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Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
- u1hcw9nx 6mo agoThe National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) administered the NAEP long-term trend (LTT) reading and mathematics assessments to 13-year-old students from October to December of the 2022–23 school year. The average scores for 13-year-olds declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics compared to the previous assessment administered during the 2019–20 school year. Compared to a decade ago, the average scores declined 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics.
- magicalist 6mo ago(2023) comparing Fall 2019 to Fall 2022
- nh23423fefe 6mo agoinstead of gpt did it, ill lazily say covid did it
- dessimus 6mo agoCovid doesn't explain the drop from 2012 to 2020 though, as the tests were administered Fall of 2019 and therefore pre-Covid.
- jjk166 6mo agoThe decrease from 2012 to 2020 was much less and generally not statistically significant. Further 2012 was the all time high, you'd expect some regression to the mean.
- selcuka 6mo ago> Further 2012 was the all time high It's an all time high because it started declining after that. You'd expect some regression, but you don't expect it to fall back to 1980s levels.
- jjk166 6mo agoThat's how all time highs work, yes. And it didn't fall to 1980s levels, 2020 was tied for second highest all time in math and was 1 point behind second highest all time in reading.
- Aachen 6mo ago+ (USA) It doesn't seem to be about 13-year-old students in general
- biscuits1 6mo agoI grepped for "covid" and "COVID-19" on all presented text. 1 result found. ". . . did you ever attend school from home or somewhere else outside of school because of the COVID-19 outbreak?" Can someone else confirm? Not enough investigation there. Of course, the trend was already going down, but the new slope is obvious. Prediction in next three years will be same or greater - technology, ai, screentime.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoNote the results are compiled from the 2022–23 school year, compared to the 2019–20 school year. So yeah, the big thing there is the lockdown for (depending on local policies) the year or two in between.
- SirFatty 6mo agoI know the talking heads have been saying that as well, but my bet is on social media and phone use being the majority stakeholder in this failure.
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoI would bet on a culture of lowered expectations.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- junofan 6mo agoChronic absence is up and truancy is down according to this report. Not really what I’d expect for phone use—both should trend flat or up. I wonder if there’s a way to validate the hypothesis that post-shutdown, some of the cohort that would have missed a day here and there now see school as optional and miss more days. Overall, the reported effect is sad and should be addressed. These are people’s lives.
- nradov 6mo agoYouth participation in travel club sports is up so they miss more school days due to tournaments. These tend to be the more affluent and motivated students who still achieve good grades and high standardized test scores. I receive warning letters from the school district every year over high absences but it doesn't mean anything and I just throw them in the trash.
- bijowo1676 6mo agoscreen time and social media
- hooo 6mo agoSeriously. I'm surprised you got downvoted. The internet is so much more hostile to minds than it was when I was a kid.
- win2k 6mo agoScreen time and social media definitely have an impact on attention spans, but it's worth pointing out for Mathematics, 2023's average is higher than pre-1990, and reading averages seem to have always been in the 255-265 range.
- godelski 6mo agoThe peak was in 2012 2012 2020 2023 Reading 263 260 256 Math 285 280 271 So people are looking at Covid and that's probably not enough. The scores are closer to those of the 80's than those in the 90's and 00's
- kpw94 6mo agoMy non-controversial theory: It's all the attention-span-shortening stuff. - tech apps starting with infinite scroll (facebook, 9gag, Instagram, etc.) - media/tech shortened content: shorter tv shows, short video content, etc. (Tiktok is the "state of the art" of those 2 trends pushed to the max) Specifically, we're getting more & more addicted to things that increase the dopamine spikes frequency, making it increasingly difficult to go in deep focus work.
- tommica 6mo agoAbsolutely, we are feeding kids so much attention-span killing things. Even as an adult I'm having hard time with YouTube shorts, and i cannot imagine a kids brain having the ways to deal with all that.
- schainks 6mo agoI am _fighting_ with elderly relatives to adjust their YouTube habits. They didn't even know it comes on autopilot by default. They don't even check sources, they just let the garbage in.
- cameldrv 6mo agoAlso the parents using too many attention-span killing things which is hurting the attention they give their children.
- guzfip 6mo agoI certainly feel several degrees dumber than I did as a teenager without that stuff
- 6mo ago
- tdb7893 6mo agoI cannot wait for one of my uncles to post this about how kids these days can't do anything so I can point out that the scores were even lower in his age bracket.
- letsbehonest1 6mo agooh, you'll get him with that one!
- tdb7893 6mo agoHaha, I wouldn't actually say anything (sarcasm never transfers on the internet). More of it's interesting that many baby boomers I know in real life think the sky is falling based on metrics that are better than they were when they were kids, and they didn't even have COVID as an excuse.
- pixelmelt 6mo agoI opened this thread expecting a bunch of "kids these days..." posts, kind of surprised not to see any. People have been raising themselves up by putting down other generations since the very first I assume, the temptation towards the fallacy of composition is too irresistible.
- NickNaraghi 6mo agoNote that these are 2023 numbers, not 2025.
- ddtaylor 6mo agoAre there newer numbers?
- pavon 6mo agoThe NAEP has two types of tests - a long-term trend assessment, and the main assessment[1]. The long-term trend is given less often (and rather sporadically recently), and 2023 is the most recent one available. The main assessment has been performed every two years recently, so 2024 data is most recent. They can all be seen here[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educational_Progress#Assessments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educati... [2] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/report_archive.aspx https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/report_archive.aspx
- swingboy 6mo agoThe right wingers are going to have a heyday with this one just like they’ve been doing with the “Swedes are getting dumber and nobody knows why” articles.
- win2k 6mo agoCan you explain for the non-terminally online?
- shigawire 6mo agoThey want to say that non-whites are naturally dumber than whites. There will be varying degrees of subtlety but that's what the dog whistlers are on about.
- win2k 6mo agoOh. Racism. I'm so relieved I left social media. Sadly, via democracy, even if you leave social media you are still impacted by those who use it and believe what they read.
- JuniperMesos 6mo agoYou can take a look at the charts in the linked article and see that the scores for Asians are consistently higher than the scores for whites which are consistently higher than the scores for blacks and Hispanics. This was true in 2012 and it's true today. If these numbers are at all meaningful for determining how much a student has learned as a result of going through schooling, then thye show that white people are consistently better than blacks and Hispanics at school and are consistently worse than Asians.
- nitwit005 6mo agoDepending on what variety of racist you get, they'll either just ignore that sort of data, or they openly state they prefer Asian immigrants.
- aggakake 6mo agoLook at Youtube Shorts in an incognito window to see the mindless crap that's popular among median users.
- shimman 6mo agoOr look at corporations + elites constantly attacking children for the last 40 years (pushing school vouchers, school choices, attacking teacher unions, politicizing school boards). Who do you think suffers when elites attack public education? It's always the children. Fun fact: Silicon Valley elites are big proponents of school vouchers because, like their hatred of American labor, they also hate public schools and don't want to pay for that either.
- adriand 6mo ago> Who do you think suffers when elites attack public education? It's always the children. Exactly. And who benefits from a less educated, less aware populace? The answer is pretty clear: look at who is benefiting right now!
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- cyberax 6mo agoAnd yet, the SF school district decided that math is too racist, and advanced classes in particular should be banned as doubleplusungood. Seattle's Public Schools district is among the leading in the nation on per-student spending, yet the test scores are cratering. Its previous superintendant had an official platform of not disciplining students. Vouchers would _improve_ the situation.
- JuniperMesos 6mo agoPlenty of children suffer in public schools as they are currently constituted. School vouchers, school choice, and attacking teachers unions are attempts to create more schooling options than just whatever the local public school is, which should benefit children who are currently having a bad time in that system. School boards are inherently poltical because as long as a publicly-run school system exists, how it is run and what things it will attempt to teach are political questions. There's no apolitical school board that existed 40 years ago that has been altered since then, they have always been poltical.
- japhyr 6mo agoPeople are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go up, and funding is flat, something gets cut. You can't cut education for a decade straight without impacting student learning. I don't think Alaska is that much of an outlier in this regard.
- zaphar 6mo agoIf increasing spending had almost no impact over time why would cutting spending have an impact?
- estearum 6mo agoIf filling a leaky bucket had almost no impact over time, why would stopping filling the bucket have an impact?
- zaphar 6mo agoBut filling a leaky bucket does have an impact. You just have to fill it faster than it empties. Which is probably your point. My point is different. Study after study shows that below a specific floor spending has almost no impact on educational outcomes. The correlation is such that you can both determine that there is likely no leak and also that it has no effect. The stuff that does have an impact is much harder to move the needle on though so everyone just scapegoats funding instead. Stuff like building up the nuclear family in an area, increasing income mobility, and holding parents accountable for child outcomes do have a measurable effect but are politically intractable today.
- foxyv 6mo agoUnfortunately there is much more to the story than a number on a line. Just because you increase spending doesn't mean that the spending isn't earmarked for items like digital projectors and virtual textbooks that have minimal impact on learning outcomes.
- raincole 6mo agoI know the knee-jerk reaction is social media, but from the graph in the article, it seems to just get back to the same level as 90s.
- win2k 6mo agoShows a lot of people haven't read the article and just made assumptions based on the headline.
- ajam1507 6mo agoIt still shows a problem. If math and reading levels were largely improving for decades then we saw a sudden decline, it signals that something changed, especially since covid.
- crabbone 6mo agoBeing a parent, I ask myself this question: is it worth it to struggle to get my child to try for better grades? And I don't have a definitive answer. The reasons to doubt are perfectly known: meritocracy is on a decline in the Western world, there's an ever improving safety net for losers, there's a price to pay for forcing my child to study vs the child spending time with their friends who were left to roam free as their social life will suffer. I probably met more people whose degrees played little to no role in their professional career than the other way around. I've met lots of people who could never realize their degree because of the hollowed down European industry. Engineers seem to suffer the most. It seems like the few ways where a degree can open the door to a better life must be in a field that provides very localized services s.a. medicine. All else is outsourced. Trades do better in this respect as a lot of them need to be local, but they too are being populated by foreign workers and competition is fierce. I don't think that COVID or any other "force of nature" is to blame for the outcomes. When there's will, there's a way. It's just that fewer parents see academic achievements as worth pursuing for their children.
- zozbot234 6mo agoWhy do you want to force your kid to study? Kids are naturally curious, it's likely that your kid will be curious about something. Introduce them to study and scholarship as a means of figuring these things out, so that it becomes natural to them.
- cyberax 6mo agoBecause _real_ study is boring. Watching videos on Youtube or playing "educational games" is not studying. You need to repeatedly solve multiple practical problems to internalize the knowledge. And you'll eventually need to do stuff that you don't really like at all.
- zozbot234 6mo agoThe proper response to that is still not to force your kid to study though. Instead, she should be made aware that in order to consistently do well, she is ultimately expected to gain the ability to force herself and defer the immediate gratification of watching a YouTube video (unless that YouTube video is a boring recorded college lecture that's relevant to her studies, I suppose).
- dzink 6mo agoTiktok was launched by ByteDance in 2018. Reels was unleashed 2020 and YouTube shorts in 2021.
- tmsh 6mo agoIt looks like it's trending back up post-COVID (this link has California data but not sure how you link to this without selecting a state)? https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/ca?chort=1&sub=MAT&st=MN&year=2024R3&sfj=NP&cti=PgTab_OT&sj=CA https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/over...
- nonameiguess 6mo agoEveryone is going to name their pet bugaboo, but if you look at the full charts, the scores were pretty stable in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and are regressing back down to what they were historically. The real question is why they went up temporarily until 2012.
- twoodfin 6mo agoFew people know this, but it turns out a major bipartisan education reform bill was passed in the early 2000’s. Constituencies of both parties found reasons to hate it, so its foundational accountability requirements were watered down by succeeding administrations. I’m perfectly willing to be convinced NCLB had nothing to do with the evolution of test scores over the last 25 years, but the circumstantial evidence is not easy to dismiss.
- robotnikman 6mo agoI wonder if having the Soviet Union as an ever looming adversary could have something to do with it, and after their fall everyone just got complacent.
- darkteflon 6mo ago… in mice. Sorry - that was reflexive: “… in the US”. I don’t think there’s any great mystery here. Every few years, you guys elect a bunch of people for whom active sabotage of public education is a sine qua non to political gerrymandering strategies driven by the self-preservation instincts of lobbyists.
- ReptileMan 6mo agoThe quality has gone down substantially in my EU member country. The kids can barely read and do simple arithmetic.
- ekjhgkejhgk 6mo agoDoes anybody else find it super suspicious that all the percentiles declined by similar amounts?
- anonreeeeplor 6mo agoWithout documenting the Change in demographics it’s meaningless. If there are more dumber people from populations with lower Iq - then this is inevitable. It’s an IQ test not a test of teaching skill.
- PaulKeeble 6mo ago[1] is a summary of the impact on the brain of Covid-19 infections including IQ reduction but many others besides. Its best understood that there is no such thing as a consequence free Covid infection, it always damages something and the early british experiment where they intentionally infected young men resulted in all of them loosing IQ and none of them being aware of the loss. This finding has been built on substantially in the past 6 years and we have a much large list of issues now, none of it treatable. [1] https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216 https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-cov...
- steviedotboston 6mo agothe trend started before covid...
- havaloc 6mo agoMuch ink has been spilled in the comments already, but as a child of the 80s, computers were a class, and not a lifestyle. If I had gone through school with what's available today, I doubt I would have done as well as I did. Most things were handwritten, I learned cursive, and computer class was Oregon Trail and basic programming essentially. Looking back, I don't think Chromebooks, iPads and the like would have been beneficial to my elementary/middle/high school education at all. Our primary instrument of learning was the teacher and really thick textbooks that were passed down student to student, and you could see that journey inside the in front cover where you signed it out for the year. As someone who would protest at learning long division when a calculator was around, in retrospect, the teacher was right.
- commandlinefan 6mo ago> Much ink has been spilled Ironically...
- wat10000 6mo agoIt's amazing how bad these things can be. My kids will sometimes get computerized homework which gets graded automatically, and if you don't format the answer the way it likes, zero points. They spend as much effort fighting with the formatting as they do understanding the material. And this is in one of the wealthiest, best run public school districts in the country. "Technology" has been an education buzzword since I was in school and it needs to be taken out and shot.
- georgel 6mo agoThis gave me flashbacks to LonCapa in college when I was in calculus classes circa 2011. A correct answer was marked incorrect automatically because of floating point issues.
- marpstar 6mo agoI don't know why I was so surprised when my kids told me there was nothing called a "computer lab" at their school... why would there be when each kid has their own device?
- semiinfinitely 6mo agowhere are the measurements between 2012 and 2020
- randomNumber7 6mo agoChildren spend an insane amount of time in school yet it has little results. One overlooked problem is imo that you can't just waste their time with nonsense and get good results. A lot of people in the education system are so full of shit that they believe it's good for children to sit there the whole day. Improving exercises and lectures should be a priority.
- RyanOD 6mo ago"Children spend an insane amount of time in school yet it has little results." What do you mean by "little results" and what data supports it?
- GJim 6mo ago> that they believe it's good for children to sit there the whole day To be perfectly frank.... Learning to sit down and do things you don't like is a fundamental part of education and a necessary life skill for adult employment.
- cynicalsecurity 6mo agoYouth today are ungrateful; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.
- RyanOD 6mo agoOh yeah, we never did ANY of that when we were kids...
- Biganon 6mo agoIt's a quote (wrongly) attributed to Socrates
- dgfl 6mo agoFor context, this is paraphrasing a 1907 manuscript by Kenneth John Freeman [1], which itself was summarizing the complains that older generations would direct against the youth in Ancient Greece. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/#e6c0268a-71fb-4237-9899-dd1a7772112b https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/#e6c0268a...
- booleandilemma 6mo agoWe might be entering an era when literacy and math are no longer required by most of the populace. Have you seen these kids do google searches? They just use the voice recognition feature on their phone (yes, they have phones at twelve years old, for some reason) and ask google for what they want. Handwriting is already out the window, what if reading and writing are next? If they can have AIs explain everything to them verbally what do they need to read for? I don't want to envision a future where most people besides a few elite have stopped reading and writing but maybe I'm just an old millennial and behind the times.
- teacher987 6mo ago[dead]
- insane_dreamer 6mo agoAs a parent of 2 older kids (post college) and 2 young ones (primary/middle) I think one big problem is the academic expectations for the kids have dropped, and unless they are highly motivated they won’t rise above classroom expectations (even if the parents are pushing them at home). The second problem is what happens outside school: non-stop distractions: phones, iPads, social media, it’s always there. Yes we try to restrict it but it’s like forcing your kids to use a horse and buggy while all their friends are driving cars ; maybe we need to convert to Amish. It’s maddening, really.
- MrVitaliy 6mo agoStates should pay more attention to Mississippi on how they were able to revamp education in under a decade. https://oxfordeagle.com/2025/01/30/mississippi-4th-graders-no-1-in-the-nation-for-naep-gains-over-time/ https://oxfordeagle.com/2025/01/30/mississippi-4th-graders-n...
- SapporoChris 6mo agoI know it's a difficult word but if you spell Mississippi correctly your comment well be taken more seriously.
- datadrivenangel 6mo agoJust gotta do the Mississippi thing and hold kids back unless they meet standards. Don't leave them behind by pretending to leave no one behind.
- zozbot234 6mo agoIf kids are held back when they fail standards, shouldn't they also be allowed to race ahead when they exceed them?
- ihsw 6mo ago[dead]
- bcrosby95 6mo agoOff the top of my head I don't have problem with this, but the topic is about declining scores so I'm not sure how relevant this is.
- eigencoder 6mo agoAbsolutely
- MagicMoonlight 6mo agoNo, because you’ll end up really dysfunctional if you’re a child in a class with 18 year olds.
- nsxwolf 6mo agoAlways used to be the case, is that no longer an option?
- rahimnathwani 6mo agoNot an option in San Francisco. Back in 2022 I spoke with the principal of a nearby government-run school. She told me: - under no circumstances would a kindergarten teacher teach any first grade content, and - grade skip is so rare that she'd seen it only once in her entire career
- khat 6mo agoLet's see Common Core was released in 2010 and by 2014-2015 most states had implemented it. Lets do the math, 2026 - 13 = 2013. Hmmm... You can say funding all you want but in the same 13 years of Common Core funding per student has increased by 50%.
- ipnon 6mo agoIt leads to K-shaped education where parents who recognize the deficiency of public education simply teach their kids math themselves or hire private tutors. Public education used to be a force for equality of knowledge in the country. Now it perversely does the opposite, all in the name of education!
- bcrosby95 6mo agoAt least in elementary school I don't see the deficiency in common core math compared to what I had 30 years ago. My kid has been exposed to a wide variety of topics sooner than I was, and she's way stronger in word problems on top of that. Do people have a specific complaint with elementary school common core math that we should be teaching but aren't, or vice versa? Or is it more problematic later?
- BrenBarn 6mo agoOne thing I notice is there seem to be far more students who finish elementary school unable to comfortably do basic math in their head (stuff like 17+36 or 144 or even basic multiplication tables like 38).
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- jjk166 6mo agoExcept that's not what the data shows. The decrease is similar across performance levels.
- 6mo ago
- nekusar 6mo agoI'll throw in my own $1.50 , inflation and all. There's definitely loads of money in "education". But the actual teachers arent seeing it. No, its in "special interest programs", state/federal compliance, loads of tests, and ordained material from "preferred creators" (cough, pearson etm.) We can pay teachers better, sure. But there's lots of areas to "pay better". Small classes. 12-17 students. Budget for class resources. No, teachers should NOT be responsible for work materials. Larger classes get aides as well. Ive also seen what modern teaching is about. The teachers are handed absolutely shit material and required to teach that, with low/no deviation. Like, "New Math" https://www.understood.org/en/articles/9-new-math-problems-and-methods https://www.understood.org/en/articles/9-new-math-problems-a... . None of these methods show WHY, only a rote procedure. I thought about becoming a teacher. I already teach people (wide array of adults and under 18) in extracurricular groups. Ive seen what works well, and what doesnt. I can tell the 'energy' of a group, especially if theyre confused and angry about something, and how to solve it. But the pay is definitely laughable compared to IT, and the administration demands exacting rubrics put forth by companies who kicked back the state educators. The responsibility is not worth their salaries or the anti-benefits and other costs.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- OkayPhysicist 6mo ago> Like, "New Math" https://www.understood.org/en/articles/9-new-math-problems-a https://www.understood.org/en/articles/9-new-math-problems-a... . None of these methods show WHY, only a rote procedure. I'm confused by your comment here. Literally the entire point of teaching those various methods is to show WHY the math works. If anything you should be arguing for rote methods. Some are better than others, but ultimately they're all trying give tools to depict the way any math literate adult thinks about arithmetic.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- rahimnathwani 6mo ago"But the actual teachers arent seeing it." There are multiple teachers in my local school district whose total compensation is well over $200k: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-districts%2Fsan-francisco%2Fsan-francisco-unified&q=teacher&y=2023 https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-... And, no, this isn't mainly overtime pay. So they're getting paid this much even though they work only 80% as many days as people with normal jobs. If you multiply the compensation numbers by 100/80 to make them comparable with people working full time, the numbers look really large.
- drivebyhooting 6mo agoI’m curious how does it track with class sizes and tracks (remedial, regular, honors, “gifted”). The level is so low in my local elementary school that the single track math class is still doing addition within 20 for first grade. The funny thing is that the state standard actually measure 2 and 3 digit addition for K and 1st graders, and proficiency at that level would be p75 for a 1st grader. So why is the actual class teaching level at p<50?
- jjk166 6mo ago> tracks (remedial, regular, honors, “gifted”) The decrease is consistent across performance levels which should be a pretty decent proxy for tracks.
- goldfishgold 6mo agoThe standards in New York for first grade are adding and subtracting within 20. Which state are you thinking of with higher standards? https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/curriculum-instruction/nys-math-standards-grade-1-crosswalk.pdf https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/curriculu...
- drivebyhooting 6mo agoIt’s in California. My child took the “CASTL” test as part of IEP assessment. According to the result percentiles, a 6 year old who can do 2 digit vertical addition is at the 70th percentile of 6 year olds. How come in kindergarten the curriculum is counting to 100 and addition within 10, while the assessment test shows double digit addition is well within the norm? BTW my child didn’t learn any arithmetic from school. EDIT: In case I wasn’t clear: there is a huge discrepancy between the standardized tests and the actual curriculum “standards”.
- artur_makly 6mo agoFull Senate Hearing on the Impact of Technology on America's Youth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawBfCAnbdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawBfCAnbdc Dr's Deposition on How Screen Time Hurts Kids' Cognitive Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
- jmyeet 6mo agoThere's a lot going on here. Most of it boils down to a concerted, decades-long project by half the country to defund, dismantle and destroy public education. This has infected every layer of education including what goes into textbooks. The Texas Board of Education has typically had outsized power here as they've mostly been the largest single purchaser of textbooks. But also we have the likes of Robert Maxwell who basically owned textbook printing [1], before "falling off" his yacht. But the part I want to concentrate on is the education part and the role of tech. Anyone who sells to large bureaucracies like state and federal Education Departments will tell you the skill is in managing the procurement process. It's getting your claws in more than it is in delivering results. Any results tend to be more manufactured than not. So contracts get signed with states and school districts that will require them to use a particular product, even if it doesn't work. We know how this goes too. Whoever was in charge of that decision will then tend to leave their job and go work for the seller. Shocking. But we know what works in teaching and it's direct instruction [2] but you don't sell tech platforms or iPads or laptops that way. As a result we now have a disturbing number of people who have never read a book and really can't read a book, going so far as the students of elite colleges [3]. Likewise, we see Education PhDs who won't make a name for themselves pushing ideas from the 1800s. They have to come up with new methods and this was kind of a disaster for literacy [4], which people are finally waking up to as we go back to the 1800s method of phonics eg [5]. But it's hard to succeed when half the country wants the entire system to fail. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM05gRIROqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM05gRIROqQ [2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8476697/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8476697/ [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli... [4]: https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... [5]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/02/science-of-reading-literacy-education-legislation-research https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/02/science-of-reading...
- jcims 6mo agoMy wife taught first through fifth grade from ~2004 until 2017. One thing that was evident to me from the sidelines was how much admin work was continually added to her workload without any consideration for the amount of class time she had. The focus on data derived from continuous testing of the students resulted in her and her peers sticking ever more closely to a continuously disrupted and rotated collection of commercially sourced curriculum and materials. This constant flux disincentivized teachers augmenting with their own content (although they still often do) because it could fall out of line with next years 'innovative new approach' to teaching basic arithmetic. Her role as educator started to take a back seat to facilitator, focused on classroom management and data collection. Add in differentiated instruction, where she was held accountable to develop personalized lesson plans for individual students and asked to track all of that and you end up with way too much workload to stay engaged and engaging year after year. She was in a pretty good school district. A friend of mine had a similar role in a city district for a regional metro area and her students were horrific. She felt physically unsafe and ultimately quit. It's a complex problem with many contributing factors. It's also difficult to experiment or strike out on your own as an educator when the future of the students in front of you could be negatively impacted by any mistakes made (not to mention job/test scores/etc) so most just ride the rail all the way down. (Also, at least in the US, you can get stuck to a district b/c the value-add of a seasoned teacher doesn't really move the metrics in the current system enough to offset the fact that you can hire two junior/fresh grads for the same money.)
- gamerDude 6mo agoI worked for a couple of years in education and I think this sentiment is so harmful: > It's also difficult to experiment or strike out on your own as an educator when the future of the students in front of you could be negatively impacted by any mistakes made (not to mention job/test scores/etc) so most just ride the rail all the way down. It's pervasive and makes things move so slowly. The biggest issue I have with it is that the system is so protective of doing no harm, but doing no harm to a system that is failing students is a poor decision imo. We should be more experimental if things are generally bad. Be protective of the mechanisms when we have good results, not when we have bad ones.
- BrenBarn 6mo agoJust eyeballing those graphs, the striking thing is the difference from the beginning (early 70s) to the peak in 2012. During that period, reading scores only increased by 8 points while math increased by 19 points. I'm definitely in the camp that thinks cell phones have something to do with what's happened since 2012. If we start from the iPhone in 2007, it seems plausible to me that a 5-ish year lag is consistent with the time it took for smartphones to rise in popularity and their effects to filter into society. (I got my first smartphone around 2012, by which time pretty much everyone else I knew already had one.) That's at least a gesture toward explaining why there was a peak around 2012. What it doesn't explain is why the ascent to that peak was so much steeper in math than in reading.
- jgord 6mo agoIf you have kids you will need to intervene to give them a good math science education. Fortunately there are some great resources, far better than the average colorful school textbooks : - aops.com and their BeastAcademy cartoon series - an old book "Algebra" by Gelfand - W W Sawyers old books on how math should be taught - Geogebra and Desmos web tools - 3Blue1Brown - KhanAcademy I try and introduce math in a more visual way, with multipication as rectangles and the distributive rule being central concepts that lead into all other areas of math : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8hxgQdvRo&list=PLEInJ-Z4qBKYxbK1Mm13grFyHRSl-0OdC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8hxgQdvRo&list=PLEInJ-Z4qB...
- sb057 6mo agoI wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that it took over two years for this data to be released after it was collected.
- 999900000999 6mo agoThis is probably a macro economic sign. It's really really difficult to worry about school when your in a homeless shelter or living in a motel. https://www.wtxl.com/thomasville/school-bus-dropoff-reveals-growing-number-of-kids-living-in-thomasville-motels https://www.wtxl.com/thomasville/school-bus-dropoff-reveals-... I do well now , but as a teenager I didn't give a shit about high school. If anything I wanted to graduate early, and get a job to ward off the next eviction. We really need to go back to occupational training in high school. I should be able to graduate and earn enough to get an apartment. It's not like you can't get a degree in Midwestern Poetry later in life.
- HDBaseT 6mo ago[dead]
- throwawaypath 6mo ago[flagged]
- faxuss 6mo agoDo you think it’s possible to reverse this trend? What concrete actions could help?
- rich_sasha 6mo agoSo here's a scenario for how AI takes over: instead of creating hyper intelligence, we are stuck around the current level. The average human stops thinking and reduces themselves to an IQ of 70, relying for everything on their phone. Then AI takes over the world not out of calculated cruelty but by accident, then messes it up by hallucinating. Humans die out to being too thick. AI bumbles on for a bit but eventually model collapse and rusting electricity infra put an end to it.
- nazgul17 6mo agoThe title makes it sound like a worldwide claim. I understand this forum is USA centric, but we could perhaps add a qualifier in the title?
- tsoukase 6mo agoA relatively high share of intelligence and behaviour is depended on genetics which we assume is constant. Education aims to develop the environmental share which has a ceiling but it's all we can do. Electronic screens have a profound correlation, positive until the 90s and later until today negative. Other independent factors might be financial deterioration and even microplastics. Quantitative estimates vary. I like the comparison with smoking, which started as a status symbol and ended being banned.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]