US Math/Reading Scores Continue 13-Year Decline. Researchers Blame Reduced Testing and Social Media (time.com) 130
Test scores "are lower than they were a decade ago in school districts across the U.S.," reports Times magazine, citing new data released Wednesday by Stanford researchers. "Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math."
But Stanford's announcement notes that America's schools "were in a 'learning recession' for seven years before the COVID-19 pandemic, with student test scores in math and reading on a steady decline since 2013." This reversal ended two decades of progress, according to Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford Graduate School of Education, whose data forms the backbone of the new research... The study reframes the narrative of pandemic-era learning loss, arguing that the crisis of the last few years was an acceleration of a problem that was already underway. "The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement," said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and a lead author of the report...
The study found that the slowdown in learning coincided with two major shifts in American childhood and education policy: the widespread dismantling of test-based accountability systems that defined the No Child Left Behind era and the rise of social media use among young people. Reading scores, in particular, suffered consistently, with the average annual loss in the years just before the pandemic being just as large as the loss during it... Today, 8th-grade reading scores on national assessments are at their lowest point since 1990.
Compounding the problem, chronic student absenteeism remains a major obstacle to improving learning. Though down from its pandemic peak, 23 percent of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, far above the pre-pandemic rate of 15 percent.
More context from Time magazine: Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math...
"The decline started around the time that social media's use among teens was exploding, and this was also occurring in a number of other countries," says Thomas Kane, one of the authors of the Educational Scorecard report and a professor at Harvard University... [H]e maintains that it is at the core of the decline in reading achievement. He points out that social media use was shown to be heaviest among the lowest achieving students.
"Some states and school districts are making progress," notes the Associated Press, "largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers."
And "The picture is also brighter in math. Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025."
But Stanford's announcement notes that America's schools "were in a 'learning recession' for seven years before the COVID-19 pandemic, with student test scores in math and reading on a steady decline since 2013." This reversal ended two decades of progress, according to Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford Graduate School of Education, whose data forms the backbone of the new research... The study reframes the narrative of pandemic-era learning loss, arguing that the crisis of the last few years was an acceleration of a problem that was already underway. "The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement," said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and a lead author of the report...
The study found that the slowdown in learning coincided with two major shifts in American childhood and education policy: the widespread dismantling of test-based accountability systems that defined the No Child Left Behind era and the rise of social media use among young people. Reading scores, in particular, suffered consistently, with the average annual loss in the years just before the pandemic being just as large as the loss during it... Today, 8th-grade reading scores on national assessments are at their lowest point since 1990.
Compounding the problem, chronic student absenteeism remains a major obstacle to improving learning. Though down from its pandemic peak, 23 percent of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, far above the pre-pandemic rate of 15 percent.
More context from Time magazine: Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math...
"The decline started around the time that social media's use among teens was exploding, and this was also occurring in a number of other countries," says Thomas Kane, one of the authors of the Educational Scorecard report and a professor at Harvard University... [H]e maintains that it is at the core of the decline in reading achievement. He points out that social media use was shown to be heaviest among the lowest achieving students.
"Some states and school districts are making progress," notes the Associated Press, "largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers."
And "The picture is also brighter in math. Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025."
Why Johnny can't read. (Score:2, Insightful)
Between the rise of emoji culture and Orange45's dismantling of education, it's not surprising Cathay will soon surpass MAGA's Red AmeriKKKa.
Re:Why Johnny can't read. (Score:4, Insightful)
...Orange45's dismantling of education
It takes longer than that to poison education. You need to go back to W and No Child Left Behind. It was education becoming a number-driven game. "Raise graduation rates" doesn't mean better educating, it just means "find ways to make chart go up" and the result was "lower the bar to graduate". Enough time has passed now since then that you're seeing the first people to spend their entire schooling in that environment rolling off the diploma line.
Re: (Score:3)
...Orange45's dismantling of education
It takes longer than that to poison education. You need to go back to W and No Child Left Behind. It was education becoming a number-driven game. "Raise graduation rates" doesn't mean better educating, it just means "find ways to make chart go up" and the result was "lower the bar to graduate". Enough time has passed now since then that you're seeing the first people to spend their entire schooling in that environment rolling off the diploma line.
Dubya was just implementing another salvo in the war on education that began with Reagan. Though Reagan's public stance was more akin to, "school is about creating business assets," the political moves he made on education were the beginning of the slide toward dumbing down the population. Dubya's No Child Left Behind definitely escalated that war on education, but it was by no means an isolated event for Republicans trying to make sure schools didn't "over-educate" people.
Re: (Score:2)
And giving every kid a tablet or laptop to do their schoolwork on (which gets them addicted to the screen), and every kid having an $800 cell phone doesn't help.
I remember when we did our homework on paper and carried books, and a couple times a week we had 'computer lab', where we learned how to do stuff on Apple IIGS computers and eventually they switched to PC.
Re: (Score:1)
The NAEP test results peaked in 2013 and then nosedived thereafter. These tests are for 4th, 8th, and 12th grade. Do you know which cohort of children entered 4th grade in 2014? Those that pioneered common-core curriculums in kindergarten in 2009. But I'm sure that's purely coincidental, it must be instead that all these 4th graders are spending too much time READING social media.
Re: (Score:2)
That and this
The study found that the slowdown in learning coincided with two major shifts in American childhood and education policy: the widespread dismantling of test-based accountability systems
We took away accountability because it hurt little Johny's "feels" and Shaikwa moaned it was 'racist'
Re: (Score:1)
Between the rise of emoji culture and Orange45's dismantling of education, it's not surprising Cathay will soon surpass MAGA's Red AmeriKKKa.
lol what?
You do know that Americans were better readers before there ever even was a federal Dept of Education, right?
Re: (Score:2)
You do know that American has changed drastically since then. Look at China pumping money into education. And to think they are doing it with no agency to control the funding, it just happens because it wants to, right?
Re: (Score:2)
At home Christian-based education will do that to you.
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correlation isn't causation (Score:2, Troll)
Suburbs are isolating as are cars and car based cities. At least for anyone who doesn't themselves own a car.
Cars have become ludicrously expensive so that fewer and fewer kids actually have access to them. Remember it's not enough to have your license you need to actually have reliable and ready access to an automobile so you can get around. It doesn't help that your p
Re: (Score:2)
McDonald's is going to pick the 50-year-old because they know that person has to show up to work whether they want to or not.
Probably not even "has to" show up, the work ethic (has historically) trended stronger in the elderly.
Re: (Score:2)
50 is "elderly"? Ouch.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is a website for the elderly.
Re: (Score:2)
That's only because just before Reagan, companies hired for life. You started as a janitor, and work you way up to CEO. You likewise gave your loyalty to the company - they treat you right, you treat them right.
After Reagan, screwing over the worker became the norm, but people used to the old system didn't change. This affected the boomers and Gen X. Millennials are the first to grow up under the system, learning rapidly that loyalty gets you nowhere and job hopping was the way to go.
Gen Z basically reinfor
Re: (Score:2)
McDonald's is going to pick the 50-year-old because they know that person has to show up to work whether they want to or not.
Eh... the 50 year old isn't going to be as willing to put up with shit from management or overwork themselves as much as someone brand-new to the workforce. They're also more sensitive to things like not having health benefits.
Re: (Score:2)
The 50-year-old working at McD's isn't going to follow all the "McCompany policies" (Mcsweep the floor, Mcmop the floor).
The ones working places like that are the herds of graduates with the piece of paper that says they know computer engineering, when all the jobs for that degree want new hires to have ten years experience.
Subburbs, cars, are not isolating (Score:3, Interesting)
Suburbs are isolating ...
No. Generations of kids found the suburbs quite social. And they often contained areas inviting outdoor activity where kids interacted. Parks, woods, rivers, lakes/ponds, etc.
... as are cars and car based cities. At least for anyone who doesn't themselves own a car.
Kids don't need to own the car. In many cases the parents own the car. For example rather than trade in an old car a kid gets it. Or the parents buy a cheap used car.
Cars effectively enlarged the "neighborhood". As did bicycles.
Cars have become ludicrously expensive so that fewer and fewer kids actually have access to them.
Not really. Uses cars start around $15K. Which in adjusted dollars is up compared to 1980's $12K but not
Re: Subburbs, cars, are not isolating (Score:3, Interesting)
"Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth" - 1982
Re: (Score:1)
"Any escape might help to smooth The unattractive truth But the suburbs have no charms to soothe The restless dreams of youth" - 1982
Neil has an outlier position there, the "big city" providing the bigger live audience. ;-)
As an anti-theist I have to assess ... (Score:2)
... that this sort of problem you're describing is one where having a monotheic revelation cult like Christianity, Judaeism or Islam as a your cultural foundation can actually make sense and come with quite a few benefits. Having the universe humbling you does seem easier if you humanize it with a stern god that punishes hedonism and misbehavior in a world of abundance. One of the countless benefits such a cult does bring along.
Re: (Score:1)
Doesn't the use of social media involve reading?
Or am I misunderstanding what social media is in this context?
Re: (Score:3)
Or am I misunderstanding what social media is in this context?
You're being obtuse. Reading advertisements also involves reading. That doesn't meant that a person who reads a lot of advertisements will develop the reading skills necessary to understand a complicated technical manual or a dense work of literature.
If I do addition and subtraction every day it doesn't mean I understand calculus.
Re: (Score:2)
Reading advertisements also involves reading.
Funny that you say that. I was looking at a magazine from the 50ies the other day, and those ads were super verbose! I mean, they really had *text*! Whole paragraphs of it!!! So, no, reading advertisements *today* certainly does not involve reading from a historical perspective.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't the use of social media involve reading?
Lots of functionally illiterate people navigate TikTok and Snapchat with no problems at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen a lot of young teachers who felt compelled to leave their mark on education, proposed things just "to disrupt", and then left education to get law degrees. Seriously. In my limited sphere, I can name 3 or 4, and I'm not in education.
Re: (Score:2)
We went from teaching math using traditional proven methods to doing things like "how do you feel about this equation?" and "write it all out like a sentence" instead of simply "7 x 8 = 56".
Being able to regurgitate a memorized factoid is not math.
Re: (Score:2)
Lack of accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The teachers--at least, the competent ones--are often the only ones who care. But they're the least empowered of the parties involved.
They are paid a pittance by the district and treated like glorified babysitters by the parents. They have had their ability to enact discipline taken away; parents are unwilling to hear that their little angel could do anything wrong or that they themselves are responsible for a home environment that doesn't foster learning.
The administrators only want to line their own poc
Re: Lack of accountability (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Lack of accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
Now talk about the police.
Re: (Score:1)
You must have strange unions in your country.
All teachers work their asses off (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This complete bullshit. I have multiple teachers in the family. First through third year teachers work a lot. After that you mostly just refresh stuff a little bit at a time.
As to your whole Vietnam fairy tail also nonsense, but cause it completely neglects the demand side of the equation. It is not like any little town or burg anywhere just build some more schools and added classrooms because there was glut of teachers on the market. Honestly the stuff you post here, is fucking retarded dude, it does
Re: (Score:2)
If teachers are getting such a good deal why don't you go do it.
Yeah that's absolutely correct (Score:2, Insightful)
Accountability sounds cool until everybody starts fighting amongst themselves uselessly like crabs in a bucket.
You don't go blaming people you recognize the problem and fix it.
Only as I described on another post we can't do that because the problem is structural.
Specifically we used to just kick low academic achievers to the curb and that was okay because we had factories for them to work in
Re: (Score:3)
Have you not heard of "No Child Left Behind" whose title belies its true purpose to not fund the schools that need the money the most so that more money can be poured into the schools of wealthier suburban enclaves? This law set a goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math, and schools that did not show progress could face penalti
Re: (Score:2)
Even if true - irrelevant.
Why because even in the most affluent districts we still see a long term decline in academic performance. The only conclusion that can be support is driver of our education problems is not 'spending'
"Us" (Score:5, Insightful)
Us Math/Reading Scores Continue 13-Year Decline
As does slashdot editors', apparently.
Re:"Us" (Score:4)
They haven't taken pride in their work in many, many years. Just like the rest of the world.
Chronic absenteeism? You mean truancy? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Nowadays, they call it a "voucher" and the parent gets a few grand to withdraw the kid from school and take them to Disneyland or whatever. Strictly educational uses, I'm sure.
Re: (Score:2)
When/where I was a kid, this was called truancy, and the police could pick you up for it. How is this still a thing?
Okay, let's say the police are able to find them and pick them up. Then what. Throw them in jail? That's still not attending school. Take them to the school? To a school that is so under-funded that they don't have a seat, books, or enough teachers for the student anyway? Only to see the student leave at the first opportunity because the student needs to go home to take care of their infant sibling, sick parent, or disabled grandmother? Or to earn money so the family doesn't get evicted again?
Yeah, more p
Re: (Score:2)
When/where I was a kid, this was called truancy, and the police could pick you up for it. How is this still a thing?
Okay, let's say the police are able to find them and pick them up. Then what. Throw them in jail? That's still not attending school. Take them to the school?
They drag them to school, but at that point, there's a record, and if it keeps happening, it becomes a legal problem for the parents, who have a responsibility for making sure their kids go to school.
To a school that is so under-funded that they don't have a seat, books, or enough teachers for the student anyway?
To a school that is under-funded in part because kids aren't meeting the minimum attendance for the school to get paid.
Only to see the student leave at the first opportunity because the student needs to go home to take care of their infant sibling, sick parent, or disabled grandmother? Or to earn money so the family doesn't get evicted again?
All of those things are the responsibility of their parents. Those are adult problems for adults to solve. Kids can't realistically solve them, and can't reasonably be expected to solve them.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Is the fox news logo burned into your tv?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
He's not wrong. I helped in inner city schools when I was in my 20s with computer after school programs. The problem is culture.
Take any of those inner city schools and have them grow up in the suburbs with a middle class family and they do well. Throw literally any kid into the inner city no fucks to give environment and it most of the time turns their life into ghetto nonsense. I got a few of the talented kids out into a tech career so there's that but they are like the 10% minority. And I am all about mo
Re: (Score:2)
You keep using the word "culture" when you should be using "wealth." There are plenty of highly successful schools and students in dense urban areas. They are the ones with money.
Re: (Score:2)
People who are wealthy live in a different culture than the rest of society.
Well I'm glad you got to the bottom of your idea and agreed with the parent to disagree with the GP that it's a minority vs illegal issue, which was the original point made.
Re: Chronic absenteeism? You mean truancy? (Score:2)
There are many different cultures among the wealthy, just as there are many cultures among the poor. So culture is not the distinguishing factor, as you originally claimed. Wealth, however, is.
Re: (Score:3)
But with chronic illness where do you draw the line?
Chronic illness is rare, and at some point, you try to figure out a way to get the kid tutoring.
We had a kid at my school, Ferris, who was always sick and then his grandma died.
I see what you did there.
If half your kids are chronically sick, there's something wrong with your school — environmental issues like mold, social issues like bullying, or senioritis like Bueller.
No (Score:3)
I don't think that's the only reason, or even the main reason.
I've noticed that modern parents have become far too lenient and overprotective with their children, to the extent that teachers are being assaulted because they require children to actually learn something.
And to get things words, we have the likes of ChatGPT, where you can abandon thinking altogether.
TBO I have no clue how to handle this. Perhaps homework should be abandoned completely, and learning should only take place within the walls of the educational facility, where children cannot use their smartphones or other "smart" devices.
And from what I've heard that's where education has been headed recently. Probably the class schedule needs to be completely overhauled as well.
Re: (Score:2)
It’s a massive societal failure and not something easily fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
parents have become far too lenient and overprotective with their children
You mean "lazy" and "indulgent." Today's parents think parenting is complete after orgasm - if they're a guy - and birth, if they're a woman. Heck, even when I was a young parent, decades ago, I saw too many parents who fobbed off their parental duties to the group so they, the parents, could socialize. Little Johnny and Susie would run amok while the parents were yammering away. And god forbid someone actually try to discipline someone's kid. Now, you're casting aspersions on me, as a parent, and I w
three(3) (Score:1)
Former teacher here (Score:5, Informative)
-COVID. It did a huge hit on kids, on their wellbeing, social development, and academic performance. Kids are still getting over the burnout from that.
School issues. Schools are hitting a teacher cliff, and teachers are all burned out from all the extra BS they have to do. On top of that, schools are wildly underfunded for the things that actually matter, and are having a hard time retaining talent as the stress load for teachers just keeps going up, while their salaries aren't competitive.
Someone posted something about absenteeism with a 'back in my day' sort of energy. So, on that- yes, schools will still send truancy officers to check in. A lot of the time, it's kids with serious mental health problems. See the COVID burnout thing, and the next point.
The kids are not ok. If you look at kid's mental health, it's frankly in the toilet, and a lot of it comes down to the world that they're inheriting. They're facing a global warming cataclysm, the rise of fascism, and a garbage economy with no hope of ever achieving the American dream. They're often latchkey kids because both parents have to work to pay rent. They're having AI and social media infiltrating their lives, and have no real sense of community (COVID disrupted so many community programs oriented at helping kids with this, and thanks to DOGE cuts, a lot of other nonprofits that did great community work are dead.) Doing well in school is based around a social contract that ensures that it will have some meaningful payout, and right now, that social contract is a joke.
Re:Former teacher here (Score:4, Insightful)
And the kids know it. They may not be able to articulate it quite so succinctly, they may not even know what the problem really is - -but they know it because it's all around them. They see it in their parents' faces and hear it in the news. They know that many things have seriously gone wrong.
We have to fix those things if we want those kids to have some hope. And one of things that we have to fix is the Republicans' half century of war on education -- of all kinds, at all levels. Republicans figured out, in the 1970's, that intelligent, educated, literate, thinking people were increasing leaving their party. And rather than introspecting and changing themselves, they decided to destroy education. We are where we are now because they've spent half a century wrecking it and they're still doing it today. They're working to create an illiterate and uneducated electorate because that's their core constituency: those people are easy to manipulate into voting for the very people who are destroying them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What rubbish.
You must be one of those uneducated because in terms of most of things you mention there kids today have it better than almost all children throughout history, with possibly the narrow exception of those of us lucky enough to be born between the end of WWII and maybe 2001 in the USA anyway.
For anything you wrote there to be sensible we'd have to assume that the above cohort is the only mentally health group of children in most of history.. LOL
There are stupid posts, and there are rsilvergun stu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
GenX and even the infamous Boomers had sudden, horrific nuclear death hanging over their heads constantly. We were expecting a world-ending flash in the sky any moment. We have no reason to be any saner than the kids these days. Yes, they're inheriting a shit world, but that's been true for nearly everyone alive.
It's not about shit, it's about learning to live with shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
-Screens aren't crack. They're a medium. Trying to take away phones at this point is like trying to take away paper. And while there *are* problematic things, it's a much better plan to actually help kids gain digital literacy, plan for use, diversify their opportunities for fun, and learn metacognition around their screen use than compare them incorrectly to drugs.
-Kids mental health really isn't good, and blaming screens is literally blaming both a s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Schools, and universities are much more left than right. This started well before the so called rise of fascism, aka anything the left disagrees with. And its not COVID either
"were in a 'learning recession' for seven years before the COVID-19 pandemic
I do think its massive bureaucracy, the inability of teachers to punish children for misbehaving. prioritizing feels over achievement.Oh yes and DEI, aiming for 50% women in every field, even if they are not naturally interested in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right there is what is wrong, calling people idiots is not useful, you didn't justify anything do didn't argue with any sort of logic, you just reverted to name calling, well they think you are idiots as well. Its pointless and now they don't care what you call them because they don't value the lefts opinion of them either.
As far as I can see that is what the discourse has degenerated to, each side just calling the other names.
Look at the US, look at the UK, there is a significant portion of the population
Re: (Score:2)
And about considering that I might be wrong- I used to think screentime w
Re: Phonics (Score:3)
Phonics-based teaching was coming into vogue when I was learning to read. My parents objected because that's not really how English works, and they weren't wrong; my cohort generally has shitty spelling abilities.
Rote memorization of the basics is about the best you can do, because English is too recently cobbled together from too many different languages to have a consistent spelling system. You need to learn Latin, Greek, French, and German at a minimum if you want to be able to reliably deduce spelling from sounds once you're past the elementary level.
Europeans are probably in better shape on that front than Americans or Canadians.
Re: (Score:3)
spelling is about writing and , tbh , it's largely a waste of time early on. ... very little correlation between character and the spoken word.
as an extreme example look at Chinese: thousands of characters
they've literally invented phonetic systems to teach people to read
(pinyin in PRC but other systems in Taiwan).
Japan similarly used their phonetic alphabet as a bridge to kanji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also in the US the opposite of "phonics" instruction isn't rote memorization in the classic s
Re: (Score:2)
Whole language isn't bizzare. It's how you learn most things. How to speak, for example. Realistically you need both, which is why good language programs will have "picture books" and if you're stuck the teacher will tell you to sound it out.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
And if you've never been exposed to phonics how are you going to know how to sound words out? I learned to read back in the '50s, when teaching phonics was at its peak, and it's served me well ever since. Being Jewish, I went to Hebrew School and learned to read Hebrew but not, alas, to speak it. Up through my 20s and into my 30s I could sight read it during religious services, but gradually stopped going and lost the ability. Now, I can s
Re: (Score:2)
If you're only ever exposed to phonics how do you know what words mean?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about Thai, but I can assure you from personal experience that even in a Sefer Torah, there are spaces between the words although there aren't vowels. And as far as sounding words out when you've only been taught whole words, I'd imagine that figuring out how to do it on the fly can be rather intimidating if you've never even encountered the idea before, especially if you're not a very
Re: (Score:2)
Whole language isn't bizzare. It's how you learn most things. How to speak, for example. Realistically you need both, which is why good language programs will have "picture books" and if you're stuck the teacher will tell you to sound it out.
"sound it out" is phonics... and the problem is that since the 90s many teachers/school districts DON'T say that because they were taught it's bad. and it got religious and phonics was banned as regressive... etc
and yes word recognition is fine later... but literally there are many people who can't up under this program who can't read a word like "realistically". I was shocked when I heard about this a few years ago, but it's a well documented detour much of the English speaking world took.
Re: (Score:2)
One of the criticisms of phonics is that reading comprehension suffers. You two don't need to reinforce that point quite so much.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem we are talking about is happening at elementary level, so being able to deduce how to spell borrow words at university is kind-of irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
You need to learn Latin, Greek, French, and German at a minimum if you want to be able to reliably deduce spelling from sounds once you're past the elementary level.
Reliable spelling is pretty irrelevant, especially in the age of spellcheck. Phonics is about READING. Understanding Latin, Greek, French, and German will certainly help with advanced etymology, but you don't really have to know the history of the bi- prefix to understand it means "2." Learning multiple languages is always a great advantage. . .but you want to teach reading in all those languages with phonics.
Whatever criticisms you have of phonics, I challenge you to cite an alternative method of teaching
Education fads (Score:2)
The blame for this falls squarely on the politics surrounding education fads. We abandon the boring things that work in favor for the new exciting crap that doesn't. And it's not because anyone really thinks it works, but because there are billions behind the new crap.
Parental apathy factors into this as well, no doubts.
We know what works, so ask yourself why we aren't using it.
Re: (Score:1)
We abandon the boring things that work in favor for the new exciting crap that doesn't.
We also have the PhD system that literally requires coming up with novel new things, or at least pretending to.
And that's where we get our education grand poobahs from ...
Testing doesn't make you better at math (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that parents are working two or three jobs just to keep a roof over their kids head.
We also don't allow public schools to abandon kids anymore and they're aren't any jobs for a high school dropout or frankly even a College dropout at this point. Certainly not something that you can make a living off of.
This means that you've got students who traditionally would have disappeared from the system but are now being educated and they bring the numbers down. Incidentally this is also why private schools look so good, if your grades start to drop in a private school they kick you out almost immediately. They aren't any better generally than public schools unless they have a lot more money and even then they can abandon anyone who isn't making the grade.
So basically a whole bunch of people we used to just toss into factory work can't do that work anymore because we either automated it away or we shipped it to china, and now those kids are still in the system and they are struggling and on top of that you have all the other social problems like covid and the leftovers from that and their parents not having any time because of over work etc etc.
There isn't actually a solution to any of this that doesn't involve massive transformations of society that a bunch of old farts like us are going to veto.
We could make the numbers go up and the class sizes go down by kicking all those kids to the curb but the problem with that obviously is we don't have anything to do with them and now they're just milling about getting into trouble. And we aren't going to do the kind of massive government programs Ala the New deal that would be required to employ that many people who struggle with high school algebra...
On the plus side the declining numbers and the increased cost of managing those kids means that we can point to how bad the numbers are and use that as an excuse to dismantle public education so I guess there is that. Think of all the tax savings for billionaires and all the profit when we privatize what's left of education.
Simple solution (Score:3)
Send the kid to parochial school [smart-words.org].
Did we really need a study for this? (Score:2)
Repeal no child left behind (Score:3)
No worries, scoring rules will be changed... (Score:2)
The problems been known for years (Score:2)
no, its too much testing (Score:3)
There's too much testing and not enough teaching.
Re: (Score:2)
Testing isn't necessarily useful. (Score:2)
Exams are a waste.
Rather, you want continuous practice that is also continuous assessment.
But US methods of teaching are also pretty 18th and 19th century. They are not sensible methods and result in students who are more advanced than the material being penalised. The US obsession with standardising is a recipe for subnormalising.
But Math is so HARD (Score:2)
Testing? (Score:2)
I blame... (Score:2)
....stupidity.
People are stupid, they vote for stupid people who install stupid people responsible for schools.
hogwash (Score:2)
What a load of hooey. Kids are dumber because look at who is having babies. Professional women hardly have any babies. The babies are mainly coming from low IQ immigrants and natives. GIGO.
This is still the cause du jour of the 60s finally coming home to roost: feminism plus birth control plus abortion.
A key factor in this.... (Score:2)
Many kids in school don't like being forced to just memorize things, so giving them APPLICATIONS of what they are learning is key. I was always the one who would ask "why?", which annoyed my parents and teachers, but in the end, illustrates how to break through. Applications of the things the children are expected to learn.
For English, when a student used poor language skills, challenge them, "what do you mean? Do you really expect anyone besides you and your close friends to understand what you are t
Re: (Score:1)
Social media makes you bad at a lot of things, when you do it to the exclusion of those things.
I'm bad at math just due to general poor schooling, I don't think my time on AIM and IRC after school was the cause. But something definitely made this last batch of kids dumber.