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L.A. students have high grades but low test scores
- ww520 4y agoGrade inflation in massive scale?
- vaidhy 4y agoNo.. just overfitted models
- ilikehurdles 4y agoYep. Same story in Oregon.
- rayiner 4y agoMy brother in law is finishing up at the U of O and nearly everyone who went to college with him from his small town Oregon high school washed out of college. The high school system left the kids completely unprepared.
- WalterBright 4y agoI was the high school valedictorian and discovered upon entering college that I was horribly underprepared. I barely got through my freshman year. I got comments from professors like "you're right on the edge here, and I really should fail you, but I'll give you a break. You'd better get better, fast."
- exitb 4y agoIs that anything new though? I’d describe my university experience similarly and in my case it happened 15 years ago, in a completely different part of the world.
- missedthecue 4y agoOr cheating on a massive scale over the past few years, particularly while school was done over zoom.
- metaphor 4y agohttps://archive.ph/6tJga https://archive.ph/6tJga
- rahimnathwani 4y ago"In math, 73% of 11th-graders earned A’s, Bs, and Cs. Tests scores showed only 19% met grade-level standards." Thankfully state standardized tests haven't yet been watered down.
- eru 4y agoIt only shows they haven't been as watered down as the grades?
- dmix 4y agoThe big question is why haven't standardized tests been under the same pressure as school grades?
- Robotbeat 4y agoBecause it’s trivial to compare them to previous tests, so would be totally obvious it’s being watered down.
- faeriechangling 4y agoGrades are more a regional reflection of who gets to graduate and who doesn't. If you are running a terrible school, that doesn't necessarily mean it makes sense to graduate just 10% of the students because only that many students are competent. Test scores are often comparable internationally.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoIn my local school district: - less than half of 11th graders meet or exceed the state standard for math - almost 90% of high schoolers graduate What does 'graduate high school' mean? Does it just mean you showed up?
- WalterBright 4y agoThe SAT and ACT tests have been under constant attack as being unfair for many decades. The attacks have recently been successful in getting many universities to disregard them. I regularly read in the local paper about union teachers complaining about "high stakes testing".
- alberth 4y agoPrivate schools. Grade inflation in private schools is even worse, since they don’t want to risk a parent pulling their kid (and losing the $10,000s in annual tuition fees that parent pays).
- pandaman 4y agoThe article is about public schools in the LAUSD.
- Retric 4y agoThe even worse bit suggested that looking at public schools might not be sufficient. There are rigorous private schools, but many are abysmal.
- yumraj 4y agoWhere in the US are private schools charging just $10K for tuition?
- Retric 4y agoNationwide the average K-12 Catholic school is 10.2k. https://research.com/universities-colleges/average-cost-of-private-school-by-state https://research.com/universities-colleges/average-cost-of-p... Overall: “The average yearly tuition at one of the 22,440 private K-12 schools in the United States is $12,350 in 2021. This includes the average tuition at a private high school of $16,040 and the average tuition at a private elementary school of $7,630 (Hanson, 2021).” https://research.com/universities-colleges/average-cost-of-private-school-by-state https://research.com/universities-colleges/average-cost-of-p... It also gives a breakdown of expensive and cheap states.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y agoCan confirm, in the great expanse of flyover country it's mostly relatively-cheap Catholic schools (most not especially good, but sometimes better than the local public schools, if those are unusually bad), things like Montessori schools that cover grade school ages as well as preschool (and sometimes even handle high school) and come in around that price and are very hit or miss, non-Catholic religious schools that are almost all bad and are around that price, and a few schools that are at least trying to be what the rich mostly-coastal prep-type schools are (those are like $30k-50k/yr, not counting boarding if applicable) that are in the $15k-$35k range, generally (day rates). My city has (I think) six of the last type (but not all are full k-12, some are high school only, and two are actually Catholic but they're the better variety than the common ones, and pricier)—and I'd say 20 or more of the cheaper varieties, with most of those being religious schools. Drags the average down.
- selectodude 4y ago30 year olds will have to work until they're 75 because the people following them will be too stupid and coddled to accomplish anything,
- eru 4y agoLA is not the world. And neither is the US.
- saagarjha 4y agoAs opposed to the people who came before them, who are exceptionally brilliant and not just those who were born when times were good.
- notwokeno 4y agoIQ is actually trending downwards in developed countries for the first time so, "yes."
- lostmsu 4y agoI heard this claim multiple times, but where's the source?
- soderfoo 4y agoWas interested in a source for this as well. The last two sections of the article on the Flynn Effect was the best primer on this claim I could find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_p...
- xiphias2 4y agoIn the US they can just let in hard working immigrants from other countries, this was has always been the case there.
- 4y ago
- monero-xmr 4y agoAt some point the buck stops. It might be when they are failing college classes. It might be when they can’t get into grad school. Or it might be their first job interview, or their first job. Eventually someone who can’t read or add simple numbers just can’t succeed at a professional level. Schools can claim whatever they want, water down grades, eliminate standardized tests. Eventually reality hits. Once you send an email and it’s grammatically moronic and full of typos, the jig is up.
- programmer_dude 4y agoGPT chat to the rescue!
- WalterBright 4y agoOne way to tell if it's an AI chatbot is if it doesn't make any spelling or grammatical errors.
- echelon 4y agoFor now. Don't give them any clues, Walter. Or put them in the same room as the email spammers.
- WalterBright 4y agoI'm getting AI chatbot spam phone calls regularly now. I can distinguish them immediately. But I know they're going to get a lot better, fast.
- tony69 4y agoThis is easily solvable by requiring an ID to obtain a phone number.. and any additional phone number is taxed or something of the sort.
- programmer_dude 4y agoTIL I am an AI chatbot. :)
- unixhero 4y agoCorruption
- tekla 4y agoI cant seem to find the actual source of this report. Can anyone find the actual report that this article is talking about?
- rayiner 4y ago> When policy drives such a focus on this testing ... it can lead to a dehumanizing of the classroom and in a way limiting what students can learn because everybody is focused on test prep rather than teaching students more holistically,” said Doron Zinger, director of the CalTeach teacher preparation program at UC Irvine. Do folks like Zinger seriously believe that these kids are actually getting a good education, and the problem is just that the tests aren’t measuring the right things?
- WalterBright 4y ago> seriously believe Of course not. They're just never going to admit they're doing a bad job, and need a messenger to shoot.
- awaythrow321 4y agoThey're never going to admit they're not allowed to do a good job. Throwing the worst-behaving 5% out of the classroom and forcing some discipline on the remaining 95% would both get better results, and make the teachers enjoy their jobs more.
- erosenbe0 4y agoBad behavior is an issue but not the primary issue. The big issue is allowing deficits to stack year on year without comprehensive intervention involving discipline and diligence from all stakeholders.
- WalterBright 4y agoThere is a simple solution, but nobody will like it. Give the teachers a base pay. Then, they get a percentage of a bonus amount. The percentage is calculated based on the percentage of the students in the teacher's class meeting grade level standard at the end of the year. The teachers will figure out how to teach them. Money, especially if the bonus could be 20-30000, is a big motivator, but those bonuses are still cheaper than the failed programs usually tried. Q: what if a teacher gets assigned a poorly performing cadre of students? A: assign the kids randomly to teachers. The ups and downs will average out. Q: what if the teacher cheats on the year end tests? A: have an independent authority do the testing Q: what if the teacher teaches to the test rather than anything valuable? A: change the test so that passing it reflects learning
- saagarjha 4y ago> change the test so that passing it reflects learning How?
- WalterBright 4y ago2 + 2 = _ Fill in the blank.
- saagarjha 4y agoI’m not sure I understand what you mean. Is this an example of a question you feel teaches understanding?
- WalterBright 4y agoI don't understand how one can do arithmetic with no understanding of it. It's an example of a question that tests understanding. How would you determine if a student understands arithmetic?
- saagarjha 4y agoYou memorize the answers? Like, I had an entire week of third grade where they wanted us to do a table of 100 basic arithmetic problems, and it was really a test of whether you remembered that 8+9=17 rather than some sort of actual understanding of what “eight”, “nine” and “the combination of eight and nine” meant. I think arithmetic in general is actually one of the most difficult things to test understanding of, because there’s not a whole lot of understanding involved. It’s kind of axiomatic for the rest of math to build on top of. I would attribute “understanding” more to being able to synthesize useful results from properties like addition and subtraction being inverses of each other, being able to form relationships like “two small numbers added together are always less than two big numbers added together”, etc. But I did actually start this thread by asking how you would test for this, because I believe doing so is quite difficult. I don’t think I’ve seen many a test that people haven’t tried to game without “understanding” the subject.
- perfecthjrjth 4y ago- Change the test in order for people to get high scores - Stop scoring the tests, instead give them "Pass", "Fail" - Get rid of tests completely - Hire Eric Cartmanez as a teacher
- perfecthjrjth 4y agoSouth Park's Eric Cartmanez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91HhsuOGaRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91HhsuOGaRo