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>poor students of color ... Asian students on standardized tests ... inexperienced science and math teachers. This isn't terribly new in the U.S. Depending on
by 8bitsrule 5y ago
>poor students of color ... Asian students on standardized tests ... inexperienced science and math teachers.
This isn't terribly new in the U.S. Depending on the school district and state laws, the qualifications of 'science teachers' may be minimal. (In some places, STEM teachers who are also coaches are likely to be preferred.) Partly because of the big difference in pay, partly because some school admins aren't motivated to care. Then the 'teaching to the test' crutch came along. Ay-yi. Understandable exodus of quality.
- cafard 5y agoNot terribly new: 50 years ago (and a few months) a friend of mine rearranged his 11th grade schedule to switch chemistry sections. The wrestling coach teaching the one he left, in reviewing the metric system with the students, had defined "milligram" as "one million grams." I trust it was a mere slip of the tongue, but it did not build confidence. On the other hand, my recollection is that coaches taught Algebra I, Plane Geometry, and Trig without causing any scandals. [Edit: corrected the spelling of "wrestling".]
- lern_too_spel 5y agoExactly this. I don't understand how people can believe pre-college education in the United States has fallen off a cliff. It has always been generally awful and very slowly improving. SAT scores have been steadily rising in all cohorts, even as more people have taken it. The US benefited in the post-war period by draining Europe of its top scientific talent, which catapulted it to the top by a wide margin. There is no reason to expect that level of dominance to persist.