teacher". These parents are both Democrats and Republicans (but more Democrat). How can one tell? Everybody has bumper stickers on their cars and word gets around.

Unfortunately, students need strong guidance and discipline at school (especially in elementary school) because many times they get nothing at home. And if the student has learning diabilities then he/she needs to have special teaching methods applied to him/her. If you don't want your student singled out, sorry, the school isn't running a popularity contest. The school is there for the student to learn.

That’s a super simplistic “back in my day” rant that, while fun (?) to read doesn’t really apply to modern needs of kids, teachers, and classrooms. I’m involved in a number of schools, and the whole “just pass kids because it makes us look good” is something people say happens but I’ve yet to see.