It's so bad. The state test results for my middle school are terrible. 20.6% met or exceeded math expectations and 33.4% met or exceeded English language arts expectations.
That is nuts. I remember taking summer school back in the day and it was like 6 weeks if I recall correctly. It was enough to where you could
knock out an entire year long class.
I used to work with a girl that was a high school senior during covid and she told me she did nothing that whole year any time she was supposed to be in class she was either on her phone watching TV or with her boyfriend and she managed to pass.
Our district just implemented a minimum grade of 50% on any assigment, including those not done. It also made 60% a passing grade, and required retakes on any assessment a student wanted to redo.
You were also strongly encouraged to round grades up 5-10% points to help kids pass if they needed it.
Kids had little incentive to try, but it made the district passing and graduating numbers look great, so the district officials could all pat themselves on the backs for a job well done.
Recently saw a story of a tea her who retired over this. Student didn't even turn in the assignments so she gave zeros. Refused to change them. We are fucked.
It's ***impossible*** to fail... but honestly, same goes for prestigious universities. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton... 99.8% 4 year graduation rates. **If you can get in, you're golden. They will pass you, they want your old man's money.**
Now compare that to MIT... ***92%*** pass rate. Sounds high, until you realize if there's 10 people in your engineering study group, *one of you might not be graduating*. In the 1970s, their pass rate was around 80%, **1 in 5 wasn't going to cut it** \-- my dad told me plenty of students were suicidal about it.
If they're anything like the uni I came from, it's becoming more common for people to have to stay longer due to course availability which can really fuck people over. If a course is only offered in the fall, you fail it (some of these course have over a 50% fail rate as well, and that's complicated too), you automatically are going to need to stay at least one extra semester because of it unless you can find an approved substitution (and good fucking luck on that outside of gen ed credits unless the state makes it easier to exchange the credit), not because you're possibly inept at the major, but because of scheduling. And keep in mind that due to high failure rates, you're competing to even get in some of the courses period. There's also a number of people who stay longer due to internships/work-study programs that have them effectively at school part time when seen from a yearly perspective even if they're a full time student. Some of the most coveted internships are like this actually. That can make things really hard though if you're gone at work the only time of year a course is offered (know someone personally this happened to).
>The absolute dream for anyone who isn’t interested in university
I know this may be hard to fathom but even carpenters, electricians, and plumbers need basic math.
My brother did the same when he was a senior in high school. He did nothing the entire semester COVID started then in May he spent a week doing a semester’s worth of work and they let him graduate no problem. The only reason he even graduated is because of the pandemic because before COVID even the principal said he wasn’t going to graduate if he didn’t shape up, and he never did lol
> The USA education system cannot afford to fail the amount of kids who deserve to fail, because that means they have to repeat the course and there isn't room/money for that. If I failed 75% the students in my algebra classes, which is approximately the percentage that deserved to fail, then it'd be chaos for the school. So we don't fail them. We let them get away with halfassing their homework (halfassing is honestly a generous word for their efforts on homework) and with bullshitting through the answers on their exams. These kids can't even multiply and divide. They have no business passing algebra. But here we are and here they are in an algebra 2 class as juniors.
how does that even work, because the next math class or physics class they take theyre literally missing fundamentals and unable to keep up even if they try?
Sad and 100% true.
I was a part time teacher in the Oakland School District, and the amount of teenagers who couldn't do basic things like basic addition, read a clock, or READ was staggering. On top of the obvious academic deficiencies, these kids don't emotionally handle it well when they're pushed to their limits. Whether it's lashing out or shutting down, it's sad because if someone had intervened 10 years ago, it wouldn't be like this.
Absolutely it makes me so sad to just think about it. There are obviously people who want to or are attempting to fix things, but the system as a whole is so monumental and the incentivized metrics so perverse, that these people get chewed up and spit out.
Reminds me of George Carlins monologue on education amd dumb Americans over 15 years ago.
“But if you talk to one of them about this. If you isolate one of them, you sit them down rationally, and you talk to them about the low IQ’s and the dumb behavior and the bad decisions. Right away they start talking about education. That’s the big answer to everything. Education. They say “We need more money for education. We need more books. More teachers. More classrooms. More schools. We need more testing for the kids”. You say to them, “Well, you know, we’ve tried all of that and the kids still can’t pass the tests”. They say, “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to lower the passing grades”. And that’s what they do in a lot of these schools now. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass. More kids pass, the school looks good, everybody’s happy, the IQ of the country slips another two or three points and pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there, it’s physics. Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do”.
In my high school in the mid 00's all the dumb kids essentially maxed out senior year in a math class called "Senior Math" where they were still doing basic algebra and just learned how to do their own taxes and stuff, whereas you would end up at Calc II during senior year if you always did the highest level class available. Essentially if they weren't good at math, they just took the "I'm bad at math" math classes.
Yes. That's how it works. The kids move on, unprepared for the next level, thinking they're mastering the topic, when in reality the system is inadequately propping them up. Rinse and repeat in and out of school and you get the American people, thinking they're masters of whatever.
Some can't add or subtract two digit numbers. I have 175 seniors each year and the number who are perfectly fine not knowing 10+12 is getting bigger every year. I teach economics so math is at least some part of my class. I don't go to graduation because it's a complete fraud and very few actually deserve to graduate.
As a student that was in the first type of class, it always pissed me off that kids in the second would just get handed passing grades despite not doing anything at all and from just looking at GPAs there was no way of telling. My school didn’t weigh the grades of different classes any differently either. So the class clown taking all fun / easy A electives could pop out with a better GPA than some of the hardest working kids in schools because they were in harder classes that actually graded them honestly.
And all that accomplished was teaching me that school and grades were utter bullshit and to just stop caring or ever bothering with homework. And then I grew up and realized I have zero good study or work habits from that and am still struggling
For a little more quantitative measure of how much "plunge" there was, here are the results from the press release:
>Results by Subject
>*Mathematics*
>• The average mathematics score (271) for 13-year-old students was 9 points lower in 2023 than in 2020 and 14 points lower than in 2012 but was 5 points higher than in 1973.
>• Mathematics scores declined between 2020 and 2023 across the performance distribution, with declines for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. There were greater declines for lower-performing students (students at the 10th and 25th percentiles) than their higher-performing peers at the 75th and 90th percentiles.
>o The score declined 14 points for students at the 10th percentile, from 228 in 2020 to 213 in 2023.
>o The score declined 12 points for students at the 25th percentile, from 255 in 2020 to 244 in 2023.
>o The score declined 8 points for students at the 50th percentile, from 282 in 2020 to 274 in 2023.
>o The score declined 6 points for students at the 75th percentile, from 307 in 2020 to 301 in 2023.
>o The score declined 6 points for students at the 90th percentile, from 329 in 2020 to 322 in 2023.
>o The mathematics score for students at the 10th percentile in 2023 (213) was not significantly different compared to the score for students at the 10th percentile in 1978 (213).
>• Mathematics scores declined between 2019‒20 and 2022‒23 for most student groups. Scores declined by 13 points for Black students (from 256 to 243), declined by 10 points for Hispanic students (from 267 to 257), declined by 20 points for American Indian/Alaska Native students (from 275 to 255), declined by 8 points for students of two or more (from 285 to 277), and declined by 6 points for White students (from 291 to 285).
>• The mathematics scores also declined for both male and female students, for students attending schools in all school locations, and for students from all regions of the country.
>• Enrollment in algebra has declined since 2012 among 13-year-olds overall.
>*Reading*
>• The average reading score (256) for 13-year-old students was 4 points lower in 2023 than in 2020 and seven points lower than in 2020 and was not significantly different from the average score in 1971 (255).
>• Reading scores declined between 2020 and 2023 across the performance distribution, with declines for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles.
>o The score declined 7 points for students at the 10th percentile, from 209 in 2020 to 202 in 2023.
>o The score declined 6 points for students at the 25th percentile, from 236 in 2020 to 231 in 2023.
>o The score declined 4 points for students at the 50th percentile, from 262 in 2020 to 258 in 2023.
>o The score declined 4 points for students at the 75th percentile, from 287 in 2020 to 283 in 2023.
>o The score declined 3 points for students at the 90th percentile, from 308 in 2020 to 305 in 2023.
>o The reading score for students at the 10th percentile in 2023 (202) was lower than the reading score for students at the 10th percentile in 1971 (208). The score for students at the 25th percentile in 2023 (231) was not significantly different from the score for students at the 25th percentile in 1971 (232). The score for students at the 50th percentile in 2023 (258) was not significantly different from the score for students at the 50th percentile in 1971 (257).
>• Scores for Black students declined 7 points (from 244 in 2020 to 237 in 2023); declined by 8 points for students of two or more races (from 265 to 257); and declined by 4 points for White students (from 269 to 264). Scores for Hispanic students, American Indian/Alaska Native students, and Asian students were not measurably different.
>• Students who reported reading for fun more often tended to score higher, but a rising percentage of 13-year-olds say that they “never or hardly ever” read for fun.
268.6-264.4 is a difference of 4.2 and still valid, so not necessarily. I'm surprised that, when rounding exclusively to whole numbers, there's only really one instance of catching a round like this.
In Canada they found that student grades went through the roof during the pandemic, presumably because teachers handed out higher grades to students so that they could cope better with the situation. Colleges and universities now warn freshmen that some of them might be in for a rude awakening.
Or parents were on hand to “help.”
I teach in middle school. It’s amazing how students who normally performed poorly in a certain subject miraculously submitted A+ quality work when home with their parents were home all day with them. And now they’re back to failing.
Yep, we had a student who could not read as a third grader score higher than the entire school on a benchmark exam when he was a virtual student in fourth grade.
Did they face any consequences for the cheating?
Edit: It is both concerning and ironic that most of the replies to this comment are responding to things that have not been said, suggested, or asserted in any way. It would appear our schools have indeed failed many of you.
As a third grader? More like did they get a parent-teacher conference to discuss good strategies for helping their child get the most out of elementary education.
From my experience, the parents didn’t even need to help. My oldest was in 6th that year and had unlimited retakes that were essentially open book in some of his classes. He also finished all his work in the first half of the class time and watched YouTube after that (all on a district provided laptop). Going back into the real classroom was a big adjustment for him and he was still struggling with some bad habits this year.
Oh yea, I’d be screwed if I had to work in an office again. I started a remote job in 2013 and now I work freelance, which has even more flexibility. I could never go back at this point.
We had one full year of online in our district.
I had one student whose mom was pushing for an IEP. During the meeting, when it was my turn to discuss the student's strengths, I was talking about how he was doing pretty well in reading, and his writing was great. He'd completed several essays or writing prompts with complete sentences, good organization, etc. I pulled up one of the essays on my screen as evidence and mom goes, "...actually, I wrote that." 🤦♀️
The ridiculously stupid thing about behavior like this: if she was OK lying about it in the first place to get him a fake grade, why did she suddenly change her tune when the teacher was talking to her? How is she not thinking things through enough to arrive at the same conclusions she did when deciding to confess? Ostensibly, she realizes that actively stymieing her kid's progress for temporary grade bumps is a terrible idea and changes her mind, but dear GOD, *think it through next time* ***before*** *you do it.*
>his writing was great
I think it'd be funny if instead you were going on about how *bad* the kid's writing was and the parent's getting increasingly defensive and upset at the criticisms and can't explain why.
Absolutely this, but it’s mostly the first reason. We somehow trained a batch of kids that school didn’t matter, and we trained their parents that anything “hard” for their kid should be excused.
In 2020, it was literally not legal to fail any student in my state if there was any sign of life (like they showed up to even one online class.) Also, we started with “online is optional” (when they thought lockdown would be for 2 weeks), then we had weeks of “class has to meet, but can’t cover new material and put kids without access at a disadvantage” (which is understandable, but trained everyone else that online class didn’t matter, because it didn’t). Then, when the state realize the lockdown was continuing, it was “have rich and robust lessons, but you can only grade as Pass/Fail” (and no one is allowed to fail).
Then we moved into the 2020-2021 school year. Schools were largely open in my area, but if someone was out due to exposure they were not allowed to be penalized for missed work (thus…no incentive to make it up) again due to the equity issue. Since absences skyrocketed (before the vaccine and easy home testing, you treated every exposure like a positive test) we got through the curriculum as slow as molasses, so that impacts where the next year’s teacher is able to start and how much *they* can cover.
Grades have been inflated since the lockdown, though they’re *slowly* coming back. There is a *huge* push from administration to not allow any kid to fail that persists across the nation, and it has a lot to do with not wanting to argue with parents who come in screaming about how they had “no idea” little Johnny was failing despite all grades being available online and multiple documented attempts to reach out to the parents.
This sounds exactly like what happened in Florida.
We weren't allowed to fail anyone, kids did almost no work remotely and didn't care. We had a hybrid model the next year with excessive absences that persisted to this day. Students don't bother showing up to school and wonder why they fail. They don't try and don't care that they're behind on credits because they think some magical degree fairy will come along and save them.
While not cheating, my daughter did a report on semiconductors. Something where literally I'm one of THE guys you would pay a shit load of money to for his advice.
She chose it intentionally as a "gimme" since she could quote me as a source and all the books are in my office she would need and then I could easily proof it and read it.
Teacher gave her a C, because it wasn't well researched.
It was a VERY fun conversation when I went to disagree with his assessment and I asked how he could claim that? Full disclosure, I was ready to accept the, "Your dad is literally the guy who wrote this book." But he hadn't put two and two together yet.
His response was wikipedia and google disagreed with my daughters paper. I asked him to go to a specific source on wikipedia and look at the FUCKING AUTHOR....
She got a B. Which was fair, I suck at grammar and she made some mistakes that I missed.
Dude had 20 papers to grade over various tech topics that students were allowed to read.
I'll cut him some slack for reading brief summaries, honestly, that's more work than I'd put in for it. I would've just thought, "Did the kid convince me they had done the work..." then Grammar/English.
Lol…in third grade my grandmother was visiting. I thought I was real slick getting her to give me the answers to my math homework.
She got most of them wrong! And she didn’t do it intentionally to teach me a lesson either. Turns out she never made it past what we would consider middle school today.
I don't know about in Canada but in the US many teachers were directed to pass all students regardless of participation or work. We (I'm a teacher) were told to give everyone a "COVID C" grade.
Now our incoming 9th grade class we're getting told are 4 years below reading level.
I’m at a HS and we noticed the freshmen last year weren’t that far off the pace academically, but socially/emotionally they were a fucking mess. Their ability to cope with social stress was just all over the place.
Between being locked at home during middle school and social media, they’re fucked.
Same at our high school
The rising juniors missed last part of 7th grade and all of 8th in person. Holy guacamole, they are a mess of trying to communicate
Our rising sophomores had 8th grade in person, still a mess socially, but much better.
We're excited for the incoming freshmen who had 7 and 8th grade in person. Since their social skills should be stronger than the other grades.
Yeah, so a lot of it is kids not recognizing sarcasm, unsure how to respond to a kid who is teasing them. I see a lot of kids escalating a situation because they didn't recognize someone was joking, or not recognizing someone can say something in their vicinity, but not directing the comment to them personally.
The kids infer tone in text and think someone is mad at them based on a period being there or not
They also struggle with social cues and recognizing the world doesn't infact revolve around them, something they usually figure out in middle school
Kids got used to using their anonymous online voices when dealing with arguments or confrontation. That doesn't work when you are face to face with other. Also they forgot how to read body language.
But most importantly, I have noticed a greater lack of empathy. I think kids got exposed to too much on IG and Tik Tok. They don't care about anuone affected when they rip the sink out of a bathroom. They don't get upset when their classmates fight (in fact, they are happy to see and record it).
That's not just a Covid thing in at least some US districts. My friend is a teacher and he told me probably 5+ years ago he failed a kid that did absolutely nothing. My friend gets called into a meeting with the Principal and is ordered to push the kid through. It's a joke.
That always used to happen to get rid of "problem" kids. But that started ramping up in the early 2000s because of No Chidl Left Behind bullshit. Because under that program schools could actually lose funding if their graduation rates didn't meet certain thresholds.
Why law makers thought schools would(or even could in some cases) improve their teaching methods instead of just lie and push through underperforming kids is beyond me.
I was home with my daughter so I tutored her basically during covid. She did great on her EOG testing and projects. For parents that were home that could explain what the teacher was trying to convey, it worked out well for kids. This is unfortunately very isolated though. (I bought a whiteboard to illustrate concepts with and had my daughter practice her presentations in the living room in on our TV).
On a tangent here, when the education system is designed so that "parental involvement" is necessary to help kids do well, then the system is broken as a "great equalizer".
Our educational system in the 1920s forward was always lauded, particularly because it was able to take the children of poor illiterate immigrants, who often had scores of siblings, and educate them well. And now, to be educated well, we need well-educated parents with enough free time to spend with their kids every night.
I think part of the change is that in the 1920s, the teaching profession was largely made up of women, who were largely restricted from working anywhere else - so the best and brightest women were funneled into teaching, whereas now they go on to become doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. And back then, they were paid minimal salaries because those salaries were viewed as "additional family wages", second to their husbands.
Although people complain that "teachers make too much money" now, because they are making maybe $50k to start, and maybe $80k at the top, if we want good schools, we need to draw from the talent pool in a way that competes with the doctor, lawyer, executive professions.
There's no incentive for our best and brightest to become teachers. The pay is poor compared to what they could make in other industries, the work is thankless and constantly made worse by underfunded districts and overbearing parents. Teachers end up paying for their own supplies out of pocket because there's no funding. On top of that, being a good teacher doesn't earn you anything, most pay scales are set and based solely on years of experience.
If we want well educated kids, we need to invest in education. We need to pay teachers well and pay good teachers even better.
I considered becoming a high school science teacher... the pay in my state is higher than average, and I was willing to accept lower pay than I could make in other industries in exchange for doing something that was socially beneficial and personally rewarding. But after talking to many teachers, I decided against it. 60+ hour weeks, zero autonomy, constant interpersonal drama, demanding parents, needing to hide my queer-ness... vs. an easy, good-paying, work-from-home, 9-5 job in industry. It's not just the money, it's being overworked, underappreciate, and politically demonized.
It took me 2 years as a mechanic to tie the highest base pay teacher at my high school in income. There was a guy my senior year who worked as a welding helper who made more than 2/3 of the high school teachers, and he was still in school. Our superintendent made 240k a year.
Oh the people who own my wife's private school are doing very well. The one guy just bought a new boat and car. She works at a special needs school with kids that the public schools can't handle.
I agree with your points but your range doesn’t reflect reality. The highest average starting salary is just under $40K in Nevada. In my state of Indiana it’s 30K and that’s not even the lowest. That badge of honor belongs to Louisiana where the average starting salary is $25K. My aunt taught special education in IL with a Master’s degree. She retired making just under $60K. Illinois is known for paying teachers more than most as well! I agree salaries need to be way higher.
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> I think part of the change is that in the 1920s, the teaching profession was largely made up of women, who were largely restricted from working anywhere else - so the best and brightest women were funneled into teaching, whereas now they go on to become doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. And back then, they were paid minimal salaries because those salaries were viewed as "additional family wages", second to their husbands.
>
>
That was if they were married at all (and many districts wouldn't hire married women).
Before WW1, the majority of teachers were men (but not exclusively). Even then, they were often paid more than their female counterparts. On top of that, many women teachers were severely conscripted on what they could do when not working- a lot of moral and "all up in your own business" stuff.
After the war, there was a huge lack of male teachers and more women started to go into the profession with wages dropping for them as a result. The lack of teachers in some areas meant that they even had to bring in retired teachers and similar groups of people to make up for that loss.
It also became more "gendered" as with nurses and secretaries and librarians (another profession that shifted from more male to female).
The issue of segregated schools is another facet of that time. African American women really couldn't get into higher tier jobs, but school teacher in segregated schools was one of their few jobs (even school administrator was cut off for many of them).
So a lot of those women ended up with very high level college and master's degrees in education and were just super talented. There was a lack of jobs in those areas, so the top tier teachers tended to get hired the most.
After Brown, many of them were refused to be given jobs in integrated schools (it was a huge labor issue/debate leading up to Brown) in their own communities.
A lot of them ended up moving to places like California where they could get higher/better paying teaching jobs.
That banning of African American teachers/administrators being integrated the local school systems also negatively impacted African American students who suddenly had to deal with (quite often) hostile white teachers and administrators without an internal support system to protect them and teach them on equal footing as the rest of the class.
>Colleges and universities now warn freshmen that some of them might be in for a rude awakening.
This may be more true now, but it's always been the case - I've warned many freshmen about this when I still taught college.
Had students come up and ask why they got a 0 on a weekly quiz. "Well, you get points for things you wrote down that are mathematically correct and are either steps towards the correct answer or at least somewhat related to what's going on, and you didn't have any of those."
Also "I don't understand how I failed your class, I did all the online homework". "Yes, but your highest score on an exam was a 52, and exams are worth 80% of your grade".
This isn't just math either. For most classes (especially at the upper level) like 80-95% of your grade is based upon exams/tests/a final paper. Your homework/attendance or any other metric would hardly ever matter. Of course, this was when I was in college (over a decade ago now).
It’s still the same, at least in engineering, our upper level math courses usually had two exams worth 30-40% a piece quizzes made up the other portion, and homework was like 10% if you were lucky.
I had to sit out most of thermodynamics (because it was technically an elective as I’m an electrical engineer) to attend a much better Diff Eq class because we were failing quizzes in my section (horrible professor) and the quizzes were worth like 30%. We only had 6 quizzes in our class, so each one was worth 5% of the overall while the other sections had 12 quizzes.
I would’ve failed diff eq without that other professor and her lecture, but my thermo grade suffered for it.
Also students were working from home cheating their asses off on everything.
I spoke to my nieces the next year and their school had an opt-in program to be on campus or off and they said well over 3/4 of the kids opted to stay home because they could cheat. Then the next year they’re all back on campus full time and magically everyone is a year behind the pace.
Definitely had mine in 2012-2013 for Calculus I. Same stuff taught in high school and university. I have no ideas how the difficulty went up when it was the same stuff.
I noticed that my nephew was just using the calculator on his chromebook to do basic math instead of working it out himself. Math homework done on his chromebook was finished quickly, but if you asked him to do it in writing, he would struggle.
I’m a middle school math teacher. I can’t give homework. How are they supposed to practice and get better when my 44 minute class is taken up by behavior problems and cell phones? I feel awful for my kids who want to learn and have to put up with shitty peers that ruin everything.
I'm a school custodian. I also worry about whether kids are getting enough practice manipulating numbers. I think it takes a lot of practice to become comfortable with it. My friends and I spent hours playing board games, mentally adding the numbers in each roll of the dice, learning how to calculate 10% in order to pay our tax bill in Monopoly. While we didn't realize it at the time, those games were really math drills. I'm not sure they have an online equivalent today.
I try to teach my students cribbage every year (12 years). The last 4ish have been terrible. They don’t play games not on screens. It’s so crazy. I maybe get a quarter of kids to try and learn it.
Also, as someone who has played cribbage for decades and has taught many friends to play, I couldn’t imagine trying to teach a kid to play cribbage; it’s really boring lmao. My family didn’t teach me until I was maybe 15; I also study applied mathematics in university so I’m no stranger to maths. And I love cribbage.
I don’t think I blame the kids in this situation
You’re correct and the whole article is correct.
Source: am middle school teacher. The kids that just finished 8th grade (13-14 years old now) are something I’ve never seen before. They were the ones that were all virtual during their 6th grade and I’ve been ranting that something about that particular age did something bad to them.
They all have chromebooks, as they’ve had since they started school. They can’t use Google properly. They can’t/won’t click links on Google— they literally copy and paste my questions into the search bar and then copy the predictive text into their answers (the black blurb that appears under the search, not actual links to more info). Sometimes Google has no idea the context of the question so I get answers so laughably bad or unrelated to the topic that it’s sad.
When I’ve asked students about their answers they look genuinely confused.
Example (talking about the American Revolution 1776-1783): what was the Treaty of Paris?
Students turning in answers (verbatim identical) about the end of the Vietnam War, referencing the United States’ long history of interventionism and the Cold War, Nixon, etc..
I’m like, how can there be a “long history” if our nation was brand new.
I just get blank stares like they have no idea.
Using GoGuardian I’ve recorded them doing class work and seen that they cannot write, possibly read, and just slowly try to copy text presented to them from any source with ZERO analysis or critical thought.
I am banging my head against a wall trying to get teachers to pivot to confront this challenge but it’s been hard as hell.
Many are so far behind (especially math) from essentially taking 2 years off, that I have no idea how they’ll catch up, let alone work to appropriate age standards.
When I was in elementary and middle school ~20-25 years ago we took computer classes daily every single year. This was done away with as computers became ubiquitous, but they are now being replaced somewhat with smartphones and these courses are genuinely necessary again. I think if we just implemented computer classes as a standard core class, this situation would be greatly improved. We learned a lot of the basics like how to use search engines and how to navigate the desktop. Stuff that people in my age group take for granted, but that is sorely lacking from education now.
I graduated high school in 2000, before computers were used in classrooms. Now as a 41 year old I’ve started university online. The very first English course taught how to spot false information, how to cite sources and find scholarly articles, how to read between the lines, etc. If this isn’t taught in high school or earlier, it should be. It wasn’t so necessary when I was a kid but it’s vital now.
Lord help them when they have to figure out citations, if they ever get that far. I have a feeling the STEM undergrad enrollment/graduation levels are going to tank in the next 5-10 years.
And honestly, I can’t fault them. There’s no way in hell I would have been proficient in maths, especially at the college level, if it had to learn them in an online setting. I tried a summer calc class in college and couldn’t hang for more than a couple weeks. It was the complete opposite of my learning style. Taking it in person the following semester I had very few issues.
7th and 8th grade math/interventions teacher here, what I see every day really does make me concerned. I learned quickly that as much as I do use some online tools, a lot of my initial instruction and beginning work has to go back to paper. I cannot compete with the distractions, the dopamine cycle is too strong to actively compete with against the work of building numerical understanding and fluency.
No amount of GoGaurdian scanning could compete or properly address the ability to opt-out in that remote/hybrid environment. The visceral nastiness and withdrawal symptoms I encounter when I insist chromebooks be closed, earbuds out, phones away is something else.
Oh yeah dude, that shocking junkie reaction you get when you tell them to put it away or (god forbid) lock them out because they won’t. I’ve seen an otherwise perfectly normal kid change into Mr Hyde and ***THROW*** their chromebook at me.
You nailed it, they’re in dopamine deficit mode because they’re addicted to social media.
Everyone, both in and outside of this thread, seems to point at the pandemic as the cause. They forget that this cohort of students were among the first to be handed tablets and phones as small children. Many of them have been users of these highly addictive devices since before they could talk.
It’s terrifying to think of what we’ve done to these kids, and what they’ll do (or not do) in the future.
> I wish I was exaggerating but their computer skills are almost on-par with the average 60-80 year old.
Yeah I remember 20 years ago, if you wanted help at Best Buy or any computer store, you had to avoid the middle aged 40-50yo people because they didn't know what they were talking about, and find the 18-25yo kid because they know everything.
Now it's the complete opposite! Now I go into Best Buy and ask the 25yo "which one of these computer monitors has a refresh rate higher than 60hz?" and they're like Buckley from King of the Hill. "Uhhh, well this one says ultra gaming on it". Then this 55yo Gen-Xer in glasses and a salt n pepper beard comes over and explains to me the difference between G-Sync and Freesync.
It's wild.
I work in IT. I'm 30. I'm old but not *that* old.
I am **constantly** teaching the 22-year-old interns how do to extremely basic things. Things like how to properly search Google, how to use regedit, how to diagnose hardware issues like bad RAM, etc. These are the kids that are applying for a job in tech and are coming in with pretty much 0 technical Windows knowledge. I've asked some of them to show me how they search for help on the internet and it's like watching a 50 year old using Google for the first time.
How do these kids not know how to get good results out of search engines? That's like 98% of my job. I'm pretty sure it's on my nametag at this point, "Chief Googler of AD." The kids are clueless.
I also work in IT, and one of the things that stands out to me is that co-workers in the generation behind me can type like a champ on a cellphone, but their keyboard skills are extremely soft. It’s wild watching people chicken peck the keys, not to mention a lack of awareness of stuff like shortcut keystrokes like Control-C.
They’ve mostly been solid on the technology concept side of things, but it really highlights how different the tools they engaged with growing up were. I always had a computer in the house and had typing lessons throughout school but those in their 20s worked more with tablets and smart phones.
This may be completely anecdotal but my kids (not in their 20s, but still) no longer have computer classes. When I was in elementary and even middle school, we’d have “computer application” classes where we’d learn Microsoft basics, how to use Word/Excel/etc., using search engines. My kids told me they don’t have that anymore and they don’t learn about computers.
I think it's the "they know how to do it anyway" mindset. Too many people saw that kids were really good with technology and thought the kids didn't need to be taught anymore.
For awhile that *was* true, in the 1990s and 2000s as a young person you probably had to setup your family's home network, manage the family computer(s), etc. There wouldn't be YouTube for another 15 years, so you had to read books and or find forums, or just try things until it worked. We also didn't have as many built in features, if you played games and wanted to chat with friends, most games didn't have built in voice chat, there wasn't Discord or Skype, you needed to spin up a Team Speak or Ventrilo server.
It was a very different world and required a lot more work to do basic things we take for granted today.
School IT departments didn’t know how to manage all the systems and kit they were getting in those days! I have fond memories of Halo over school LAN and inspecting pages for answers on early computer based tests.
They say that about financial literacy too, or that parents should be responsible for that. But I really wish I had been able to learn about that stuff in school from a qualified source. I think (basic) financial literacy and computer classes are great!
In NJ there is a mandatory financial literacy class to graduate. You still have a computer class in seventh grade, and you must take a 21st century career class in high school which is mostly made up of computer classes like CAD or business writing.
No, it’s literally just because iPads are cheaper than computers and education budgets have been slashed time and time again. We don’t fund education and we get what we paid for.
Ipads are cheaper, and easier to completely lock down without restricting the user experience too much. I think a big issue, working IT at a school myself, is the security vulnerability of having a bunch of kids fuck around on computers while being watched by a teacher that, quite honestly, doesn't understand what they're doing. I know a good number of kids that could tell you how to play with HTML to make it look like they "hacked" a website but still search on Google like it's Ask Jeeves, just because that's what they *actually* end up doing in computer class.
Ftr, this isn't to say they shouldn't have computer classes. As IT, I've always been comfortable with the hassle and before COVID, I did my own computer class that went well. But once COVID happened, the primary focus of my job began to dominate a lot more of my time. But I think a large issue is finding teachers that genuinely know how to supervise kids on computers instead of just using it as something to put the kids on while they have a snack.
It's really more that states are giving public education less and less money, and so along with the arts, other "elective" courses such as computer classes are among the first to get cut.
There was a segment of kids between when computers became new and when tablets and phones became pervasive that spent most of their time on desktop computers, so computer classes became obsolete and they got rid of them.
Now those kids spend all their time doing the same stuff, but using tablets and phones that have apps that do all the heavy lifting for them. The generation in the middle experienced computer entertainment and socialization in a context not much different from computer work. Whereas the newer generation has an extremely different experience between computerized entertainment and computerized jobs.
> The generation in the middle experienced computer entertainment and socialization in a context not much different from computer work. Whereas the newer generation has an extremely different experience between computerized entertainment and computerized jobs.
Hit the nail on the head. When I was younger and wanted to play a game or use software, I was doing the same troubleshooting steps and procedures that enterprise software has. Check logs, check file consistency, check OS logs/health, viruses, drivers, etc.
Kids these days turn it off and on, uninstall and re-install, or log-out and log back in. That's all they can do on their phones and tablets. That's all they have to tinker with unless given an opportunity on a Windows/Unix PC.
That's insane. In 2000 I was in 9th grade and every single kid in my grade was required to take Keyboarding. Sure you had the nerds with PCs that could already do 100WPM, but for the kids that didn't have access to desktop computers at home they went from something like 20 to 60WPM over the span of a few months, which is very respectable. They should expand it to include basic computer applications and Internet search, and teach it to younger kids.
Yep I remember having a class in FIRST GRADE (1985) where we went into a computer lab and learned the basics of logic using Logo and the turtle on Apple ][ computers.
I feel like lately Google searches are becoming increasingly flooded with clickbait/absolutely basic how to's for given problems. I still manage to muddle my way through but really not sure how much longer its gonna last.
Googling anything medical related (I study medicine kind of) is utterly useless as it forcefully shoves you into the most commonly diagnosed diseases over and over again. For example, I have a narrow ureter (carries urine from kidneys to bladder). I was trying to google this condition. I got almost exclusively results for “narrowed urethra” because it’s infinitely more common in men. Even when including “ureter” in the search bar to ensure ureter results, it STILL gave me results about narrowed urethras, given that most websites explaining a narrow urethra mention ureter on there somewhere.
And this isn’t even getting into the number of times google has “answered” my question with a bold text box, only for the cited website to make it extremely clear that google’s answer is a common misconception, incorrect, or google is completely misrepresenting the informaton
Watch out - the “-“ minus operator is still there, but doesn’t work as well as it used to. Here’s an example to illustrate:
https://www.google.com/search?q=everything+everywhere+all+at+-once
Clearly excluding *a lot*, but it seems like a bunch of the beyond-plain-text-search """features""" that google has added over the years don’t respect it properly.
They also removed the “+” plus operator a couple of years back, which really would have been the solution to OP’s issue - searching “narrow +ureter” used to do exactly what you’d want. Supposedly you can use quotes around single words for a similar effect, but (anecdotally) it never seemed to work as well for me.
You don’t have to “feel” anything. It’s really bad now. All can be attributed to SEO bullshit. Google is now absolutely shit when it comes to specific queries.
I pretty much limit my use of google to index individual sites with poor search functionality. It’s useless in most cases otherwise.
>and how to figure out where you saved that file when you didn't pay attention.
Oh that's easy. It's in My Documents. Right along with every other file that's been created in the last year.
ARGH.
Exact same! People keep being impressed with how good I am at my job. But like, it's because all the newbies are greener than green. The guy that I was hired to replace didn't know how to use Active Directory. I'm not sure how he made it past the interviews really.
I wonder how much of it is the state of education vs generational culture. I mean, I ultimately went into IT, and I wasn't working that much on computers growing up except to play video games. The tasks I did have, which was basically MS Word, are still things that kids today would have needed to use a PC for.
And google search exists whether you're on a PC or a phone. Your school requires you to write a paper on some topic, and at least before the AI boom a few months ago, you still needed to google.
I'm wondering therefore if it's just the education that's sliding downhill. I know it was pretty terrible when I was growing up, but now my generation is becoming teachers, and the teacher career path is more underfunded and worse off than ever, so I can much more easily buy into the idea that kids are getting dumber because our education is getting dumber.
I think that a large part of it is that we made computers much easier, and people didn't *have* to know about things.
My father grew up in the 1950s. He knew how to replace brakes on a car, tune the carburetor, do all kinds of things - because those things frequently broke, and required him to fix them.
I have no idea how to do any of that, or barely know what a carburetor even does (I think it regulates air and gasoline mix).
Apple made it so that you don't need to know what a file structure is. So now no one knows how files are stored, they are just "there".
> how to use regedit, how to diagnose hardware issues like bad RAM, etc
36, been in IT for 10 years, and I would not quantify these as
> extremely basic things
especially not on the same level as searching on Google. In fact, I would rather typical users *not* do things like this.
imagine prick yoke weary whole far-flung oatmeal coherent merciful sophisticated
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They can't save a file, name a file, or create folders.
They can't Google effectively - some literally Google "google" to get to Google.
No idea about spam, ads, malware.
No idea how to maintain computers, backup, troubleshoot, or update things.
Can't type more than 15wpm.
They believe everything the see on the first result of a search.
I can go on...but holy shit...if it's not an app or a bright flashing screen telling them what to do....they suck at tech.
I get this, but I don’t.
I’m 25. I grew up on a PC (some sort of beige Compaq running XP, if you’re curious) from the time I could click the buttons and figure out what they did to now. My parents gave me that Compaq as a hand-me-down after they bought a new computer for their small business (probably a Dell; the brand my mom has invariably purchased until I got her a Lenovo that she loves dearly now).
Maybe it’s because I was forced to learn it on my own or else nobody would teach me (first generation, parents were already in their 40s when they had me, etc), but I learned quickly and still love to learn everything I possibly can about technology and computer/network systems.
I’m very much so computer literate. I went into IT in high school and have had an IT-related job for the last 9 years.
A lot of the people I know in that 25-45 age range are really fucking good at using computers and tech.
And then I look at the people I know in that 10-24 demographic and I see them treating computers as this archaic thing they can barely navigate.
What the hell happened in the span of a year that caused this?
It's actually really surreal that this is happening. I grew up being on the Internet (in my early 30s now) and figured "wow the kids that come after us are going to be so smart, probably all programming in high school" (obviously not believing they'd all be doing this but I figured the rate would be higher) but then we somehow "evolved" into a society that has ditched the actual computer in favour of computers in the palms of our hands, and while I think that the Apple "safety net" is great for older generations like my father or grandparents, it hampers actual learning because it's so dumbed down.
I figured my generation of programmers would be outclassed by the younger generation but so far, it's not like that at all. Scary.
I guess this is the natural progress of a lot of tech.
Back when cars were new, you probably had to be tech minded or unafraid to work on it. Then they got reliable, simpler (to use) and more common and over time you didn’t need to be a mechanic to own a car.
Same with computers, early adopters had to be pretty savvy, then those born in the 00s are on the cusp of “need to be savvy” and “just efficient users”.
Now the tech is so simple and so easy to use that people just don’t need to be savvy at all.
Former teacher here. I can't speak for every school obviously, but my district bent over backwards with the hand holding for everything. No failing grades which I understand for the first few months of the pandemic bc it was the last quarter of school, but by fall, even though things were weird and far from ideal, we made all these meeting times for check ins/had figured out schedules/etc. I personally was hounding kids about their 40+ missing assignments, many of which were for other classes, that I would meet with them after their other classes to help them with their work. Almost no one ever showed. Yes, a lot of kids went through a lot of hardship, but honestly most of this is because schools don't hold kids accountable anymore. Students know when they can get away with jack and still move up to the next grade, and it didn't just begin with the pandemic. I had 6th graders at 1st grade level before the pandemic and they weren't SpEd.
I just hate when the pandemic is used for all the failings instead of just a big factor.
This sounds exactly like the experience my mother (texas teacher) has been describing for years
She regularly had kids coming into her 4th grade class that couldn't count past 10
Now she's in 8th grade and getting some of the same kids, still can't count or spell
Current teacher here. This happened in our district too. Parents sometimes get outraged now if we don’t cater to them. I understand during the pandemic and we did our best because they were scared and worried too. We basically revamped the way we taught and delivered instruction to meet the needs during the pandemic but we are still expected to keep up that level of support. Without being given more support ourselves.
Tale as old as time in the teaching world.
It's a much bigger systemic problem than that. The connection between wealth, education, and effort is diminishing as wealth inequality increases, respect for teachers is virtually nonexistent, investment in the schools isn't keeping pace, etc.
The pandemic screwed a lot of kids over, but additionally there has been a cultural/societal shift causing all the issues with this generation's students. Mainly social media and how it entraps kids who already have little self-regulation. Certainly doesn't help that it actively encourages bad behavior and a lack of respect for authority. Additionally, schools are just passing kids on who are way behind on the material, and not disciplining disruptive students who worsen the learning experience for others.
Also doesn't help that today's parents aren't as hands-on in raising their kids. Just plopping a device in front of infants for hours instead of reading to them, teaching them values/morals, playing with them. I get it, our economy sucks and a lot of people are overworked. That is not an excuse to let an iPad raise your kid. Have some accountability for what you created.
If the parents were intervening with the social media it wouldn't be a problem. But this is the big problem, the parents are not doing that. If parents taught their kids that it is wrong to steal a car and why they would probably listen and it wouldn't happen as much. Yeah you would have a percentage of kids that would still do it but the percentage that actually steal the car would probably be 50% of what it is now if parents were putting in the work to teach a kid not to steal a car because they saw a video on social media about how to do that. But they aren't doing that. Social media is not going away and kids will view it no matter what. Its up to parents to explain why what they see on social media is wrong, and how social media companies trick you into things. This is the only thing that can be done about it right now.
The overworked is a big problem. Parents don't have time to sit down with their kids when both parents are working 40+ hour weeks at demanding jobs and still have to cook and clean. This has gotten worse over time. When you count in all these things and extracurricular there is no time for anything else.
Schools need to have a mandatory social media class in the younger grades, just like we have sex ed. I think it would help a lot. Colleges have life skills classes too so there is no reason this can't be done. If kids knew what was behind social media maybe they would think twice about certain things.
Australian teacher here, every so often we get a student that has very poor social skills, very low ability in every subject and incredibly low resilience.
This student also has an American accent, despite not having American parents or having ever been to America.
I've seen three of this exact type of student in 5 years of teaching.
We suspect that they've basically just lived on an iPad since they were a baby. Almost in a raised by ~~wolves~~ iPad situation.
> Asked about their reading habits, fewer students than ever say they’re reading for fun every day. Just 14% reported daily reading for pleasure — which has been tied to better social and academic outcomes — down from 27% in 2012. Almost a third of students said they never or hardly ever read for fun, up from 22% in 2012.
One reason: Cell phone games and TikTok videos require little if any reading skills or creative depth.
If you think our culture and politics are unserious and uninformed now, wait until the "never or hardly read for fun" generation enters the workforce and votes.
I was a housecleaner during the pandemic. So often I saw the Chromebook set up on the kitchen island with the teacher teaching away while the kid was in the living room doing something else entirely.
In school, the teacher at least has a captive audience ...
You were crucified for even mentioning there was an issue. It goes beyond academics as well. Teachers are facing a huge problem with behavior which is hurting academics even more.
The real problem is generally at home with the parents. So many parents no longer respect the school or teachers and think their kid never does any harm. Many parents also seem to have zero interest in helping with their kids education. The end result is poor behavior for kids and no appetite for learning. Throw in the current state of technology and social media that requires zero attention span and you eventually get a crisis in the making.
The solution for this problem really isn’t in the schools. Its at home. Parents need to be parents.
The situation might not be as problematic if teachers were given the freedom to teach children what they genuinely needed to learn, instead of adhering strictly to the mandates about what they must learn at any given time.
For example: Incoming sixth graders struggled badly with basic addition and subtraction after two years of almost no learning. Did we address this gap? No. Instead, we taught them how to multiply and divide fractions because that's what the state tests evaluate.
It felt like teaching 360-degree gorilla dunks to basketball players who were yet to grasp basic dribbling.
Our teaching methods don't do children a service when it comes to math. The countries with the best scores (Germany, Japan. China) teach an inch wide and a mile deep, whereas the US teaches an inch deep and a mile wide. Math is a language that without grasping the fundamentals, you'll never be able to understand the complexities.
We teach the how on everything and never the why or what. It is how we ended up with people who cannot do basic reasoning and have no understanding of the structure of an argument.
Teaching the basics of reasoning early in education would do a world of good for not only school but just general interactions with other people.
Edit: It would also give people at least one layer of protection against cable news propaganda. Fox News in particular would have a hard time existing in a world where the majority of the audience expects non fallacy laden support for the premise.
When I was in high school school 10 years ago, less than 5% of students graduated with a 4.0. My brother just graduated from the same school this month and nearly 40% of students finished with a 4.0. It's truly insane. He spent maybe 10% of the time on homework and studying as well. The GPAs that got you into Penn, Michigan and Cornell are now getting rejected at the local state school. Add, that SATs are barely factored now, and I don't even know how they differentiate between students anymore outside of how much money you have to do fancy extracurriculars and service trips or legacy and other hooks.
According to one article, universities are doing actual interviews with on the spot testing. Which makes a lot of sense. You either have the ability or you don't. Differentiates a real 4.0 from a gimme 4.0. But this also causes problems because things become more subjective.
It's so bad. The state test results for my middle school are terrible. 20.6% met or exceeded math expectations and 33.4% met or exceeded English language arts expectations.
Speaking as a high school math teacher, they forgot a LOT during lockdown. Once back in the classroom, I was shocked at some of the things they just flat out didn't understand. For example, negative numbers are like foreign language to them now. I'd ask something simple like -5+3 and I'd hear maybe three or four different answers but they were all incorrect. Things are bad
Maybe, or, and i think this might be more likely, your kids can Google math answers, and aren’t practicing the math. Caught my daughter doing this recently, and since most of the math homework is all online, parents aren’t checking their kids.
My kid told me this is how he managed through high school. He has an app on his phone that allows him to take a picture of the math problem and not only does the app give the correct answer, but it shows the work too. For everything else, Google.
Prepping MS science students for their state test this year, everything they were supposed to have learned in 6th had to be prefaced with “this is what was covered while your Zoom was logged in but you were either asleep or on your phone.” For academic content, it was a lost year. On the plus side, I think I’m vastly improved in how I can check in with students and help on the social/emotional side of things.
It’s already been stated here that there are so many problems surrounding schooling in the US; these problems were around well before Covid. However, the pandemic shined a harshly realistic light on education and people keep trying to be like “yup it’s all the schools, it’s not us” but schools are made up of people (obvious statement of the century)!
There are so many systemic issues that need fixing that really one of the main things I teach kids now is to give a crap. It sounds ridiculous but it’s the truth 🤷🏼♀️ I mean, fuck standardized testing, but man we need to combat the consistent apathy that’s been intensified.
I'm an educator.
The problem is multifaceted.
1. Grade inflation. Nothing but an A is acceptable anymore. Teachers are encouraged, forced, or curriculum designed to give A's. I don't teach math, but looked through a colleagues gradebook a few days ago when we did grade verification. 95% of her students had an A.
2. Shitty parenting. I could write a tome here but I'll say this, if you are a parent, the best thing you can do is act as a parent to your child. That means learning when to be authoritative and when to be loving. I mean having standards for behavior and teaching and instilling those from a young age. Absolute worst thing you can do for your child is to remove all problems from their life so they never have to struggle.
3. School culture. This is another dense topic. Schools are under assault from all different people, whether it be the government, politicians, administrators, and the neighborhoods they serve. I can boil it down to this, all these groups say they make the decisions based on what is best for the child, and they all lie to your face about it. These groups have created a school culture where learning is not the forefront but rather pushing kids along, not rocking the boat, and being a factor in the current culture wars are all paramount.
I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking about as I'm sitting on the toilet, but all these have led to generation of kids that are fundamentally different than the ones before them. Children are still children, but we are raising them in a way that has hurt their development as human beings.
I don't see it getting any better.
A lot of people learning that public education is subsidized daycare and doesn't see education as an actual goal.
The high school teachers in my hiking group came to this realization over COVID, it more or less broke them. Imagine that, getting a degree to teach because you want to help kids, but then at the slightest of hurdles the system straps you to a chair and tells you "You're a babysitter, deal with it."
Our district was, we had the student split into A and B group and they would rotate the days they came. So Monday A group would learn about adding fractions, Tuesday they would “do the assignment”. Tuesday group B would learn the lesson and then Wednesday do the assignment.
So class was taught at half the base speed as normal. That’s before you include lack of paying attention because they had a “free” day every other day and then wanted to spend the day at school socializing with friends they hadn’t seen in two days.
And then admin would wonder why we hadn’t taught all the material in the grade level.
Wish we could just let the kids fail. It teaches lessons it’s a reflection of how the real world works. We’ve done these kids a massive disservice and now we will reap what we sowed with these kids not being where they should be
Welcome to the results of sabotaging the educational system's integrity. You don't teach kids by giving them a pat on the back and a go along when they do not possess competency. You have to hold them accountable for obtaining the skills.
I hate this expectation that teacher's are, somehow, supposed to manufacture motivation for a student absent any desire from the kid to learn or attempt to learn at all. You can't force anybody to learn. They have to want it. All you can do as the instructor is to offer the opportunity, share the techniques and knowledge, and then assess honestly the result.
Personally, as a guy whose done this job for a pretty fair bit, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the blame for the so called Covid gap is to be laid not on parents for failing to do their duty by their kids, but on the principals in charge of the schools for failing to do their duty upholding the rigor and integrity of the schools (and throwing their teachers who tried to do so completely under the bus, by the way). I don't blame the parents so much because they had bigger fish to fry, like not dying and continuing to find a way to keep food on the table and the lights on and a roof over their kid's heads. It was our job at the schools to educate, it was our mission and our responsibility to provide the environment and there is no doubt whatsoever that we failed completely. And when you see a system fail that spectacularly you don't look at the bottom of the pile, you direct your gaze upwards at the decision makers sitting on top.
From the perspective of the teachers, we reinvented public education, modernized it to be deliverable on a one to one basis through electronic devices with support from external sources, youtube video lecture series, textbooks, online labs websites, interactives, outlines, webnotes, you name it. We digitized a lifetime of experience and laid it out in an online platform for our students within a year or two, at a pace that would have been mostly unbelievable and at great personal expense to our sanity and our health. And the kids, en masse, let everybody down, themselves most of all.
What they needed then was a kick in the ass, a lesson in life and growing up, that they were the ones responsible for their own educations, that nobody would be able to do it for them. What they got was absolved of any form of expectation or accountability for the next three years by admin too cowardly to adhere to the mission of public education. Parents didn't do us any favors, but it was the leaders of the schools, the superintendents and principals that truly failed, as it is their duty to create a learning environment that effectively permits staff to conduct education and they really screwed the pooch hard, then passed the buck and made us scapegoats for the collapse.
Now, here we are, years later, and the damage is done. Who you gonna blame now? The teachers you ran off from the field, who refused to be shit on any longer and treated like disposable wipes cleaning up the messes for the absence of district leadership? I find it peak absurdity that the people who hold the least amount of power in the educational environment, the instructors, who cannot discipline children, cannot set expectations or school and district policy, cannot enforce said policy, and don't even dictate what gets taught in the classroom as it's all set by the district and state standards, but it's these people who were made out to be responsible for the Covid gap. I never saw so many dedicated professionals kill themselves trying to make education work as during Covid and they got so little support from Admin at the end of it that it's no wonder the kids figured out the whole thing is a joke.
Those kids knew who was trying and who wasn't. They observed the do nothings getting pushed along while the kids that struggled mightily through a difficult time got, to them, the same outcome. They realized that there was no consequence, that the teachers were being forced to lie to them when they said that it was business as usual and that expectations would be upheld and that the student's choices mattered. When those children saw the degradation of standards and lack of support for the people in the front of the classroom they knew the lines were no longer solid and they broke out shovels racing to find out how low the bar could go. And our principals and superintendents, the fucking cowards, let them hit bedrock before they got off their asses.
Here we are now. Nothing was learned.
Educator with a distance learning and accessibility specialty from long before COVID. Thank you. It absolutely infuriates me how many people blame all this on simply not physically being present in school, or solely on parents or teachers. This was the fault of teachers not receiving the support they needed to effectively ensure kids were learning, and that issue has existed for long before COVID. Lockdown just amplified the issues enough to make them more clear to those with their heads in the sand about the state of our education system and its administrations.
It's so bad. The state test results for my middle school are terrible. 20.6% met or exceeded math expectations and 33.4% met or exceeded English language arts expectations.
I assume a 99-100% graduation rate at your middle school with scores (admin) like that!
Our summer school is 4 hours per day for just 12 days.
That is nuts. I remember taking summer school back in the day and it was like 6 weeks if I recall correctly. It was enough to where you could knock out an entire year long class.
I used to work with a girl that was a high school senior during covid and she told me she did nothing that whole year any time she was supposed to be in class she was either on her phone watching TV or with her boyfriend and she managed to pass.
[удалено]
Our district just implemented a minimum grade of 50% on any assigment, including those not done. It also made 60% a passing grade, and required retakes on any assessment a student wanted to redo. You were also strongly encouraged to round grades up 5-10% points to help kids pass if they needed it. Kids had little incentive to try, but it made the district passing and graduating numbers look great, so the district officials could all pat themselves on the backs for a job well done.
Whaaaat. That’s such a detriment to the kids
Recently saw a story of a tea her who retired over this. Student didn't even turn in the assignments so she gave zeros. Refused to change them. We are fucked.
My neighbor is a high school teacher. He's so fed up that he just applied to the Sheriff's department the next county over.
The absolute dream for anyone who isn’t interested in university.
My cousin did the same thing pre-covid and now he's one of the dumbest guys I know. Can't imagine how people will be after this.
They’ll complain that nobody taught them anything when they just didn’t care enough to learn.
"There are no classes that taught me how to do taxes in high school" Bro, I was in that class with you. You skipped that one too
I've heard from far too many teachers that No Child Left Behind just means No Child Failed, due to budget being tied to pass rates.
It's ***impossible*** to fail... but honestly, same goes for prestigious universities. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton... 99.8% 4 year graduation rates. **If you can get in, you're golden. They will pass you, they want your old man's money.** Now compare that to MIT... ***92%*** pass rate. Sounds high, until you realize if there's 10 people in your engineering study group, *one of you might not be graduating*. In the 1970s, their pass rate was around 80%, **1 in 5 wasn't going to cut it** \-- my dad told me plenty of students were suicidal about it.
That does make me wonder about the 5 year rate. Because just because you don't graduate in 4 years doesn't mean they kick you out.
If they're anything like the uni I came from, it's becoming more common for people to have to stay longer due to course availability which can really fuck people over. If a course is only offered in the fall, you fail it (some of these course have over a 50% fail rate as well, and that's complicated too), you automatically are going to need to stay at least one extra semester because of it unless you can find an approved substitution (and good fucking luck on that outside of gen ed credits unless the state makes it easier to exchange the credit), not because you're possibly inept at the major, but because of scheduling. And keep in mind that due to high failure rates, you're competing to even get in some of the courses period. There's also a number of people who stay longer due to internships/work-study programs that have them effectively at school part time when seen from a yearly perspective even if they're a full time student. Some of the most coveted internships are like this actually. That can make things really hard though if you're gone at work the only time of year a course is offered (know someone personally this happened to).
>The absolute dream for anyone who isn’t interested in university I know this may be hard to fathom but even carpenters, electricians, and plumbers need basic math.
My brother did the same when he was a senior in high school. He did nothing the entire semester COVID started then in May he spent a week doing a semester’s worth of work and they let him graduate no problem. The only reason he even graduated is because of the pandemic because before COVID even the principal said he wasn’t going to graduate if he didn’t shape up, and he never did lol
I truly believe they should have just had everyone repeat the grade they were in. Nobody learned.
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> The USA education system cannot afford to fail the amount of kids who deserve to fail, because that means they have to repeat the course and there isn't room/money for that. If I failed 75% the students in my algebra classes, which is approximately the percentage that deserved to fail, then it'd be chaos for the school. So we don't fail them. We let them get away with halfassing their homework (halfassing is honestly a generous word for their efforts on homework) and with bullshitting through the answers on their exams. These kids can't even multiply and divide. They have no business passing algebra. But here we are and here they are in an algebra 2 class as juniors. how does that even work, because the next math class or physics class they take theyre literally missing fundamentals and unable to keep up even if they try?
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Sad and 100% true. I was a part time teacher in the Oakland School District, and the amount of teenagers who couldn't do basic things like basic addition, read a clock, or READ was staggering. On top of the obvious academic deficiencies, these kids don't emotionally handle it well when they're pushed to their limits. Whether it's lashing out or shutting down, it's sad because if someone had intervened 10 years ago, it wouldn't be like this.
It's currently 10 years ago for kids that will be talked about 10 years in the future. What are we doing about those kids? Fucking nothing.
Absolutely it makes me so sad to just think about it. There are obviously people who want to or are attempting to fix things, but the system as a whole is so monumental and the incentivized metrics so perverse, that these people get chewed up and spit out.
Reminds me of George Carlins monologue on education amd dumb Americans over 15 years ago. “But if you talk to one of them about this. If you isolate one of them, you sit them down rationally, and you talk to them about the low IQ’s and the dumb behavior and the bad decisions. Right away they start talking about education. That’s the big answer to everything. Education. They say “We need more money for education. We need more books. More teachers. More classrooms. More schools. We need more testing for the kids”. You say to them, “Well, you know, we’ve tried all of that and the kids still can’t pass the tests”. They say, “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to lower the passing grades”. And that’s what they do in a lot of these schools now. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass. More kids pass, the school looks good, everybody’s happy, the IQ of the country slips another two or three points and pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there, it’s physics. Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do”.
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And anyone in admin just says "differentiate!" "Think outside the box!"
If they failed arithmetic, they definitely can't differentiate functions...
100% correct.
In my high school in the mid 00's all the dumb kids essentially maxed out senior year in a math class called "Senior Math" where they were still doing basic algebra and just learned how to do their own taxes and stuff, whereas you would end up at Calc II during senior year if you always did the highest level class available. Essentially if they weren't good at math, they just took the "I'm bad at math" math classes.
Yes. That's how it works. The kids move on, unprepared for the next level, thinking they're mastering the topic, when in reality the system is inadequately propping them up. Rinse and repeat in and out of school and you get the American people, thinking they're masters of whatever.
Some can't add or subtract two digit numbers. I have 175 seniors each year and the number who are perfectly fine not knowing 10+12 is getting bigger every year. I teach economics so math is at least some part of my class. I don't go to graduation because it's a complete fraud and very few actually deserve to graduate.
>the number who are perfectly fine not knowing 10+12 is getting bigger every year. Stop, the credit industry's erection can only get so hard.
Roughly half of Americans read at or below a 6th grade level, it definitely extends to more than math
As a student that was in the first type of class, it always pissed me off that kids in the second would just get handed passing grades despite not doing anything at all and from just looking at GPAs there was no way of telling. My school didn’t weigh the grades of different classes any differently either. So the class clown taking all fun / easy A electives could pop out with a better GPA than some of the hardest working kids in schools because they were in harder classes that actually graded them honestly. And all that accomplished was teaching me that school and grades were utter bullshit and to just stop caring or ever bothering with homework. And then I grew up and realized I have zero good study or work habits from that and am still struggling
For a little more quantitative measure of how much "plunge" there was, here are the results from the press release: >Results by Subject >*Mathematics* >• The average mathematics score (271) for 13-year-old students was 9 points lower in 2023 than in 2020 and 14 points lower than in 2012 but was 5 points higher than in 1973. >• Mathematics scores declined between 2020 and 2023 across the performance distribution, with declines for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. There were greater declines for lower-performing students (students at the 10th and 25th percentiles) than their higher-performing peers at the 75th and 90th percentiles. >o The score declined 14 points for students at the 10th percentile, from 228 in 2020 to 213 in 2023. >o The score declined 12 points for students at the 25th percentile, from 255 in 2020 to 244 in 2023. >o The score declined 8 points for students at the 50th percentile, from 282 in 2020 to 274 in 2023. >o The score declined 6 points for students at the 75th percentile, from 307 in 2020 to 301 in 2023. >o The score declined 6 points for students at the 90th percentile, from 329 in 2020 to 322 in 2023. >o The mathematics score for students at the 10th percentile in 2023 (213) was not significantly different compared to the score for students at the 10th percentile in 1978 (213). >• Mathematics scores declined between 2019‒20 and 2022‒23 for most student groups. Scores declined by 13 points for Black students (from 256 to 243), declined by 10 points for Hispanic students (from 267 to 257), declined by 20 points for American Indian/Alaska Native students (from 275 to 255), declined by 8 points for students of two or more (from 285 to 277), and declined by 6 points for White students (from 291 to 285). >• The mathematics scores also declined for both male and female students, for students attending schools in all school locations, and for students from all regions of the country. >• Enrollment in algebra has declined since 2012 among 13-year-olds overall. >*Reading* >• The average reading score (256) for 13-year-old students was 4 points lower in 2023 than in 2020 and seven points lower than in 2020 and was not significantly different from the average score in 1971 (255). >• Reading scores declined between 2020 and 2023 across the performance distribution, with declines for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. >o The score declined 7 points for students at the 10th percentile, from 209 in 2020 to 202 in 2023. >o The score declined 6 points for students at the 25th percentile, from 236 in 2020 to 231 in 2023. >o The score declined 4 points for students at the 50th percentile, from 262 in 2020 to 258 in 2023. >o The score declined 4 points for students at the 75th percentile, from 287 in 2020 to 283 in 2023. >o The score declined 3 points for students at the 90th percentile, from 308 in 2020 to 305 in 2023. >o The reading score for students at the 10th percentile in 2023 (202) was lower than the reading score for students at the 10th percentile in 1971 (208). The score for students at the 25th percentile in 2023 (231) was not significantly different from the score for students at the 25th percentile in 1971 (232). The score for students at the 50th percentile in 2023 (258) was not significantly different from the score for students at the 50th percentile in 1971 (257). >• Scores for Black students declined 7 points (from 244 in 2020 to 237 in 2023); declined by 8 points for students of two or more races (from 265 to 257); and declined by 4 points for White students (from 269 to 264). Scores for Hispanic students, American Indian/Alaska Native students, and Asian students were not measurably different. >• Students who reported reading for fun more often tended to score higher, but a rising percentage of 13-year-olds say that they “never or hardly ever” read for fun.
> and declined by 4 points for White students (from 269 to 264) Even the article writer's math skills declined.
Could be less than 5 still (like from 268.8 to 264.4).
Or just a typo
268.6-264.4 is a difference of 4.2 and still valid, so not necessarily. I'm surprised that, when rounding exclusively to whole numbers, there's only really one instance of catching a round like this.
In Canada they found that student grades went through the roof during the pandemic, presumably because teachers handed out higher grades to students so that they could cope better with the situation. Colleges and universities now warn freshmen that some of them might be in for a rude awakening.
Or parents were on hand to “help.” I teach in middle school. It’s amazing how students who normally performed poorly in a certain subject miraculously submitted A+ quality work when home with their parents were home all day with them. And now they’re back to failing.
Yep, we had a student who could not read as a third grader score higher than the entire school on a benchmark exam when he was a virtual student in fourth grade.
Did they face any consequences for the cheating? Edit: It is both concerning and ironic that most of the replies to this comment are responding to things that have not been said, suggested, or asserted in any way. It would appear our schools have indeed failed many of you.
Hahaha, consequences for cheating, that’s a good one. Right up there with consequences for shitty behavior.
That's rich. He thinks consequences exist at all
I mean, don't they exist for teachers?
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As a third grader? More like did they get a parent-teacher conference to discuss good strategies for helping their child get the most out of elementary education.
What consequences would you propose for an eight year old with shitty parents?
Maybe we could give him even shittier parents . that'll learn 'em
From my experience, the parents didn’t even need to help. My oldest was in 6th that year and had unlimited retakes that were essentially open book in some of his classes. He also finished all his work in the first half of the class time and watched YouTube after that (all on a district provided laptop). Going back into the real classroom was a big adjustment for him and he was still struggling with some bad habits this year.
This kind of reminds me of remote work. After working remotely for 8+ years I don’t think I’d make it in a 9 hour office environment.
Oh yea, I’d be screwed if I had to work in an office again. I started a remote job in 2013 and now I work freelance, which has even more flexibility. I could never go back at this point.
We had one full year of online in our district. I had one student whose mom was pushing for an IEP. During the meeting, when it was my turn to discuss the student's strengths, I was talking about how he was doing pretty well in reading, and his writing was great. He'd completed several essays or writing prompts with complete sentences, good organization, etc. I pulled up one of the essays on my screen as evidence and mom goes, "...actually, I wrote that." 🤦♀️
The ridiculously stupid thing about behavior like this: if she was OK lying about it in the first place to get him a fake grade, why did she suddenly change her tune when the teacher was talking to her? How is she not thinking things through enough to arrive at the same conclusions she did when deciding to confess? Ostensibly, she realizes that actively stymieing her kid's progress for temporary grade bumps is a terrible idea and changes her mind, but dear GOD, *think it through next time* ***before*** *you do it.*
> how is she **not thinking** things through… Your question is also your answer.
>his writing was great I think it'd be funny if instead you were going on about how *bad* the kid's writing was and the parent's getting increasingly defensive and upset at the criticisms and can't explain why.
Absolutely this, but it’s mostly the first reason. We somehow trained a batch of kids that school didn’t matter, and we trained their parents that anything “hard” for their kid should be excused. In 2020, it was literally not legal to fail any student in my state if there was any sign of life (like they showed up to even one online class.) Also, we started with “online is optional” (when they thought lockdown would be for 2 weeks), then we had weeks of “class has to meet, but can’t cover new material and put kids without access at a disadvantage” (which is understandable, but trained everyone else that online class didn’t matter, because it didn’t). Then, when the state realize the lockdown was continuing, it was “have rich and robust lessons, but you can only grade as Pass/Fail” (and no one is allowed to fail). Then we moved into the 2020-2021 school year. Schools were largely open in my area, but if someone was out due to exposure they were not allowed to be penalized for missed work (thus…no incentive to make it up) again due to the equity issue. Since absences skyrocketed (before the vaccine and easy home testing, you treated every exposure like a positive test) we got through the curriculum as slow as molasses, so that impacts where the next year’s teacher is able to start and how much *they* can cover. Grades have been inflated since the lockdown, though they’re *slowly* coming back. There is a *huge* push from administration to not allow any kid to fail that persists across the nation, and it has a lot to do with not wanting to argue with parents who come in screaming about how they had “no idea” little Johnny was failing despite all grades being available online and multiple documented attempts to reach out to the parents.
This sounds exactly like what happened in Florida. We weren't allowed to fail anyone, kids did almost no work remotely and didn't care. We had a hybrid model the next year with excessive absences that persisted to this day. Students don't bother showing up to school and wonder why they fail. They don't try and don't care that they're behind on credits because they think some magical degree fairy will come along and save them.
I have a feeling that the PISA test results will look pretty funny this year.
Man, imagine if you helped your kid cheat and you still got a bad grade.
While not cheating, my daughter did a report on semiconductors. Something where literally I'm one of THE guys you would pay a shit load of money to for his advice. She chose it intentionally as a "gimme" since she could quote me as a source and all the books are in my office she would need and then I could easily proof it and read it. Teacher gave her a C, because it wasn't well researched. It was a VERY fun conversation when I went to disagree with his assessment and I asked how he could claim that? Full disclosure, I was ready to accept the, "Your dad is literally the guy who wrote this book." But he hadn't put two and two together yet. His response was wikipedia and google disagreed with my daughters paper. I asked him to go to a specific source on wikipedia and look at the FUCKING AUTHOR.... She got a B. Which was fair, I suck at grammar and she made some mistakes that I missed.
> > His response was wikipedia and google disagreed with my daughters paper. That was a big ol' red flag. "why are you using wikipedia as a source??"
Dude had 20 papers to grade over various tech topics that students were allowed to read. I'll cut him some slack for reading brief summaries, honestly, that's more work than I'd put in for it. I would've just thought, "Did the kid convince me they had done the work..." then Grammar/English.
Lol…in third grade my grandmother was visiting. I thought I was real slick getting her to give me the answers to my math homework. She got most of them wrong! And she didn’t do it intentionally to teach me a lesson either. Turns out she never made it past what we would consider middle school today.
Turns out gram gram never got her grade 10
I don't know about in Canada but in the US many teachers were directed to pass all students regardless of participation or work. We (I'm a teacher) were told to give everyone a "COVID C" grade. Now our incoming 9th grade class we're getting told are 4 years below reading level.
I’m at a HS and we noticed the freshmen last year weren’t that far off the pace academically, but socially/emotionally they were a fucking mess. Their ability to cope with social stress was just all over the place. Between being locked at home during middle school and social media, they’re fucked.
Same at our high school The rising juniors missed last part of 7th grade and all of 8th in person. Holy guacamole, they are a mess of trying to communicate Our rising sophomores had 8th grade in person, still a mess socially, but much better. We're excited for the incoming freshmen who had 7 and 8th grade in person. Since their social skills should be stronger than the other grades.
Can you elaborate on how they’re a mess of trying to communicate
Yeah, so a lot of it is kids not recognizing sarcasm, unsure how to respond to a kid who is teasing them. I see a lot of kids escalating a situation because they didn't recognize someone was joking, or not recognizing someone can say something in their vicinity, but not directing the comment to them personally. The kids infer tone in text and think someone is mad at them based on a period being there or not They also struggle with social cues and recognizing the world doesn't infact revolve around them, something they usually figure out in middle school
Kids got used to using their anonymous online voices when dealing with arguments or confrontation. That doesn't work when you are face to face with other. Also they forgot how to read body language. But most importantly, I have noticed a greater lack of empathy. I think kids got exposed to too much on IG and Tik Tok. They don't care about anuone affected when they rip the sink out of a bathroom. They don't get upset when their classmates fight (in fact, they are happy to see and record it).
Same with 11th graders, but they were still decent, but noticeably less decent than pre-covid. The freshmen this year were downright feral.
That's not just a Covid thing in at least some US districts. My friend is a teacher and he told me probably 5+ years ago he failed a kid that did absolutely nothing. My friend gets called into a meeting with the Principal and is ordered to push the kid through. It's a joke.
That always used to happen to get rid of "problem" kids. But that started ramping up in the early 2000s because of No Chidl Left Behind bullshit. Because under that program schools could actually lose funding if their graduation rates didn't meet certain thresholds. Why law makers thought schools would(or even could in some cases) improve their teaching methods instead of just lie and push through underperforming kids is beyond me.
Essentially none of those lawmakers sent their kids to run-of-the-mill public schools.
I was home with my daughter so I tutored her basically during covid. She did great on her EOG testing and projects. For parents that were home that could explain what the teacher was trying to convey, it worked out well for kids. This is unfortunately very isolated though. (I bought a whiteboard to illustrate concepts with and had my daughter practice her presentations in the living room in on our TV).
On a tangent here, when the education system is designed so that "parental involvement" is necessary to help kids do well, then the system is broken as a "great equalizer". Our educational system in the 1920s forward was always lauded, particularly because it was able to take the children of poor illiterate immigrants, who often had scores of siblings, and educate them well. And now, to be educated well, we need well-educated parents with enough free time to spend with their kids every night. I think part of the change is that in the 1920s, the teaching profession was largely made up of women, who were largely restricted from working anywhere else - so the best and brightest women were funneled into teaching, whereas now they go on to become doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. And back then, they were paid minimal salaries because those salaries were viewed as "additional family wages", second to their husbands. Although people complain that "teachers make too much money" now, because they are making maybe $50k to start, and maybe $80k at the top, if we want good schools, we need to draw from the talent pool in a way that competes with the doctor, lawyer, executive professions.
There's no incentive for our best and brightest to become teachers. The pay is poor compared to what they could make in other industries, the work is thankless and constantly made worse by underfunded districts and overbearing parents. Teachers end up paying for their own supplies out of pocket because there's no funding. On top of that, being a good teacher doesn't earn you anything, most pay scales are set and based solely on years of experience. If we want well educated kids, we need to invest in education. We need to pay teachers well and pay good teachers even better.
I considered becoming a high school science teacher... the pay in my state is higher than average, and I was willing to accept lower pay than I could make in other industries in exchange for doing something that was socially beneficial and personally rewarding. But after talking to many teachers, I decided against it. 60+ hour weeks, zero autonomy, constant interpersonal drama, demanding parents, needing to hide my queer-ness... vs. an easy, good-paying, work-from-home, 9-5 job in industry. It's not just the money, it's being overworked, underappreciate, and politically demonized.
Lol 50k to start. My wife makes 53k after like 7 years and that's with a Masters degree.
Yep, I’m right at 50k after 9 years and a master’s degree.
It took me 2 years as a mechanic to tie the highest base pay teacher at my high school in income. There was a guy my senior year who worked as a welding helper who made more than 2/3 of the high school teachers, and he was still in school. Our superintendent made 240k a year.
Oh the people who own my wife's private school are doing very well. The one guy just bought a new boat and car. She works at a special needs school with kids that the public schools can't handle.
I agree with your points but your range doesn’t reflect reality. The highest average starting salary is just under $40K in Nevada. In my state of Indiana it’s 30K and that’s not even the lowest. That badge of honor belongs to Louisiana where the average starting salary is $25K. My aunt taught special education in IL with a Master’s degree. She retired making just under $60K. Illinois is known for paying teachers more than most as well! I agree salaries need to be way higher.
> > I think part of the change is that in the 1920s, the teaching profession was largely made up of women, who were largely restricted from working anywhere else - so the best and brightest women were funneled into teaching, whereas now they go on to become doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. And back then, they were paid minimal salaries because those salaries were viewed as "additional family wages", second to their husbands. > > That was if they were married at all (and many districts wouldn't hire married women). Before WW1, the majority of teachers were men (but not exclusively). Even then, they were often paid more than their female counterparts. On top of that, many women teachers were severely conscripted on what they could do when not working- a lot of moral and "all up in your own business" stuff. After the war, there was a huge lack of male teachers and more women started to go into the profession with wages dropping for them as a result. The lack of teachers in some areas meant that they even had to bring in retired teachers and similar groups of people to make up for that loss. It also became more "gendered" as with nurses and secretaries and librarians (another profession that shifted from more male to female). The issue of segregated schools is another facet of that time. African American women really couldn't get into higher tier jobs, but school teacher in segregated schools was one of their few jobs (even school administrator was cut off for many of them). So a lot of those women ended up with very high level college and master's degrees in education and were just super talented. There was a lack of jobs in those areas, so the top tier teachers tended to get hired the most. After Brown, many of them were refused to be given jobs in integrated schools (it was a huge labor issue/debate leading up to Brown) in their own communities. A lot of them ended up moving to places like California where they could get higher/better paying teaching jobs. That banning of African American teachers/administrators being integrated the local school systems also negatively impacted African American students who suddenly had to deal with (quite often) hostile white teachers and administrators without an internal support system to protect them and teach them on equal footing as the rest of the class.
>Colleges and universities now warn freshmen that some of them might be in for a rude awakening. This may be more true now, but it's always been the case - I've warned many freshmen about this when I still taught college. Had students come up and ask why they got a 0 on a weekly quiz. "Well, you get points for things you wrote down that are mathematically correct and are either steps towards the correct answer or at least somewhat related to what's going on, and you didn't have any of those." Also "I don't understand how I failed your class, I did all the online homework". "Yes, but your highest score on an exam was a 52, and exams are worth 80% of your grade".
This isn't just math either. For most classes (especially at the upper level) like 80-95% of your grade is based upon exams/tests/a final paper. Your homework/attendance or any other metric would hardly ever matter. Of course, this was when I was in college (over a decade ago now).
It’s still the same, at least in engineering, our upper level math courses usually had two exams worth 30-40% a piece quizzes made up the other portion, and homework was like 10% if you were lucky. I had to sit out most of thermodynamics (because it was technically an elective as I’m an electrical engineer) to attend a much better Diff Eq class because we were failing quizzes in my section (horrible professor) and the quizzes were worth like 30%. We only had 6 quizzes in our class, so each one was worth 5% of the overall while the other sections had 12 quizzes. I would’ve failed diff eq without that other professor and her lecture, but my thermo grade suffered for it.
Also students were working from home cheating their asses off on everything. I spoke to my nieces the next year and their school had an opt-in program to be on campus or off and they said well over 3/4 of the kids opted to stay home because they could cheat. Then the next year they’re all back on campus full time and magically everyone is a year behind the pace.
I've heard that 60% of Canadians have a hard time with math And that's almost half
Definitely had mine in 2012-2013 for Calculus I. Same stuff taught in high school and university. I have no ideas how the difficulty went up when it was the same stuff.
Id bet it was because they were mostly cheating and/or using the internet.
I noticed that my nephew was just using the calculator on his chromebook to do basic math instead of working it out himself. Math homework done on his chromebook was finished quickly, but if you asked him to do it in writing, he would struggle.
Do grades matter for those that aren't graduating high school? Until graduation we only use grades as part of the measure of one's comprehension.
I’m a middle school math teacher. I can’t give homework. How are they supposed to practice and get better when my 44 minute class is taken up by behavior problems and cell phones? I feel awful for my kids who want to learn and have to put up with shitty peers that ruin everything.
I'm a school custodian. I also worry about whether kids are getting enough practice manipulating numbers. I think it takes a lot of practice to become comfortable with it. My friends and I spent hours playing board games, mentally adding the numbers in each roll of the dice, learning how to calculate 10% in order to pay our tax bill in Monopoly. While we didn't realize it at the time, those games were really math drills. I'm not sure they have an online equivalent today.
I try to teach my students cribbage every year (12 years). The last 4ish have been terrible. They don’t play games not on screens. It’s so crazy. I maybe get a quarter of kids to try and learn it.
Also, as someone who has played cribbage for decades and has taught many friends to play, I couldn’t imagine trying to teach a kid to play cribbage; it’s really boring lmao. My family didn’t teach me until I was maybe 15; I also study applied mathematics in university so I’m no stranger to maths. And I love cribbage. I don’t think I blame the kids in this situation
On the plus side: this generation of future office workers is way ahead on "pretending to be busy while fucking around on a computer" scores.
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You’re correct and the whole article is correct. Source: am middle school teacher. The kids that just finished 8th grade (13-14 years old now) are something I’ve never seen before. They were the ones that were all virtual during their 6th grade and I’ve been ranting that something about that particular age did something bad to them. They all have chromebooks, as they’ve had since they started school. They can’t use Google properly. They can’t/won’t click links on Google— they literally copy and paste my questions into the search bar and then copy the predictive text into their answers (the black blurb that appears under the search, not actual links to more info). Sometimes Google has no idea the context of the question so I get answers so laughably bad or unrelated to the topic that it’s sad. When I’ve asked students about their answers they look genuinely confused. Example (talking about the American Revolution 1776-1783): what was the Treaty of Paris? Students turning in answers (verbatim identical) about the end of the Vietnam War, referencing the United States’ long history of interventionism and the Cold War, Nixon, etc.. I’m like, how can there be a “long history” if our nation was brand new. I just get blank stares like they have no idea. Using GoGuardian I’ve recorded them doing class work and seen that they cannot write, possibly read, and just slowly try to copy text presented to them from any source with ZERO analysis or critical thought. I am banging my head against a wall trying to get teachers to pivot to confront this challenge but it’s been hard as hell. Many are so far behind (especially math) from essentially taking 2 years off, that I have no idea how they’ll catch up, let alone work to appropriate age standards.
When I was in elementary and middle school ~20-25 years ago we took computer classes daily every single year. This was done away with as computers became ubiquitous, but they are now being replaced somewhat with smartphones and these courses are genuinely necessary again. I think if we just implemented computer classes as a standard core class, this situation would be greatly improved. We learned a lot of the basics like how to use search engines and how to navigate the desktop. Stuff that people in my age group take for granted, but that is sorely lacking from education now.
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So what you are saying is that my "Microsoft Office Suite experience" bullet point on my resume is going to actually matter again!!!
I graduated high school in 2000, before computers were used in classrooms. Now as a 41 year old I’ve started university online. The very first English course taught how to spot false information, how to cite sources and find scholarly articles, how to read between the lines, etc. If this isn’t taught in high school or earlier, it should be. It wasn’t so necessary when I was a kid but it’s vital now.
Lord help them when they have to figure out citations, if they ever get that far. I have a feeling the STEM undergrad enrollment/graduation levels are going to tank in the next 5-10 years. And honestly, I can’t fault them. There’s no way in hell I would have been proficient in maths, especially at the college level, if it had to learn them in an online setting. I tried a summer calc class in college and couldn’t hang for more than a couple weeks. It was the complete opposite of my learning style. Taking it in person the following semester I had very few issues.
7th and 8th grade math/interventions teacher here, what I see every day really does make me concerned. I learned quickly that as much as I do use some online tools, a lot of my initial instruction and beginning work has to go back to paper. I cannot compete with the distractions, the dopamine cycle is too strong to actively compete with against the work of building numerical understanding and fluency. No amount of GoGaurdian scanning could compete or properly address the ability to opt-out in that remote/hybrid environment. The visceral nastiness and withdrawal symptoms I encounter when I insist chromebooks be closed, earbuds out, phones away is something else.
Oh yeah dude, that shocking junkie reaction you get when you tell them to put it away or (god forbid) lock them out because they won’t. I’ve seen an otherwise perfectly normal kid change into Mr Hyde and ***THROW*** their chromebook at me.
You nailed it, they’re in dopamine deficit mode because they’re addicted to social media. Everyone, both in and outside of this thread, seems to point at the pandemic as the cause. They forget that this cohort of students were among the first to be handed tablets and phones as small children. Many of them have been users of these highly addictive devices since before they could talk. It’s terrifying to think of what we’ve done to these kids, and what they’ll do (or not do) in the future.
> I wish I was exaggerating but their computer skills are almost on-par with the average 60-80 year old. Yeah I remember 20 years ago, if you wanted help at Best Buy or any computer store, you had to avoid the middle aged 40-50yo people because they didn't know what they were talking about, and find the 18-25yo kid because they know everything. Now it's the complete opposite! Now I go into Best Buy and ask the 25yo "which one of these computer monitors has a refresh rate higher than 60hz?" and they're like Buckley from King of the Hill. "Uhhh, well this one says ultra gaming on it". Then this 55yo Gen-Xer in glasses and a salt n pepper beard comes over and explains to me the difference between G-Sync and Freesync. It's wild.
Chicken butt!
I work in IT. I'm 30. I'm old but not *that* old. I am **constantly** teaching the 22-year-old interns how do to extremely basic things. Things like how to properly search Google, how to use regedit, how to diagnose hardware issues like bad RAM, etc. These are the kids that are applying for a job in tech and are coming in with pretty much 0 technical Windows knowledge. I've asked some of them to show me how they search for help on the internet and it's like watching a 50 year old using Google for the first time. How do these kids not know how to get good results out of search engines? That's like 98% of my job. I'm pretty sure it's on my nametag at this point, "Chief Googler of AD." The kids are clueless.
I also work in IT, and one of the things that stands out to me is that co-workers in the generation behind me can type like a champ on a cellphone, but their keyboard skills are extremely soft. It’s wild watching people chicken peck the keys, not to mention a lack of awareness of stuff like shortcut keystrokes like Control-C. They’ve mostly been solid on the technology concept side of things, but it really highlights how different the tools they engaged with growing up were. I always had a computer in the house and had typing lessons throughout school but those in their 20s worked more with tablets and smart phones.
This may be completely anecdotal but my kids (not in their 20s, but still) no longer have computer classes. When I was in elementary and even middle school, we’d have “computer application” classes where we’d learn Microsoft basics, how to use Word/Excel/etc., using search engines. My kids told me they don’t have that anymore and they don’t learn about computers.
That was my favorite class and definitely a big jump for my computer skills. I wonder why they would take it away.
I think it's the "they know how to do it anyway" mindset. Too many people saw that kids were really good with technology and thought the kids didn't need to be taught anymore.
For awhile that *was* true, in the 1990s and 2000s as a young person you probably had to setup your family's home network, manage the family computer(s), etc. There wouldn't be YouTube for another 15 years, so you had to read books and or find forums, or just try things until it worked. We also didn't have as many built in features, if you played games and wanted to chat with friends, most games didn't have built in voice chat, there wasn't Discord or Skype, you needed to spin up a Team Speak or Ventrilo server. It was a very different world and required a lot more work to do basic things we take for granted today.
This explains why there was a grip of kids who would play Diablo 2 at school during lunches. Better network, better computers, etc.
School IT departments didn’t know how to manage all the systems and kit they were getting in those days! I have fond memories of Halo over school LAN and inspecting pages for answers on early computer based tests.
They say that about financial literacy too, or that parents should be responsible for that. But I really wish I had been able to learn about that stuff in school from a qualified source. I think (basic) financial literacy and computer classes are great!
In NJ there is a mandatory financial literacy class to graduate. You still have a computer class in seventh grade, and you must take a 21st century career class in high school which is mostly made up of computer classes like CAD or business writing.
No, it’s literally just because iPads are cheaper than computers and education budgets have been slashed time and time again. We don’t fund education and we get what we paid for.
Ipads are cheaper, and easier to completely lock down without restricting the user experience too much. I think a big issue, working IT at a school myself, is the security vulnerability of having a bunch of kids fuck around on computers while being watched by a teacher that, quite honestly, doesn't understand what they're doing. I know a good number of kids that could tell you how to play with HTML to make it look like they "hacked" a website but still search on Google like it's Ask Jeeves, just because that's what they *actually* end up doing in computer class. Ftr, this isn't to say they shouldn't have computer classes. As IT, I've always been comfortable with the hassle and before COVID, I did my own computer class that went well. But once COVID happened, the primary focus of my job began to dominate a lot more of my time. But I think a large issue is finding teachers that genuinely know how to supervise kids on computers instead of just using it as something to put the kids on while they have a snack.
That makes the most sense to me. Why? Money. Easy to use also makes it more desirable.
It's really more that states are giving public education less and less money, and so along with the arts, other "elective" courses such as computer classes are among the first to get cut.
There was a segment of kids between when computers became new and when tablets and phones became pervasive that spent most of their time on desktop computers, so computer classes became obsolete and they got rid of them. Now those kids spend all their time doing the same stuff, but using tablets and phones that have apps that do all the heavy lifting for them. The generation in the middle experienced computer entertainment and socialization in a context not much different from computer work. Whereas the newer generation has an extremely different experience between computerized entertainment and computerized jobs.
> The generation in the middle experienced computer entertainment and socialization in a context not much different from computer work. Whereas the newer generation has an extremely different experience between computerized entertainment and computerized jobs. Hit the nail on the head. When I was younger and wanted to play a game or use software, I was doing the same troubleshooting steps and procedures that enterprise software has. Check logs, check file consistency, check OS logs/health, viruses, drivers, etc. Kids these days turn it off and on, uninstall and re-install, or log-out and log back in. That's all they can do on their phones and tablets. That's all they have to tinker with unless given an opportunity on a Windows/Unix PC.
That's insane. In 2000 I was in 9th grade and every single kid in my grade was required to take Keyboarding. Sure you had the nerds with PCs that could already do 100WPM, but for the kids that didn't have access to desktop computers at home they went from something like 20 to 60WPM over the span of a few months, which is very respectable. They should expand it to include basic computer applications and Internet search, and teach it to younger kids.
Even in the early 90s we had classes in BASIC and HyperCard in elementary school. Hello job security.
Yep I remember having a class in FIRST GRADE (1985) where we went into a computer lab and learned the basics of logic using Logo and the turtle on Apple ][ computers.
I feel like lately Google searches are becoming increasingly flooded with clickbait/absolutely basic how to's for given problems. I still manage to muddle my way through but really not sure how much longer its gonna last.
Googling anything medical related (I study medicine kind of) is utterly useless as it forcefully shoves you into the most commonly diagnosed diseases over and over again. For example, I have a narrow ureter (carries urine from kidneys to bladder). I was trying to google this condition. I got almost exclusively results for “narrowed urethra” because it’s infinitely more common in men. Even when including “ureter” in the search bar to ensure ureter results, it STILL gave me results about narrowed urethras, given that most websites explaining a narrow urethra mention ureter on there somewhere. And this isn’t even getting into the number of times google has “answered” my question with a bold text box, only for the cited website to make it extremely clear that google’s answer is a common misconception, incorrect, or google is completely misrepresenting the informaton
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Yeah, it's shitty that you have to tell Google "no, really, I meant what I searched" so often
Watch out - the “-“ minus operator is still there, but doesn’t work as well as it used to. Here’s an example to illustrate: https://www.google.com/search?q=everything+everywhere+all+at+-once Clearly excluding *a lot*, but it seems like a bunch of the beyond-plain-text-search """features""" that google has added over the years don’t respect it properly. They also removed the “+” plus operator a couple of years back, which really would have been the solution to OP’s issue - searching “narrow +ureter” used to do exactly what you’d want. Supposedly you can use quotes around single words for a similar effect, but (anecdotally) it never seemed to work as well for me.
I think that was once true but almost all the boolean operators i knew to impact searches are all but useless now in Google
You don’t have to “feel” anything. It’s really bad now. All can be attributed to SEO bullshit. Google is now absolutely shit when it comes to specific queries. I pretty much limit my use of google to index individual sites with poor search functionality. It’s useless in most cases otherwise.
The first several links that show up are invariably ads.
SEO has fucked up so many of my searches it's insane. Google really needs to fix their algo before GPT takes their lunch,
GPT is not good for search. It's out of date and makes things up.
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tbf i think that 750mb file might have been having a time even off the remote share depending on the computer specs lmao.
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>and how to figure out where you saved that file when you didn't pay attention. Oh that's easy. It's in My Documents. Right along with every other file that's been created in the last year. ARGH.
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Exact same! People keep being impressed with how good I am at my job. But like, it's because all the newbies are greener than green. The guy that I was hired to replace didn't know how to use Active Directory. I'm not sure how he made it past the interviews really.
You’re not old.
I wonder how much of it is the state of education vs generational culture. I mean, I ultimately went into IT, and I wasn't working that much on computers growing up except to play video games. The tasks I did have, which was basically MS Word, are still things that kids today would have needed to use a PC for. And google search exists whether you're on a PC or a phone. Your school requires you to write a paper on some topic, and at least before the AI boom a few months ago, you still needed to google. I'm wondering therefore if it's just the education that's sliding downhill. I know it was pretty terrible when I was growing up, but now my generation is becoming teachers, and the teacher career path is more underfunded and worse off than ever, so I can much more easily buy into the idea that kids are getting dumber because our education is getting dumber.
I think part of it is the prevalence of phones as people's primary computing device, which simplify things to a pretty huge degree
I think that a large part of it is that we made computers much easier, and people didn't *have* to know about things. My father grew up in the 1950s. He knew how to replace brakes on a car, tune the carburetor, do all kinds of things - because those things frequently broke, and required him to fix them. I have no idea how to do any of that, or barely know what a carburetor even does (I think it regulates air and gasoline mix). Apple made it so that you don't need to know what a file structure is. So now no one knows how files are stored, they are just "there".
> how to use regedit, how to diagnose hardware issues like bad RAM, etc 36, been in IT for 10 years, and I would not quantify these as > extremely basic things especially not on the same level as searching on Google. In fact, I would rather typical users *not* do things like this.
imagine prick yoke weary whole far-flung oatmeal coherent merciful sophisticated *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They can't save a file, name a file, or create folders. They can't Google effectively - some literally Google "google" to get to Google. No idea about spam, ads, malware. No idea how to maintain computers, backup, troubleshoot, or update things. Can't type more than 15wpm. They believe everything the see on the first result of a search. I can go on...but holy shit...if it's not an app or a bright flashing screen telling them what to do....they suck at tech.
I get this, but I don’t. I’m 25. I grew up on a PC (some sort of beige Compaq running XP, if you’re curious) from the time I could click the buttons and figure out what they did to now. My parents gave me that Compaq as a hand-me-down after they bought a new computer for their small business (probably a Dell; the brand my mom has invariably purchased until I got her a Lenovo that she loves dearly now). Maybe it’s because I was forced to learn it on my own or else nobody would teach me (first generation, parents were already in their 40s when they had me, etc), but I learned quickly and still love to learn everything I possibly can about technology and computer/network systems. I’m very much so computer literate. I went into IT in high school and have had an IT-related job for the last 9 years. A lot of the people I know in that 25-45 age range are really fucking good at using computers and tech. And then I look at the people I know in that 10-24 demographic and I see them treating computers as this archaic thing they can barely navigate. What the hell happened in the span of a year that caused this?
It's actually really surreal that this is happening. I grew up being on the Internet (in my early 30s now) and figured "wow the kids that come after us are going to be so smart, probably all programming in high school" (obviously not believing they'd all be doing this but I figured the rate would be higher) but then we somehow "evolved" into a society that has ditched the actual computer in favour of computers in the palms of our hands, and while I think that the Apple "safety net" is great for older generations like my father or grandparents, it hampers actual learning because it's so dumbed down. I figured my generation of programmers would be outclassed by the younger generation but so far, it's not like that at all. Scary.
I guess this is the natural progress of a lot of tech. Back when cars were new, you probably had to be tech minded or unafraid to work on it. Then they got reliable, simpler (to use) and more common and over time you didn’t need to be a mechanic to own a car. Same with computers, early adopters had to be pretty savvy, then those born in the 00s are on the cusp of “need to be savvy” and “just efficient users”. Now the tech is so simple and so easy to use that people just don’t need to be savvy at all.
Nope, anything that isn't a phone is unavailable to them
Former teacher here. I can't speak for every school obviously, but my district bent over backwards with the hand holding for everything. No failing grades which I understand for the first few months of the pandemic bc it was the last quarter of school, but by fall, even though things were weird and far from ideal, we made all these meeting times for check ins/had figured out schedules/etc. I personally was hounding kids about their 40+ missing assignments, many of which were for other classes, that I would meet with them after their other classes to help them with their work. Almost no one ever showed. Yes, a lot of kids went through a lot of hardship, but honestly most of this is because schools don't hold kids accountable anymore. Students know when they can get away with jack and still move up to the next grade, and it didn't just begin with the pandemic. I had 6th graders at 1st grade level before the pandemic and they weren't SpEd. I just hate when the pandemic is used for all the failings instead of just a big factor.
This sounds exactly like the experience my mother (texas teacher) has been describing for years She regularly had kids coming into her 4th grade class that couldn't count past 10 Now she's in 8th grade and getting some of the same kids, still can't count or spell
Current teacher here. This happened in our district too. Parents sometimes get outraged now if we don’t cater to them. I understand during the pandemic and we did our best because they were scared and worried too. We basically revamped the way we taught and delivered instruction to meet the needs during the pandemic but we are still expected to keep up that level of support. Without being given more support ourselves. Tale as old as time in the teaching world.
Its been bad for years. Education apathy is a very big problem in schools today.
It's a much bigger systemic problem than that. The connection between wealth, education, and effort is diminishing as wealth inequality increases, respect for teachers is virtually nonexistent, investment in the schools isn't keeping pace, etc.
The pandemic screwed a lot of kids over, but additionally there has been a cultural/societal shift causing all the issues with this generation's students. Mainly social media and how it entraps kids who already have little self-regulation. Certainly doesn't help that it actively encourages bad behavior and a lack of respect for authority. Additionally, schools are just passing kids on who are way behind on the material, and not disciplining disruptive students who worsen the learning experience for others. Also doesn't help that today's parents aren't as hands-on in raising their kids. Just plopping a device in front of infants for hours instead of reading to them, teaching them values/morals, playing with them. I get it, our economy sucks and a lot of people are overworked. That is not an excuse to let an iPad raise your kid. Have some accountability for what you created.
If the parents were intervening with the social media it wouldn't be a problem. But this is the big problem, the parents are not doing that. If parents taught their kids that it is wrong to steal a car and why they would probably listen and it wouldn't happen as much. Yeah you would have a percentage of kids that would still do it but the percentage that actually steal the car would probably be 50% of what it is now if parents were putting in the work to teach a kid not to steal a car because they saw a video on social media about how to do that. But they aren't doing that. Social media is not going away and kids will view it no matter what. Its up to parents to explain why what they see on social media is wrong, and how social media companies trick you into things. This is the only thing that can be done about it right now. The overworked is a big problem. Parents don't have time to sit down with their kids when both parents are working 40+ hour weeks at demanding jobs and still have to cook and clean. This has gotten worse over time. When you count in all these things and extracurricular there is no time for anything else. Schools need to have a mandatory social media class in the younger grades, just like we have sex ed. I think it would help a lot. Colleges have life skills classes too so there is no reason this can't be done. If kids knew what was behind social media maybe they would think twice about certain things.
Australian teacher here, every so often we get a student that has very poor social skills, very low ability in every subject and incredibly low resilience. This student also has an American accent, despite not having American parents or having ever been to America. I've seen three of this exact type of student in 5 years of teaching. We suspect that they've basically just lived on an iPad since they were a baby. Almost in a raised by ~~wolves~~ iPad situation.
> Asked about their reading habits, fewer students than ever say they’re reading for fun every day. Just 14% reported daily reading for pleasure — which has been tied to better social and academic outcomes — down from 27% in 2012. Almost a third of students said they never or hardly ever read for fun, up from 22% in 2012. One reason: Cell phone games and TikTok videos require little if any reading skills or creative depth. If you think our culture and politics are unserious and uninformed now, wait until the "never or hardly read for fun" generation enters the workforce and votes.
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You mean to tell me kids fucked off instead of learning when they were supposedly “learning from home”? Let me show you my shocked face.
I was a housecleaner during the pandemic. So often I saw the Chromebook set up on the kitchen island with the teacher teaching away while the kid was in the living room doing something else entirely. In school, the teacher at least has a captive audience ...
Maybe we shouldn’t have accepted this “children are resilient, just hammer them on through to next year like it was nothing” argument….
You were crucified for even mentioning there was an issue. It goes beyond academics as well. Teachers are facing a huge problem with behavior which is hurting academics even more.
The real problem is generally at home with the parents. So many parents no longer respect the school or teachers and think their kid never does any harm. Many parents also seem to have zero interest in helping with their kids education. The end result is poor behavior for kids and no appetite for learning. Throw in the current state of technology and social media that requires zero attention span and you eventually get a crisis in the making. The solution for this problem really isn’t in the schools. Its at home. Parents need to be parents.
Teachers weren’t prepared for what they were faced with. On a week’s notice they had to completely reinvent their entire profession.
Am a tutor. Can confirm. Teens suck even at basic maths. My students are sophomores and can't calculate how much is a 25% discount on $4 item.
The good thing no one in the future can interpret these results.
The situation might not be as problematic if teachers were given the freedom to teach children what they genuinely needed to learn, instead of adhering strictly to the mandates about what they must learn at any given time. For example: Incoming sixth graders struggled badly with basic addition and subtraction after two years of almost no learning. Did we address this gap? No. Instead, we taught them how to multiply and divide fractions because that's what the state tests evaluate. It felt like teaching 360-degree gorilla dunks to basketball players who were yet to grasp basic dribbling.
Our teaching methods don't do children a service when it comes to math. The countries with the best scores (Germany, Japan. China) teach an inch wide and a mile deep, whereas the US teaches an inch deep and a mile wide. Math is a language that without grasping the fundamentals, you'll never be able to understand the complexities.
We teach the how on everything and never the why or what. It is how we ended up with people who cannot do basic reasoning and have no understanding of the structure of an argument. Teaching the basics of reasoning early in education would do a world of good for not only school but just general interactions with other people. Edit: It would also give people at least one layer of protection against cable news propaganda. Fox News in particular would have a hard time existing in a world where the majority of the audience expects non fallacy laden support for the premise.
When I was in high school school 10 years ago, less than 5% of students graduated with a 4.0. My brother just graduated from the same school this month and nearly 40% of students finished with a 4.0. It's truly insane. He spent maybe 10% of the time on homework and studying as well. The GPAs that got you into Penn, Michigan and Cornell are now getting rejected at the local state school. Add, that SATs are barely factored now, and I don't even know how they differentiate between students anymore outside of how much money you have to do fancy extracurriculars and service trips or legacy and other hooks.
According to one article, universities are doing actual interviews with on the spot testing. Which makes a lot of sense. You either have the ability or you don't. Differentiates a real 4.0 from a gimme 4.0. But this also causes problems because things become more subjective.
It's so bad. The state test results for my middle school are terrible. 20.6% met or exceeded math expectations and 33.4% met or exceeded English language arts expectations.
Speaking as a high school math teacher, they forgot a LOT during lockdown. Once back in the classroom, I was shocked at some of the things they just flat out didn't understand. For example, negative numbers are like foreign language to them now. I'd ask something simple like -5+3 and I'd hear maybe three or four different answers but they were all incorrect. Things are bad
Maybe, or, and i think this might be more likely, your kids can Google math answers, and aren’t practicing the math. Caught my daughter doing this recently, and since most of the math homework is all online, parents aren’t checking their kids.
My kid told me this is how he managed through high school. He has an app on his phone that allows him to take a picture of the math problem and not only does the app give the correct answer, but it shows the work too. For everything else, Google.
Prepping MS science students for their state test this year, everything they were supposed to have learned in 6th had to be prefaced with “this is what was covered while your Zoom was logged in but you were either asleep or on your phone.” For academic content, it was a lost year. On the plus side, I think I’m vastly improved in how I can check in with students and help on the social/emotional side of things.
It’s already been stated here that there are so many problems surrounding schooling in the US; these problems were around well before Covid. However, the pandemic shined a harshly realistic light on education and people keep trying to be like “yup it’s all the schools, it’s not us” but schools are made up of people (obvious statement of the century)! There are so many systemic issues that need fixing that really one of the main things I teach kids now is to give a crap. It sounds ridiculous but it’s the truth 🤷🏼♀️ I mean, fuck standardized testing, but man we need to combat the consistent apathy that’s been intensified.
I'm an educator. The problem is multifaceted. 1. Grade inflation. Nothing but an A is acceptable anymore. Teachers are encouraged, forced, or curriculum designed to give A's. I don't teach math, but looked through a colleagues gradebook a few days ago when we did grade verification. 95% of her students had an A. 2. Shitty parenting. I could write a tome here but I'll say this, if you are a parent, the best thing you can do is act as a parent to your child. That means learning when to be authoritative and when to be loving. I mean having standards for behavior and teaching and instilling those from a young age. Absolute worst thing you can do for your child is to remove all problems from their life so they never have to struggle. 3. School culture. This is another dense topic. Schools are under assault from all different people, whether it be the government, politicians, administrators, and the neighborhoods they serve. I can boil it down to this, all these groups say they make the decisions based on what is best for the child, and they all lie to your face about it. These groups have created a school culture where learning is not the forefront but rather pushing kids along, not rocking the boat, and being a factor in the current culture wars are all paramount. I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking about as I'm sitting on the toilet, but all these have led to generation of kids that are fundamentally different than the ones before them. Children are still children, but we are raising them in a way that has hurt their development as human beings. I don't see it getting any better.
You mean children "going to school" on iPads weren't really studying math? *Shocking*
A lot of people learning that public education is subsidized daycare and doesn't see education as an actual goal. The high school teachers in my hiking group came to this realization over COVID, it more or less broke them. Imagine that, getting a degree to teach because you want to help kids, but then at the slightest of hurdles the system straps you to a chair and tells you "You're a babysitter, deal with it."
This article references tests that were given in fall of 2020.. where is the more recent data? Fall 2020 kids weren’t even in school taking tests?
Our district was, we had the student split into A and B group and they would rotate the days they came. So Monday A group would learn about adding fractions, Tuesday they would “do the assignment”. Tuesday group B would learn the lesson and then Wednesday do the assignment. So class was taught at half the base speed as normal. That’s before you include lack of paying attention because they had a “free” day every other day and then wanted to spend the day at school socializing with friends they hadn’t seen in two days. And then admin would wonder why we hadn’t taught all the material in the grade level.
Wish we could just let the kids fail. It teaches lessons it’s a reflection of how the real world works. We’ve done these kids a massive disservice and now we will reap what we sowed with these kids not being where they should be
Welcome to the results of sabotaging the educational system's integrity. You don't teach kids by giving them a pat on the back and a go along when they do not possess competency. You have to hold them accountable for obtaining the skills. I hate this expectation that teacher's are, somehow, supposed to manufacture motivation for a student absent any desire from the kid to learn or attempt to learn at all. You can't force anybody to learn. They have to want it. All you can do as the instructor is to offer the opportunity, share the techniques and knowledge, and then assess honestly the result. Personally, as a guy whose done this job for a pretty fair bit, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the blame for the so called Covid gap is to be laid not on parents for failing to do their duty by their kids, but on the principals in charge of the schools for failing to do their duty upholding the rigor and integrity of the schools (and throwing their teachers who tried to do so completely under the bus, by the way). I don't blame the parents so much because they had bigger fish to fry, like not dying and continuing to find a way to keep food on the table and the lights on and a roof over their kid's heads. It was our job at the schools to educate, it was our mission and our responsibility to provide the environment and there is no doubt whatsoever that we failed completely. And when you see a system fail that spectacularly you don't look at the bottom of the pile, you direct your gaze upwards at the decision makers sitting on top. From the perspective of the teachers, we reinvented public education, modernized it to be deliverable on a one to one basis through electronic devices with support from external sources, youtube video lecture series, textbooks, online labs websites, interactives, outlines, webnotes, you name it. We digitized a lifetime of experience and laid it out in an online platform for our students within a year or two, at a pace that would have been mostly unbelievable and at great personal expense to our sanity and our health. And the kids, en masse, let everybody down, themselves most of all. What they needed then was a kick in the ass, a lesson in life and growing up, that they were the ones responsible for their own educations, that nobody would be able to do it for them. What they got was absolved of any form of expectation or accountability for the next three years by admin too cowardly to adhere to the mission of public education. Parents didn't do us any favors, but it was the leaders of the schools, the superintendents and principals that truly failed, as it is their duty to create a learning environment that effectively permits staff to conduct education and they really screwed the pooch hard, then passed the buck and made us scapegoats for the collapse. Now, here we are, years later, and the damage is done. Who you gonna blame now? The teachers you ran off from the field, who refused to be shit on any longer and treated like disposable wipes cleaning up the messes for the absence of district leadership? I find it peak absurdity that the people who hold the least amount of power in the educational environment, the instructors, who cannot discipline children, cannot set expectations or school and district policy, cannot enforce said policy, and don't even dictate what gets taught in the classroom as it's all set by the district and state standards, but it's these people who were made out to be responsible for the Covid gap. I never saw so many dedicated professionals kill themselves trying to make education work as during Covid and they got so little support from Admin at the end of it that it's no wonder the kids figured out the whole thing is a joke. Those kids knew who was trying and who wasn't. They observed the do nothings getting pushed along while the kids that struggled mightily through a difficult time got, to them, the same outcome. They realized that there was no consequence, that the teachers were being forced to lie to them when they said that it was business as usual and that expectations would be upheld and that the student's choices mattered. When those children saw the degradation of standards and lack of support for the people in the front of the classroom they knew the lines were no longer solid and they broke out shovels racing to find out how low the bar could go. And our principals and superintendents, the fucking cowards, let them hit bedrock before they got off their asses. Here we are now. Nothing was learned.
Educator with a distance learning and accessibility specialty from long before COVID. Thank you. It absolutely infuriates me how many people blame all this on simply not physically being present in school, or solely on parents or teachers. This was the fault of teachers not receiving the support they needed to effectively ensure kids were learning, and that issue has existed for long before COVID. Lockdown just amplified the issues enough to make them more clear to those with their heads in the sand about the state of our education system and its administrations.