4 ms·

It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. "Sold a story" had a huge impact on the educational establishment. My local district reintroduced phon

It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. "Sold a story" had a huge impact on the educational establishment. My local district reintroduced phonics for the 2023-2024 school year, and reintroduced it in kindergarten. By the end of kindergarten, every single one of my kid's classmates could read. This class is today's 2nd graders; they are avid readers today, I'll usually run into one of them walking with a book in front of their face at aftercare. They're too young to show up in the test scores, though, because these kids won't have their first round of standardized testing for another 2 years. Schools and parents are also banning cell phones and cutting down on computer use, which should help with the distraction angle. The socioeconomic divide mentioned in the article is still worrisome, though. I doubt that kids in the bottom 30% of America have the same experience. And simultaneously, the middle class has largely stopped having kids, which means there's a top 20% and a bottom 30% and pretty much nothing in between. If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.

coliveira 1y ago
The enemy of reading nowadays is not phonics alternatives, it is the excessive use of screens that kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move.
- sixtyj 1y ago
  This. People skim, they don’t read. Back in the 90's when they were looking for a killer app for browsers, who knew that video would be the real killer app (of the brain and attention).
- jihadjihad 1y ago
  I think it's counterproductive to provide Chromebooks and iPads to students, but the "excessive use of screens" in my experience is by and large a parenting issue. And it's not just about boundaries around devices, like time limits or app restrictions. It's about setting the right example and providing an environment where reading a book is as stimulating and desirable and encouraged as playing a game every once in a while on an iPad. It's telling that the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children. And children cannot be held accountable for poor habits that are largely a consequence of their environment.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    > the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children You're right, and we see this everywhere. But at least adults already learned how to read, so this is not something that will stop their development during their critical formative years.
    - ocschwar 1y ago
      It's true, but it's cold comfort. the amount of reading I can do in a single sitting has declined a lot.
  - aeternum 1y ago
    The screens thing is a diversion. The core issue is that it's nearly illegal to discipline students now. There's a socioeconomic divide because child behavior is unfortunately negatively correlated to socioeconomics. Thus poor schools suffer more from the lack of ability for teachers to remove disruptive students. Yes some excellent teachers are sometimes able to deal with it, most cannot.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      I think the drop is an almost worldwide thing and not correlated very much to disciplining. Disciplining varies, the screens and the slop are universal.
      - cudgy 1y ago
        This is an interesting take. Based on what you’re saying, then I presume that in India and China academic performance is dropping as well?
        disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        According to PISA results, it seems that the US does worse on maths on average, but pretty close on reading relative to UK and Ireland. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor... There's probably a much better data source, but am on phone.
- noosphr 1y ago
  I've got a zfold and it's the best ebook reader I've ever had. Currently have 500 papers and 30 books on it. Being able to screen read anything is also a plus for light reading like war and peace.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    I mean I'm sure you disable most pop-ups and notifications on your phone too. The problem is most people don't and every type of distraction is vying for their attention every moment they are on that screen.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  That can't be true because the Mentava and Alpha School kids use screens for instruction and they're doing well from parental reports.
  - cudgy 1y ago
    You would have to compare it to a cohort using no screens to know whether there was a benefit or loss.
    - renewiltord 1y ago
      If the effect size is large (ie the screens are substantially damaging) we’d expect to simply directly observe something but these kids test near the top. You only need that kind of comparison if the effect is not acute.
      - cudgy 1y ago
        Not sure what you’re saying here. I think you’re saying you can just observe the top performers and measure whether the top performers use screen time frequently outside of school. Not sure this works as it’s probable that the top performers are gonna be the same in both situations. However, my concern was with the use of screens IN schools as part of the curriculum and as a replacement of textbooks and other sources.
        renewiltord 1y ago
        Alpha School students learn their lessons almost exclusively from a screen during the intensive 3 h first section of day. If screens were debilitating these children would not show high percentile MAP scores. The children do. Therefore screens cannot be debilitating. At worst they can have a negative long term effect or a mild deleterious effect. But they do not have an acute deleterious effect.
        cudgy 1y ago
        OK, but would these children have done better without using the screens? That is the question not whether students can possibly do well with screens. For example, what if the students at the top are less impacted by using screens and would’ve done just as well with books. And at the same time, some of the students in the middle would’ve done better when using books. The analysis you suggest would not catch that.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  Is it actually? That's a very common bugaboo, but I'm not convinced that screen time use is really the main culprit, and I think it's self-evident that it won't have as big an effect as not knowing how to read. The article seemed to suggest as much as well: > But the smartphone thesis has a few weak spots. It’s not just middle schoolers and high schoolers whose performance is declining; it’s also kids in elementary school. Phone use has certainly increased among young children, but not to the ubiquitous proportions of adolescents. And even though smartphone use is almost universal, the learning losses have not been. High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses. My kids are allowed to have screen time, but with limits. Most of their friends have similar arrangements. It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading. When you're limited to an hour of screen time a day, there's still 23 hours to do other stuff.
  - jihadjihad 1y ago
    > It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading. A confounding variable is how reading enjoyment is built and sustained across achievement levels. Presumably your kids and their friends are already high achievers, and as you said, nothing is stopping them from enjoying reading. I think that is great, and again, presumably in these households reading is encouraged as a fulfilling pastime. The question is to what degree lower performers both come to enjoy and choose to engage in reading. If a household doesn't often engage in reading, or it isn't encouraged, or there is little parental support for a laggard reader, it stands to reason that "those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses."
    - nostrademons 1y ago
      Yes. It's usually more fun to do things that you're good at. Reading and academic performance generally has a snowball effect: if you're good at it, you want to do it more, which makes you even better at it, and so on. My point is that if you're looking for an ultimate cause for why this snowball never gets started, I'd look at the very beginning, when kids don't learn the fundamentals needed to make that first leap into reading. Without phonics they don't have the tools needed to sound out unfamiliar words, without this, they really are just guessing all through the rest of their education. And without competence, reading isn't fun, so why would they do it for fun? I'd actually go further and say that the causality between screen time and lack of reading goes the other way. The reason that today's social media industry looks the way it does, with lots of short videos, is because its primary audience can't read. There were plenty of text-based social media sites that catered to Millennials in the early 00s; one is literally named "Reddit". But images and videos started dominating around 2013 because the kids entering prime social media demographics couldn't read. It's a case of the market pulling the product out: text based social media is a niche product today, with Instagram dominating over Facebook, YouTube over Google+, and Reddit and Twitter/X moving to videos, because its primary market can't deal with text.
- qqtt 1y ago
  I would argue the problem is multi-faceted, and screens are a convenient boogeyman which is a relatively easy thing to point to. The harder problems are that both parents need jobs to make ends meet, meaning actual time with their children are both lower quality and less impactful due to lower energy and less time. Children are given devices to play with because the parents are exhausted and don't have the energy to fully engage with young children that are full of energy. Education itself is also chronically underfunded, especially teacher salaries. Whereas before teacher salaries would pay something resembling a living wage, these days the cost of living has exploded and teachers are generally just simply left behind as an afterthought in public budgets. So you have cohort after cohort of children with less quality education time with their parents being funneled into underpaid teachers who are expected to teach a class of 20-40 kids how to read, with poor support systems in place for everything from kids with behavior issues to even potty training in grade school. As a society, we aren't valuing education - neither from the home side, to the workplace accommodation side, to the actual classroom. Until we all collectively agree that this is something worth investing in and we need to spend the time, money and energy to do it correctly, it won't get better. Screens are a symptom but taking them away completely is just treating the symptoms instead of the underlying disease.
  - rpcope1 1y ago
    I mean the thing with parents both needing likely stressful jobs just to make ends meet doesn't just stop at education, it also impacts fertility. We won't even have kids to educate if something doesn't change. It shouldn't require two people working full time to be able to afford a home and have kids, and we need to push against the various forces that have driven us to that.
  - cudgy 1y ago
    First, salaries for teachers must be compensated for the fact that teachers get three months off for summer amongst many other holidays that other workers do not get. Also, teachers get regular salary increases and have generous pension plans. I know several teachers personally that retired after working for 30 years and now have pensions paying 75% of their last highest salary for the rest of their lives, including survivor benefits. Second. Screen Time causes many issues in schools. Not the least of which is the distraction they causes children in the classroom and between classes. Another issue with screens and schools is the cost of these screens and these Chromebook and all the IT and infrastructure that’s required in order to basically just read some material. Prior to chrome books you simply had books and the books lasted for decades, potentially with no further expenses required. The whole educational system is an absolute mess with tons of waste and inefficient processes. Adding technology in Chromebook on top of it all was not helpful.
dfxm12 1y ago
If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed. When you look at the conservative attack on public education, the prison industrial complex, et al., it really seems that this is the intention.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
  Oh yes, the public education that has done such a wonderful job. God forbid parents had better options. /s
  - ribosometronome 1y ago
    The article, and presumably this discussion, is specifically about a recent decline, e.g. the largely public school system doing a worse job than it used to. It should obviously be worth thinking about the reasons, including things like the attacks on schools.
ribosometronome 1y ago
>It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. Is there proof the affluent ever were suffering? From the article we're discussing: >Across grades and subjects, the NAEP results show that the top tenth of students are doing roughly as well as they always have, whereas those at the bottom are doing worse.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  The low-income story gets most of the airtime because most people are not interested in reading about how rich people are struggling, but there was also a significant decline in affluent districts as well. See eg. this Boston Globe article about how even the top districts in the state (which itself is historically the top in the country) are using poor instructional methods: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-top-ranked-ma-schools/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-... https://archive.is/epEe5 https://archive.is/epEe5 I grew up near most of these districts, and and my mom taught in one of them. I was shocked at how low MCAS Reading scores have fallen. I was the first class to take them; it's not a hard test, and it's reportedly gotten even easier in the 30 years since I took it. And yet 30% of students in affluent districts can't pass them. Also we encountered this personally when hiring a babysitter for our kids. She was a college junior, grew up in an adjacent city with $2.5M average house prices, was otherwise great with the kids. She struggled to get through The Lorax - my kindergartner could read it better than her.
  - ribosometronome 1y ago
    I'm still not sure that article supports that rich people are struggling. My take away is that the core point of the article is the achievement gap between rich and poor students, especially in affluent schools. It kind of drives home that the rich kids aren't struggling, really. >Although the kids who are lagging come from all backgrounds, they are disproportionately Black or Latino, live in a low-income household, are not native English speakers, or have a disability. The "Income and Disability Achievement Gaps" graphs seems to show a higher percentage of non-income disadvantage / disabled students are meeting or exceeding expectations in the wealthy districts than statewide.
tayo42 1y ago
>middle class has largely stopped having kids, Anecdotal I guess but I feel like I'm seeing alot of people having kids suddenly.
orochimaaru 1y ago
>>>If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed. It sort of is already. The segregation of Americans by school district based on what their property taxes are already accomplishes this. Observe the standards to which schools that are wealthier (because of better taxes) vs schools in areas with lower taxes. The parents of the kids in the former are expected to play a more imperative role, the kids are challenged a LOT more. My fourth grader was expected to do at least 3 detailed book reports, each book at least 200 pages per book, including learning to present her findings in a timed manner. They were graded informally on a detailed rubric. They advance kids to higher math grades based on the child’s skill level. So there are 4th graders doing 5th and some exceptional ones 6th grade math. This contrasts with another school district we were in earlier. Very loving teachers. But they had no space to challenge the kids. Because the teachers had to own the responsibility of getting each kid across the finish line for the grade.
- bodiekane 1y ago
  Texas has "Robinhood" rules where property taxes from affluent areas are taken away and given to lower income areas throughout the state, so that the schools have more similar budgets regardless of income level in the area. They still have drastically different quality of schools and student experiences though, because the kids are coming from very different home environments, parental expectations, cultural norms, etc.
  - orochimaaru 1y ago
    I’ve heard teachers often dislike the term good or bad school district. And rightly so. The home environment that kids come from can vary. This makes a “great schools” score (or something equivalent) not a marker of the level of effort the teachers put in but rather a marker for parents to find “better peer groups” and “like minded pta”. Note I’m consciously avoiding the discussion of race here. Because in most suburban cases the good/bad doesn’t depend on race but more on income. This will obviously change if you look at urban districts.
throwaway314155 1y ago
> It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. America is not solely made up of affluent kids.
greygoo222 1y ago
If you read the article, you'll know that the affluent kids never saw a decrease in performance begin with. The top 10% performed just as well as always.
- LarsDu88 1y ago
  Most of the article is paywalled for me
  - chimpanzee 1y ago
    And so it begins...
    - ulrashida 1y ago
      Ah yes, I am literate but I cannot read.
      - jdshaffer 1y ago
        So, in the end, I guess only the affluent can read after all...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
DerArzt 1y ago
Perhaps the socioeconomic divide won't be as big of an issue as you think. If you haven't heard of the Mississippi Miracle [1], it's worth learning about. The bigger issue is convincing education departments that phonics are the more successful way to learn reading. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle

coliveira 1y ago

The enemy of reading nowadays is not phonics alternatives, it is the excessive use of screens that kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move.

sixtyj 1y ago
This. People skim, they don’t read. Back in the 90's when they were looking for a killer app for browsers, who knew that video would be the real killer app (of the brain and attention).
jihadjihad 1y ago
I think it's counterproductive to provide Chromebooks and iPads to students, but the "excessive use of screens" in my experience is by and large a parenting issue. And it's not just about boundaries around devices, like time limits or app restrictions. It's about setting the right example and providing an environment where reading a book is as stimulating and desirable and encouraged as playing a game every once in a while on an iPad. It's telling that the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children. And children cannot be held accountable for poor habits that are largely a consequence of their environment.
- coliveira 1y ago
  > the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children You're right, and we see this everywhere. But at least adults already learned how to read, so this is not something that will stop their development during their critical formative years.
  - ocschwar 1y ago
    It's true, but it's cold comfort. the amount of reading I can do in a single sitting has declined a lot.
- aeternum 1y ago
  The screens thing is a diversion. The core issue is that it's nearly illegal to discipline students now. There's a socioeconomic divide because child behavior is unfortunately negatively correlated to socioeconomics. Thus poor schools suffer more from the lack of ability for teachers to remove disruptive students. Yes some excellent teachers are sometimes able to deal with it, most cannot.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    I think the drop is an almost worldwide thing and not correlated very much to disciplining. Disciplining varies, the screens and the slop are universal.
    - cudgy 1y ago
      This is an interesting take. Based on what you’re saying, then I presume that in India and China academic performance is dropping as well?
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        According to PISA results, it seems that the US does worse on maths on average, but pretty close on reading relative to UK and Ireland. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor... There's probably a much better data source, but am on phone.
noosphr 1y ago
I've got a zfold and it's the best ebook reader I've ever had. Currently have 500 papers and 30 books on it. Being able to screen read anything is also a plus for light reading like war and peace.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I mean I'm sure you disable most pop-ups and notifications on your phone too. The problem is most people don't and every type of distraction is vying for their attention every moment they are on that screen.
renewiltord 1y ago
That can't be true because the Mentava and Alpha School kids use screens for instruction and they're doing well from parental reports.
- cudgy 1y ago
  You would have to compare it to a cohort using no screens to know whether there was a benefit or loss.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    If the effect size is large (ie the screens are substantially damaging) we’d expect to simply directly observe something but these kids test near the top. You only need that kind of comparison if the effect is not acute.
    - cudgy 1y ago
      Not sure what you’re saying here. I think you’re saying you can just observe the top performers and measure whether the top performers use screen time frequently outside of school. Not sure this works as it’s probable that the top performers are gonna be the same in both situations. However, my concern was with the use of screens IN schools as part of the curriculum and as a replacement of textbooks and other sources.
      - renewiltord 1y ago
        Alpha School students learn their lessons almost exclusively from a screen during the intensive 3 h first section of day. If screens were debilitating these children would not show high percentile MAP scores. The children do. Therefore screens cannot be debilitating. At worst they can have a negative long term effect or a mild deleterious effect. But they do not have an acute deleterious effect.
        cudgy 1y ago
        OK, but would these children have done better without using the screens? That is the question not whether students can possibly do well with screens. For example, what if the students at the top are less impacted by using screens and would’ve done just as well with books. And at the same time, some of the students in the middle would’ve done better when using books. The analysis you suggest would not catch that.
nostrademons 1y ago
Is it actually? That's a very common bugaboo, but I'm not convinced that screen time use is really the main culprit, and I think it's self-evident that it won't have as big an effect as not knowing how to read. The article seemed to suggest as much as well: > But the smartphone thesis has a few weak spots. It’s not just middle schoolers and high schoolers whose performance is declining; it’s also kids in elementary school. Phone use has certainly increased among young children, but not to the ubiquitous proportions of adolescents. And even though smartphone use is almost universal, the learning losses have not been. High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses. My kids are allowed to have screen time, but with limits. Most of their friends have similar arrangements. It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading. When you're limited to an hour of screen time a day, there's still 23 hours to do other stuff.
- jihadjihad 1y ago
  > It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading. A confounding variable is how reading enjoyment is built and sustained across achievement levels. Presumably your kids and their friends are already high achievers, and as you said, nothing is stopping them from enjoying reading. I think that is great, and again, presumably in these households reading is encouraged as a fulfilling pastime. The question is to what degree lower performers both come to enjoy and choose to engage in reading. If a household doesn't often engage in reading, or it isn't encouraged, or there is little parental support for a laggard reader, it stands to reason that "those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses."
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    Yes. It's usually more fun to do things that you're good at. Reading and academic performance generally has a snowball effect: if you're good at it, you want to do it more, which makes you even better at it, and so on. My point is that if you're looking for an ultimate cause for why this snowball never gets started, I'd look at the very beginning, when kids don't learn the fundamentals needed to make that first leap into reading. Without phonics they don't have the tools needed to sound out unfamiliar words, without this, they really are just guessing all through the rest of their education. And without competence, reading isn't fun, so why would they do it for fun? I'd actually go further and say that the causality between screen time and lack of reading goes the other way. The reason that today's social media industry looks the way it does, with lots of short videos, is because its primary audience can't read. There were plenty of text-based social media sites that catered to Millennials in the early 00s; one is literally named "Reddit". But images and videos started dominating around 2013 because the kids entering prime social media demographics couldn't read. It's a case of the market pulling the product out: text based social media is a niche product today, with Instagram dominating over Facebook, YouTube over Google+, and Reddit and Twitter/X moving to videos, because its primary market can't deal with text.
qqtt 1y ago
I would argue the problem is multi-faceted, and screens are a convenient boogeyman which is a relatively easy thing to point to. The harder problems are that both parents need jobs to make ends meet, meaning actual time with their children are both lower quality and less impactful due to lower energy and less time. Children are given devices to play with because the parents are exhausted and don't have the energy to fully engage with young children that are full of energy. Education itself is also chronically underfunded, especially teacher salaries. Whereas before teacher salaries would pay something resembling a living wage, these days the cost of living has exploded and teachers are generally just simply left behind as an afterthought in public budgets. So you have cohort after cohort of children with less quality education time with their parents being funneled into underpaid teachers who are expected to teach a class of 20-40 kids how to read, with poor support systems in place for everything from kids with behavior issues to even potty training in grade school. As a society, we aren't valuing education - neither from the home side, to the workplace accommodation side, to the actual classroom. Until we all collectively agree that this is something worth investing in and we need to spend the time, money and energy to do it correctly, it won't get better. Screens are a symptom but taking them away completely is just treating the symptoms instead of the underlying disease.
- rpcope1 1y ago
  I mean the thing with parents both needing likely stressful jobs just to make ends meet doesn't just stop at education, it also impacts fertility. We won't even have kids to educate if something doesn't change. It shouldn't require two people working full time to be able to afford a home and have kids, and we need to push against the various forces that have driven us to that.
- cudgy 1y ago
  First, salaries for teachers must be compensated for the fact that teachers get three months off for summer amongst many other holidays that other workers do not get. Also, teachers get regular salary increases and have generous pension plans. I know several teachers personally that retired after working for 30 years and now have pensions paying 75% of their last highest salary for the rest of their lives, including survivor benefits. Second. Screen Time causes many issues in schools. Not the least of which is the distraction they causes children in the classroom and between classes. Another issue with screens and schools is the cost of these screens and these Chromebook and all the IT and infrastructure that’s required in order to basically just read some material. Prior to chrome books you simply had books and the books lasted for decades, potentially with no further expenses required. The whole educational system is an absolute mess with tons of waste and inefficient processes. Adding technology in Chromebook on top of it all was not helpful.

dfxm12 1y ago

If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed. When you look at the conservative attack on public education, the prison industrial complex, et al., it really seems that this is the intention.

9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
Oh yes, the public education that has done such a wonderful job. God forbid parents had better options. /s
- ribosometronome 1y ago
  The article, and presumably this discussion, is specifically about a recent decline, e.g. the largely public school system doing a worse job than it used to. It should obviously be worth thinking about the reasons, including things like the attacks on schools.

ribosometronome 1y ago

>It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. Is there proof the affluent ever were suffering? From the article we're discussing: >Across grades and subjects, the NAEP results show that the top tenth of students are doing roughly as well as they always have, whereas those at the bottom are doing worse.

nostrademons 1y ago
The low-income story gets most of the airtime because most people are not interested in reading about how rich people are struggling, but there was also a significant decline in affluent districts as well. See eg. this Boston Globe article about how even the top districts in the state (which itself is historically the top in the country) are using poor instructional methods: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-top-ranked-ma-schools/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-... https://archive.is/epEe5 https://archive.is/epEe5 I grew up near most of these districts, and and my mom taught in one of them. I was shocked at how low MCAS Reading scores have fallen. I was the first class to take them; it's not a hard test, and it's reportedly gotten even easier in the 30 years since I took it. And yet 30% of students in affluent districts can't pass them. Also we encountered this personally when hiring a babysitter for our kids. She was a college junior, grew up in an adjacent city with $2.5M average house prices, was otherwise great with the kids. She struggled to get through The Lorax - my kindergartner could read it better than her.
- ribosometronome 1y ago
  I'm still not sure that article supports that rich people are struggling. My take away is that the core point of the article is the achievement gap between rich and poor students, especially in affluent schools. It kind of drives home that the rich kids aren't struggling, really. >Although the kids who are lagging come from all backgrounds, they are disproportionately Black or Latino, live in a low-income household, are not native English speakers, or have a disability. The "Income and Disability Achievement Gaps" graphs seems to show a higher percentage of non-income disadvantage / disabled students are meeting or exceeding expectations in the wealthy districts than statewide.

tayo42 1y ago

>middle class has largely stopped having kids, Anecdotal I guess but I feel like I'm seeing alot of people having kids suddenly.

orochimaaru 1y ago

>>>If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed. It sort of is already. The segregation of Americans by school district based on what their property taxes are already accomplishes this. Observe the standards to which schools that are wealthier (because of better taxes) vs schools in areas with lower taxes. The parents of the kids in the former are expected to play a more imperative role, the kids are challenged a LOT more. My fourth grader was expected to do at least 3 detailed book reports, each book at least 200 pages per book, including learning to present her findings in a timed manner. They were graded informally on a detailed rubric. They advance kids to higher math grades based on the child’s skill level. So there are 4th graders doing 5th and some exceptional ones 6th grade math. This contrasts with another school district we were in earlier. Very loving teachers. But they had no space to challenge the kids. Because the teachers had to own the responsibility of getting each kid across the finish line for the grade.

bodiekane 1y ago
Texas has "Robinhood" rules where property taxes from affluent areas are taken away and given to lower income areas throughout the state, so that the schools have more similar budgets regardless of income level in the area. They still have drastically different quality of schools and student experiences though, because the kids are coming from very different home environments, parental expectations, cultural norms, etc.
- orochimaaru 1y ago
  I’ve heard teachers often dislike the term good or bad school district. And rightly so. The home environment that kids come from can vary. This makes a “great schools” score (or something equivalent) not a marker of the level of effort the teachers put in but rather a marker for parents to find “better peer groups” and “like minded pta”. Note I’m consciously avoiding the discussion of race here. Because in most suburban cases the good/bad doesn’t depend on race but more on income. This will obviously change if you look at urban districts.

throwaway314155 1y ago

> It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. America is not solely made up of affluent kids.

greygoo222 1y ago

If you read the article, you'll know that the affluent kids never saw a decrease in performance begin with. The top 10% performed just as well as always.

LarsDu88 1y ago
Most of the article is paywalled for me
- chimpanzee 1y ago
  And so it begins...
  - ulrashida 1y ago
    Ah yes, I am literate but I cannot read.
    - jdshaffer 1y ago
      So, in the end, I guess only the affluent can read after all...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

DerArzt 1y ago

Perhaps the socioeconomic divide won't be as big of an issue as you think. If you haven't heard of the Mississippi Miracle [1], it's worth learning about. The bigger issue is convincing education departments that phonics are the more successful way to learn reading. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle