13 ms·

Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

118 points by tomcam 4y ago

jimbob45 4y ago
According to state testing? I was an A student (as were many of my peers) but you'd best believe we dicked around with anything that we were told wouldn't affect our letter grades (e.g. state testing).
- dividefuel 4y ago
  I wondered this a lot when I was a student in the 2000s. What fraction of kids take the tests seriously? What fraction put in the same effort as they would into their academic tests? I had some friends who were poor students and didn't care much about school. I doubt these people put in much or any effort at all into these tests. I was a good student, but at a certain point I got burnt out too. It wasn't worth reading the 10th literature passage extra carefully, nor checking my work on each math problem. These tests are long and don't impact me: why should I give it my all?
- justin_oaks 4y ago
  This is an underrated comment. I remember taking a Golden State Exam [1] in high school. It was for English and it required some essay writing. I didn't think I'd be in the top group so I wouldn't win any award, and I knew it wouldn't affect my letter grade. I spent the time writing random stuff that would fill the page instead of what I was supposed to write about. It would be interesting to get data on how much students don't even try on exams that don't affect their letter grade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Exams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Exams
- tssva 4y ago
  This is still the case. In my state growth assessment tests are given for reading and math every fall and spring. These tests don't affect students grades in any manner. My experience with my child and her friends is that no effort is given. When the test answers were recorded via paper creating patterns on the test sheet was the only effort given. Now that it is computerized, they just randomly select answers or pick a letter to answer for every question. Based upon these tests my daughter and most of her friends are illiterate and can't count. Her and her friends are all A students enrolled in honors, AP and dual enrollment classes. In high school there are a few state level tests which effect whether you graduate. These they take more seriously.
baggy_trough 4y ago
Don't worry, we'll simply reduce the standards.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tgv 4y ago
  Your comment is a bit dismissive, but you’re right. That’s what will happen. Another reply says “ Wouldn't the grade level be defined by the median student?”, which is exactly how you get ever lowering standards. You start with a few good sounding assumptions, and then keep adjusting the level, because the assumptions cannot, no, may not be wrong. Financial incentives are another good example.
- adrr 4y ago
  Aren't the standards higher now than the past? I have daughter in second grade who is learning multiplication, basic division, fractions and very basic algebra. I never learned that till 3rd and 4th grade. Here's some sample questions from california standardized test. http://starsamplequestions.org/grades_2_3.pdf http://starsamplequestions.org/grades_2_3.pdf
pessimizer 4y ago
Wouldn't the grade level be defined by the median student?
- seaners 4y ago
  No, it's a standard that is based on what a child should be able to perform at a certain age. Otherwise everyone could get exceptionally dumb and illiterate, which has already happened in CA apparently. As someone who went to CA public school, I can tell you that very little learning is going on (at least where I was).
- mjhay 4y ago
  I think it is defined by the aspirational median student.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  I presume "grade level" was defined by the median student some time ago and has not been adjusted since. The fact that it's going down seems like bad news. EDIT: It seems the headline is misleading and my take is not accurate.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    It’s not really going down. There are years it was worse and years it was better. It seems like it’s staying fairly consistent around the original threshold, which appears to be close the median. But I’d note the first year observed was lower than this last year observed, so it couldn’t have been the actual median. They probably intentionally picked a level below the median as the threshold to convince people to freak out and “send funding now”
    - babypuncher 4y ago
      Yeah after taking a closer look at everything, it seems that the actual headline is alarmist and heavily misleading. The conclusion to take from this is that the pandemic had a mild negative impact on test results, but otherwise everything is fine, and actually marginally improved since these metrics were first established.
mistrial9 4y ago
close to thirty percent of Oakland Public Schools students did not graduate High School last I looked.. spectacular levels of genuine confirmed illiteracy, plus dozens of non-English native languages; very high violence rates among and between some groups
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  I think at this point Oakland is a failed city. Or at least very close to it.
standardUser 4y ago
The site has a cool widget and you can browse through past data. From what I see, the decline isn't too dramatic. I'd expect an even worse drop off due to the pandemic than just a few points.
twerkmonsta 4y ago
[flagged]
bluedino 4y ago
Low levels of parental involvement in education.
rahmeero 4y ago
This data is from the California Dept of Education. I wonder if other states track this also. My guess is that some states don't even bother, and their students likely don't perform as well. Then there are other states, small ones like Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, whose students might fall on the high side of the curve. Just a guess. Anyone know?
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  States have to track these sorts of metrics to qualify for federal education funding. This is an enduring result of the “No Child Left Behind” act. Before that, you were correct, many states did not track educational stats in any consistent or reliable way.
jmathai 4y ago
As a California resident, I'm surprised there's no mention of % of ESL (english as a second language) students. There's a very large population of ESL students in California that drag down these statistics as the students catch up. If english isn't your primary language, learning math that is taught in english will also be more difficult.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Math is language independent. Shouldn't ESL students be able to use workbooks in their native language?
  - reocha 4y ago
    Math teachers speak English.
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    You'd think so, but I've taught ESL math. Good luck getting them to understand what's even going on without speaking their language. Especially if some, like my students, come in at high school having only really had five years of formal schooling. You need the language to teach the math, basically. Also, not all of the kids I had were literate in their first language (A Mayan language, so most weren't) or even their second (often another Mayan language) or third (Spanish usually), so you can't just say 'Give them a workbook'
  - NDizzle 4y ago
    I'd sure hate to be taught math from a workbook alone.
- TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
  No. California does not have a large Black immigrant population. The Black population speaks English and does worse than the average (including ESL students). Language alone doesn't explain the gap. Particularly since immigrant Asian groups are above average.
  - 4y ago
bmmayer1 4y ago
The failure of public education in this country is a national scandal. It should be the number one concern of everyone, and yet there's no outrage, no political wedge issue, no media -- what's going on?
- anoonmoose 4y ago
  One simple explanation would be that the problem just isn't as bad as you think it is.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    What is your opinion on the NPR Reveal podcast episode about how the prominence of reading recovery instead of phonics has led to 1/3 of children by fourth grade reading at a substandard level?
    - Spivak 4y ago
      That we can microbenchmark any aspect of the education system looking for improvements but and the end of the day colleges are packed and you'll be hard pressed to find someone who is genuinely illiterate -- you'll find people who don't read and write English super well but it's because it's their second language and they're perfectly literate in their native tongue.
    - dorchadas 4y ago
      We need to remember the average adult only reads at a 6th grade level... Not that that's good, but I'd say there's many other factors involved than just the schools (parental involvement, do they read outside school, etc)
      - bmmayer1 4y ago
        This is an awful excuse. The whole purpose of public education is to give students who don't have support at home an education. Passing the buck to parents makes the whole point of public school moot -- if kids with involved parents read and those without don't, why put kids in school at all at that point?
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Looking at the history this doesn’t seem abnormal, and it hovers around 49%. This implies to me median is determined to be grade level (essentially) and it hasn’t moved materially beyond this point since the data was compiled and the entirely arbitrary definition of “grade level” was declared. Would be interesting to see other states but it wasn’t immediately obvious if a similar dataset exists for anywhere else. Given all this it seems entirely unclear if this should be viewed in some subjective sense as “good” or “bad.” It just seems to reflect things are “normal.”
- bmitc 4y ago
  If it's "normal", isn't the conclusion then that the normal is not good? The threshold is extremely low already, and that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. It isn't that they aren't capable. It's that the social support structures are not there.
  - singlow 4y ago
    If nearly 50% of people perform below average is that bad?
    - darig 4y ago
      [dead]
    - bmitc 4y ago
      I edited my comment probably as you were responding, but it wasn't my impression that that is what's being measured. Some level is set and the students are measured against that level. I would assume that the target percentage is of course close to 100% to be meeting that level. If not, then it should be. It is also my assumption that the level is already very low.
      - fnordpiglet 4y ago
        No, if you read the thread you’ll see it was picked to be greater than the median at the time the metric was established. So in the first year it was less than 50%, but close. The phrase “grade level” implies a 100% goal, but the math of the metric says you’ll do great to do anything better than 50%.
greenthrow 4y ago
[flagged]
- slkfjlksdjf 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    I dunno about your second point.. some of the worst stuff I've ever seen online was in Facebook-powered comment sections on news articles, sitting next to pictures of smiling grandpas holding their grandchildren
- Gareth321 4y ago
  Ironically, this take is useless and reactionary. Perhaps you should have a nice cup of tea before you leave a common next time?
- menacingly 4y ago
  I think viewing different opinions as some kind of disease is at the root of a lot of our current ridiculous political situation
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  I'm allowed to care about my kid's education.
- golergka 4y ago
  Thanks for providing a useful, fact-based and detailed counter-point to these takes.
sys32768 4y ago
[flagged]
chad1n 4y ago
This is the effect on a state of reducing enrollment requirements.
fallingknife 4y ago
I'm shocked that this is happening in a state that tried to get rid of advanced math class to promote equality.
Scubabear68 4y ago
In our rural public school in NJ, both our kids were routinely socially promoted with B’a and C’s even though they were very below average on State testing. We tried fighting this but the inertia of “do nothing and pass anyway” was too great. When we moved them to private school last year (5th and 9th grade), they had a brutal adjustment period of catching up from being so far behind, and for learning studying habits from scratch. Public schools in the US have problems due to the unions giving too much protection to lousy teachers, and school boards throwing away money like water on things like laptops and athletic fields while not focusing on attracting and paying really good teachers with a track record of success. It really is a travesty.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > We tried fighting this but the inertia of “do nothing and pass anyway” was too great. It's because there's no story for what to do in this case. All schools, even good ones, only focus on the happy path. I mean you're basically describing the problem perfectly when you moved your kid to a private school. They're not getting a more personalized education, the expectations are just higher. School is still a train that keeps moving whether you're at the level or not.
  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    Well said and exactly right. The private school not only had higher expectations? But also realistic feedback in the form of real grades and consequences.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Not just that, but the food we give to these kids is horrible. I know that he is a bit contrived in his methodologies, but you watch enough of his shows that you can see the adult behavior reactions to his methods, it is clear that nothing is ever going to change... https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-food-revolution-changing-americas-public-schools https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-...
  - 4y ago
ocfnash 4y ago
It's not especially relevant but I can't help being reminded of VerizonMath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU
golergka 4y ago
I'm not an american — what level of math proficiency for at what age are we talking about here? Is it about being bad at integrals or not being able to solve a simple quadratic equation?
- kube-system 4y ago
  At the end of public school, the latter; algebra. Calculus is typically optional in US high schools. Although each state has different specific educational requirements.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  The latter, and that's probably still too high a bar for any grade below senior year.
  - golergka 4y ago
    I don't usually swear on HN but what the fuck.
fatcat500 4y ago
A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're headed toward a medieval "Three Estates" type system reupholstered with a post-modern aesthetic: the ruling class (brokers of power), the intelligentsia (white collars), and the peasants (everyone else).
- olivermarks 4y ago
  In California we are already in that system
- nikanj 4y ago
  Is there no separation between the blue-collar working class and the homeless/hopeless class?
- cm2012 4y ago
  You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Where was any of that mentioned? Complete strawman argument.
  - hervature 4y ago
    Although I don't agree with the conspiracy, it's more that the politicians can achieve the outcome by misdirecting funds (free iPads!) to achieve the "supposed" end goal (producing sheeple) while looking like they are achieving a nobler goal (educating the lesser off). This can be achieved with very few people interested in the former with the majority of the politicians believing they are accomplishing the latter.
TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
I don't think this is going to change. I have kids in school in California. Most of the parents in my middle class neighborhood also went through public schools, and they have completely wrong ideas about how to improve academic performance. The only parents I agree with are parents from China, Singapore, Taiwan, India etc. But most of them are moving out of public schools and into private schools. So I'm mostly stuck with parents who themselves can't do math properly, so they complain about things like Common Core without understanding what the purpose is.
lasermike026 4y ago
We have to cut the crap and get drilling. Common core is a disaster. Get rid of it. We need to build students to be resilient, work collectively and be able to demonstrate applied knowledge. Take a Finnish education system and copy it. https://www.amazon.com/Leading-High-Performance-School-Systems-Lessons/dp/1416627006 https://www.amazon.com/Leading-High-Performance-School-Syste...
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Common Core can be fairly summarized as conservatively pushing math standards forward by 0.5 years. The spec of any particular grade level can be read in a few minutes and details simple requirements like some operationalized understanding of polynomials, and the entire math spec can be read in an afternoon. The more recent push to abolish the spec in favor of a more lax standard, namely Equitable Math, was a backlash against this. There are public school districts in California which couldn't be more eager for specs to push standards forward by another 0.5+ years because the Common Core is still catching up from behind to their de facto standards, but there's a seriously powerful (perhaps majority) democratic and political will to hold standards back. What the Common Core and Equitable Math should not be understood as is as a new way of teaching or learning math. Neither of these are revolutionary. All parties involved understand that there's an existing supply of math teachers across the nation who are comfortable teaching some curriculum at some level, and that a true re-arrangement or re-imagination of subjects carries high institutional friction. In other words, we might rearrange Geometry to be taken before Algebra, but replacing Geometry with Linear Algebra (per Gilbert Strang's suggestion) would be revolutionary.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
Bucketing children by age and not developmental milestones has always confused me. No matter how you slice it, some kids are more advanced in verticals than others (emotional, math, reading, problem solving, etc.) and there aren’t tracks in the U.S. to accommodate that so we end up forcing all these square pegs into round holes - everyone loses.
- kwere 4y ago
  from a social development standpoint it makes sense, a lot of "geniuses" had/could develop problems growing up with people emotionally/socially more mature, altough keeping gifted people with underperformers and lowering education level to keep them "afloat" is a disservice to both groups
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    People are not underperformers, you can't and shouldn't segment the population across some quantitative boundary. Each individual should learn at a difficulty gradient for them that is positive and engaging for each subject. For everyone this will be a different value. What you are describing is a form of damaging elitism.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      People absolutely can and do underperform relative to a standard or mean. Perhaps they should also learn at an optimal rate for personal growth. This doesn't negate the statement above, and it certainly isn't an argument for grouping children together where they can't learn at a personally appropriate rate.
      - nerpderp82 4y ago
        Are you addressing the my statement relative to the GP? They are making the elitist assertion that the gifted kids should be separated from the chaff. Having been in gifted programs, I have not found the removal of "underperformers" to be anything other than classism.
johnea 4y ago
Just reenforces my perseption, after living in California for 40 years, and being a parent of a child going through public education, that education here sucks, and most Californian's are dumb as rocks...
nerpderp82 4y ago
Why don't we get rid of grade levels? It would seem 50% of the students are continuously behind and probably suffering. A more humane approach would be to continue to teach the material at a level they can learn from until they get it, and or find new ways to teach it. You see a bimodal distribution in technical subjects (reading and math are technical) where if you get behind, you will continue to get further behind. Catching up takes a 150% power output to even get back to parity if the rest of the non-lagging cohort continues to run ahead.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Perhaps we might get rid of across-subject grade levels but thing that grade levels solve is limited supply of teachers and the coordination of materials and standards. Otherwise we'd live in a world where every child gets their own tutor and their own custom curriculum. Thus in some sense we should strive to have better grade levels, but we'll still have grade levels.
xmddmx 4y ago
An important point: the high school dropout rate has been declining for many years. In the past, students who weren’t making it would simply stop attending. Now they are mostly still in school, and probably not doing a whole lot better, which makes the stats look like they are getting worse. Overall dropout rate has dropped by nearly 50% since 1972: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-school-dropout-rate-reaches-record-low-driven-by-improvements-among-hispanics-blacks/ft_14-10-01_h-s-dropout_2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-sc...
disambiguation 4y ago
As a non-Californian, I'm surprised that their education spending per pupil is "mid-tier" (14k/yr) compared to other US states. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-s...
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I'm much more interested in the proportion of students who can't do math at the previous grade level. It means they completed the grade without being able to do the math.
ecf 4y ago
Half of adults in the US read at or below an 8th grade level so I don’t see why this is surprising.
LewisCaster 4y ago
[dead]

118 points by tomcam 4y ago

According to state testing? I was an A student (as were many of my peers) but you'd best believe we dicked around with anything that we were told wouldn't affect our letter grades (e.g. state testing).

dividefuel 4y ago
I wondered this a lot when I was a student in the 2000s. What fraction of kids take the tests seriously? What fraction put in the same effort as they would into their academic tests? I had some friends who were poor students and didn't care much about school. I doubt these people put in much or any effort at all into these tests. I was a good student, but at a certain point I got burnt out too. It wasn't worth reading the 10th literature passage extra carefully, nor checking my work on each math problem. These tests are long and don't impact me: why should I give it my all?
justin_oaks 4y ago
This is an underrated comment. I remember taking a Golden State Exam [1] in high school. It was for English and it required some essay writing. I didn't think I'd be in the top group so I wouldn't win any award, and I knew it wouldn't affect my letter grade. I spent the time writing random stuff that would fill the page instead of what I was supposed to write about. It would be interesting to get data on how much students don't even try on exams that don't affect their letter grade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Exams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Exams
tssva 4y ago
This is still the case. In my state growth assessment tests are given for reading and math every fall and spring. These tests don't affect students grades in any manner. My experience with my child and her friends is that no effort is given. When the test answers were recorded via paper creating patterns on the test sheet was the only effort given. Now that it is computerized, they just randomly select answers or pick a letter to answer for every question. Based upon these tests my daughter and most of her friends are illiterate and can't count. Her and her friends are all A students enrolled in honors, AP and dual enrollment classes. In high school there are a few state level tests which effect whether you graduate. These they take more seriously.

baggy_trough 4y ago

Don't worry, we'll simply reduce the standards.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tgv 4y ago
Your comment is a bit dismissive, but you’re right. That’s what will happen. Another reply says “ Wouldn't the grade level be defined by the median student?”, which is exactly how you get ever lowering standards. You start with a few good sounding assumptions, and then keep adjusting the level, because the assumptions cannot, no, may not be wrong. Financial incentives are another good example.
adrr 4y ago
Aren't the standards higher now than the past? I have daughter in second grade who is learning multiplication, basic division, fractions and very basic algebra. I never learned that till 3rd and 4th grade. Here's some sample questions from california standardized test. http://starsamplequestions.org/grades_2_3.pdf http://starsamplequestions.org/grades_2_3.pdf

pessimizer 4y ago

Wouldn't the grade level be defined by the median student?

seaners 4y ago
No, it's a standard that is based on what a child should be able to perform at a certain age. Otherwise everyone could get exceptionally dumb and illiterate, which has already happened in CA apparently. As someone who went to CA public school, I can tell you that very little learning is going on (at least where I was).
mjhay 4y ago
I think it is defined by the aspirational median student.
babypuncher 4y ago
I presume "grade level" was defined by the median student some time ago and has not been adjusted since. The fact that it's going down seems like bad news. EDIT: It seems the headline is misleading and my take is not accurate.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  It’s not really going down. There are years it was worse and years it was better. It seems like it’s staying fairly consistent around the original threshold, which appears to be close the median. But I’d note the first year observed was lower than this last year observed, so it couldn’t have been the actual median. They probably intentionally picked a level below the median as the threshold to convince people to freak out and “send funding now”
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    Yeah after taking a closer look at everything, it seems that the actual headline is alarmist and heavily misleading. The conclusion to take from this is that the pandemic had a mild negative impact on test results, but otherwise everything is fine, and actually marginally improved since these metrics were first established.

mistrial9 4y ago

close to thirty percent of Oakland Public Schools students did not graduate High School last I looked.. spectacular levels of genuine confirmed illiteracy, plus dozens of non-English native languages; very high violence rates among and between some groups

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
I think at this point Oakland is a failed city. Or at least very close to it.

standardUser 4y ago

The site has a cool widget and you can browse through past data. From what I see, the decline isn't too dramatic. I'd expect an even worse drop off due to the pandemic than just a few points.

twerkmonsta 4y ago

[flagged]

bluedino 4y ago

Low levels of parental involvement in education.

rahmeero 4y ago

This data is from the California Dept of Education. I wonder if other states track this also. My guess is that some states don't even bother, and their students likely don't perform as well. Then there are other states, small ones like Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, whose students might fall on the high side of the curve. Just a guess. Anyone know?

snowwrestler 4y ago
States have to track these sorts of metrics to qualify for federal education funding. This is an enduring result of the “No Child Left Behind” act. Before that, you were correct, many states did not track educational stats in any consistent or reliable way.

jmathai 4y ago

As a California resident, I'm surprised there's no mention of % of ESL (english as a second language) students. There's a very large population of ESL students in California that drag down these statistics as the students catch up. If english isn't your primary language, learning math that is taught in english will also be more difficult.

zozbot234 4y ago
Math is language independent. Shouldn't ESL students be able to use workbooks in their native language?
- reocha 4y ago
  Math teachers speak English.
- dorchadas 4y ago
  You'd think so, but I've taught ESL math. Good luck getting them to understand what's even going on without speaking their language. Especially if some, like my students, come in at high school having only really had five years of formal schooling. You need the language to teach the math, basically. Also, not all of the kids I had were literate in their first language (A Mayan language, so most weren't) or even their second (often another Mayan language) or third (Spanish usually), so you can't just say 'Give them a workbook'
- NDizzle 4y ago
  I'd sure hate to be taught math from a workbook alone.
TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
No. California does not have a large Black immigrant population. The Black population speaks English and does worse than the average (including ESL students). Language alone doesn't explain the gap. Particularly since immigrant Asian groups are above average.
- 4y ago

bmmayer1 4y ago

The failure of public education in this country is a national scandal. It should be the number one concern of everyone, and yet there's no outrage, no political wedge issue, no media -- what's going on?

anoonmoose 4y ago
One simple explanation would be that the problem just isn't as bad as you think it is.
- goatlover 4y ago
  What is your opinion on the NPR Reveal podcast episode about how the prominence of reading recovery instead of phonics has led to 1/3 of children by fourth grade reading at a substandard level?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    That we can microbenchmark any aspect of the education system looking for improvements but and the end of the day colleges are packed and you'll be hard pressed to find someone who is genuinely illiterate -- you'll find people who don't read and write English super well but it's because it's their second language and they're perfectly literate in their native tongue.
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    We need to remember the average adult only reads at a 6th grade level... Not that that's good, but I'd say there's many other factors involved than just the schools (parental involvement, do they read outside school, etc)
    - bmmayer1 4y ago
      This is an awful excuse. The whole purpose of public education is to give students who don't have support at home an education. Passing the buck to parents makes the whole point of public school moot -- if kids with involved parents read and those without don't, why put kids in school at all at that point?

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Looking at the history this doesn’t seem abnormal, and it hovers around 49%. This implies to me median is determined to be grade level (essentially) and it hasn’t moved materially beyond this point since the data was compiled and the entirely arbitrary definition of “grade level” was declared. Would be interesting to see other states but it wasn’t immediately obvious if a similar dataset exists for anywhere else. Given all this it seems entirely unclear if this should be viewed in some subjective sense as “good” or “bad.” It just seems to reflect things are “normal.”

bmitc 4y ago
If it's "normal", isn't the conclusion then that the normal is not good? The threshold is extremely low already, and that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. It isn't that they aren't capable. It's that the social support structures are not there.
- singlow 4y ago
  If nearly 50% of people perform below average is that bad?
  - darig 4y ago
    [dead]
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I edited my comment probably as you were responding, but it wasn't my impression that that is what's being measured. Some level is set and the students are measured against that level. I would assume that the target percentage is of course close to 100% to be meeting that level. If not, then it should be. It is also my assumption that the level is already very low.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      No, if you read the thread you’ll see it was picked to be greater than the median at the time the metric was established. So in the first year it was less than 50%, but close. The phrase “grade level” implies a 100% goal, but the math of the metric says you’ll do great to do anything better than 50%.

greenthrow 4y ago

[flagged]

slkfjlksdjf 4y ago
[flagged]
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  I dunno about your second point.. some of the worst stuff I've ever seen online was in Facebook-powered comment sections on news articles, sitting next to pictures of smiling grandpas holding their grandchildren
Gareth321 4y ago
Ironically, this take is useless and reactionary. Perhaps you should have a nice cup of tea before you leave a common next time?
menacingly 4y ago
I think viewing different opinions as some kind of disease is at the root of a lot of our current ridiculous political situation
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I'm allowed to care about my kid's education.
golergka 4y ago
Thanks for providing a useful, fact-based and detailed counter-point to these takes.

sys32768 4y ago

[flagged]

chad1n 4y ago

This is the effect on a state of reducing enrollment requirements.

fallingknife 4y ago

I'm shocked that this is happening in a state that tried to get rid of advanced math class to promote equality.

Scubabear68 4y ago

In our rural public school in NJ, both our kids were routinely socially promoted with B’a and C’s even though they were very below average on State testing. We tried fighting this but the inertia of “do nothing and pass anyway” was too great. When we moved them to private school last year (5th and 9th grade), they had a brutal adjustment period of catching up from being so far behind, and for learning studying habits from scratch. Public schools in the US have problems due to the unions giving too much protection to lousy teachers, and school boards throwing away money like water on things like laptops and athletic fields while not focusing on attracting and paying really good teachers with a track record of success. It really is a travesty.

Spivak 4y ago
> We tried fighting this but the inertia of “do nothing and pass anyway” was too great. It's because there's no story for what to do in this case. All schools, even good ones, only focus on the happy path. I mean you're basically describing the problem perfectly when you moved your kid to a private school. They're not getting a more personalized education, the expectations are just higher. School is still a train that keeps moving whether you're at the level or not.
- Scubabear68 4y ago
  Well said and exactly right. The private school not only had higher expectations? But also realistic feedback in the form of real grades and consequences.
latchkey 4y ago
Not just that, but the food we give to these kids is horrible. I know that he is a bit contrived in his methodologies, but you watch enough of his shows that you can see the adult behavior reactions to his methods, it is clear that nothing is ever going to change... https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-food-revolution-changing-americas-public-schools https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-...
- 4y ago

ocfnash 4y ago

It's not especially relevant but I can't help being reminded of VerizonMath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU

golergka 4y ago

I'm not an american — what level of math proficiency for at what age are we talking about here? Is it about being bad at integrals or not being able to solve a simple quadratic equation?

kube-system 4y ago
At the end of public school, the latter; algebra. Calculus is typically optional in US high schools. Although each state has different specific educational requirements.
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
The latter, and that's probably still too high a bar for any grade below senior year.
- golergka 4y ago
  I don't usually swear on HN but what the fuck.

fatcat500 4y ago

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're headed toward a medieval "Three Estates" type system reupholstered with a post-modern aesthetic: the ruling class (brokers of power), the intelligentsia (white collars), and the peasants (everyone else).

olivermarks 4y ago
In California we are already in that system
nikanj 4y ago
Is there no separation between the blue-collar working class and the homeless/hopeless class?
cm2012 4y ago
You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.
- deleted 4y ago
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- jaywalk 4y ago
  Where was any of that mentioned? Complete strawman argument.
- hervature 4y ago
  Although I don't agree with the conspiracy, it's more that the politicians can achieve the outcome by misdirecting funds (free iPads!) to achieve the "supposed" end goal (producing sheeple) while looking like they are achieving a nobler goal (educating the lesser off). This can be achieved with very few people interested in the former with the majority of the politicians believing they are accomplishing the latter.

TheMagicHorsey 4y ago

I don't think this is going to change. I have kids in school in California. Most of the parents in my middle class neighborhood also went through public schools, and they have completely wrong ideas about how to improve academic performance. The only parents I agree with are parents from China, Singapore, Taiwan, India etc. But most of them are moving out of public schools and into private schools. So I'm mostly stuck with parents who themselves can't do math properly, so they complain about things like Common Core without understanding what the purpose is.

lasermike026 4y ago

We have to cut the crap and get drilling. Common core is a disaster. Get rid of it. We need to build students to be resilient, work collectively and be able to demonstrate applied knowledge. Take a Finnish education system and copy it. https://www.amazon.com/Leading-High-Performance-School-Systems-Lessons/dp/1416627006 https://www.amazon.com/Leading-High-Performance-School-Syste...

threatofrain 4y ago
Common Core can be fairly summarized as conservatively pushing math standards forward by 0.5 years. The spec of any particular grade level can be read in a few minutes and details simple requirements like some operationalized understanding of polynomials, and the entire math spec can be read in an afternoon. The more recent push to abolish the spec in favor of a more lax standard, namely Equitable Math, was a backlash against this. There are public school districts in California which couldn't be more eager for specs to push standards forward by another 0.5+ years because the Common Core is still catching up from behind to their de facto standards, but there's a seriously powerful (perhaps majority) democratic and political will to hold standards back. What the Common Core and Equitable Math should not be understood as is as a new way of teaching or learning math. Neither of these are revolutionary. All parties involved understand that there's an existing supply of math teachers across the nation who are comfortable teaching some curriculum at some level, and that a true re-arrangement or re-imagination of subjects carries high institutional friction. In other words, we might rearrange Geometry to be taken before Algebra, but replacing Geometry with Linear Algebra (per Gilbert Strang's suggestion) would be revolutionary.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

Bucketing children by age and not developmental milestones has always confused me. No matter how you slice it, some kids are more advanced in verticals than others (emotional, math, reading, problem solving, etc.) and there aren’t tracks in the U.S. to accommodate that so we end up forcing all these square pegs into round holes - everyone loses.

kwere 4y ago
from a social development standpoint it makes sense, a lot of "geniuses" had/could develop problems growing up with people emotionally/socially more mature, altough keeping gifted people with underperformers and lowering education level to keep them "afloat" is a disservice to both groups
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  People are not underperformers, you can't and shouldn't segment the population across some quantitative boundary. Each individual should learn at a difficulty gradient for them that is positive and engaging for each subject. For everyone this will be a different value. What you are describing is a form of damaging elitism.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    People absolutely can and do underperform relative to a standard or mean. Perhaps they should also learn at an optimal rate for personal growth. This doesn't negate the statement above, and it certainly isn't an argument for grouping children together where they can't learn at a personally appropriate rate.
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      Are you addressing the my statement relative to the GP? They are making the elitist assertion that the gifted kids should be separated from the chaff. Having been in gifted programs, I have not found the removal of "underperformers" to be anything other than classism.

johnea 4y ago

Just reenforces my perseption, after living in California for 40 years, and being a parent of a child going through public education, that education here sucks, and most Californian's are dumb as rocks...

nerpderp82 4y ago

Why don't we get rid of grade levels? It would seem 50% of the students are continuously behind and probably suffering. A more humane approach would be to continue to teach the material at a level they can learn from until they get it, and or find new ways to teach it. You see a bimodal distribution in technical subjects (reading and math are technical) where if you get behind, you will continue to get further behind. Catching up takes a 150% power output to even get back to parity if the rest of the non-lagging cohort continues to run ahead.

threatofrain 4y ago
Perhaps we might get rid of across-subject grade levels but thing that grade levels solve is limited supply of teachers and the coordination of materials and standards. Otherwise we'd live in a world where every child gets their own tutor and their own custom curriculum. Thus in some sense we should strive to have better grade levels, but we'll still have grade levels.

xmddmx 4y ago

An important point: the high school dropout rate has been declining for many years. In the past, students who weren’t making it would simply stop attending. Now they are mostly still in school, and probably not doing a whole lot better, which makes the stats look like they are getting worse. Overall dropout rate has dropped by nearly 50% since 1972: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-school-dropout-rate-reaches-record-low-driven-by-improvements-among-hispanics-blacks/ft_14-10-01_h-s-dropout_2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-sc...

disambiguation 4y ago

As a non-Californian, I'm surprised that their education spending per pupil is "mid-tier" (14k/yr) compared to other US states. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-s...

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I'm much more interested in the proportion of students who can't do math at the previous grade level. It means they completed the grade without being able to do the math.

ecf 4y ago

Half of adults in the US read at or below an 8th grade level so I don’t see why this is surprising.

LewisCaster 4y ago

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