A college ranking of higher education tells me that Florida high school or primary students are in better shape than other states that reacted differently to COVID more than SAT performance? Shouldn’t I see Florida going up and other states going down on test scores? You made the claim. What data should I look at?
Now do the one that tests for students in any particular state where English is their FIRST LANGUAGE. I'll bet the score will change, but I never felt that Florida as a whole was one of the top school systems in the country. Florida is too DIVERSE, and has far too many new immigrants from non-English speaking nations. But back in the day (30... 40 years ago) some public school were very good over all in testing nationally.
Not just in the US, here in the UK too. Honestly, it's just one man's opinion - albeit with a background of having been in education for 20 years - our education system over here is out of date and young people are more aware of that than ever before. I work with many 13-16 year olds - most are bright and aware of more than they get credit for. Very few engage with, or enjoy learning in its current guise of "school". My eldest daughter thrived in the pandemic - she was at home, she pushed herself (more than would have happened at school) and was able to mature beyond the system. She's not the only one. And it's not that kids don't "buy into" needing an education - they clearly do - it's that the current curriculum isn't fit for the modern day in terms of learning styles and what they will need to be successful later in life. * Teaching children to count the number of adverbial phrases or subordinate clauses they use in a text? * Understanding how carbon atoms are covalently bonded in graphene? * Memorising physics formulas or even dates of key events in history? We know it. They know it - these have limited use in every day life when they are older - and yet EVERYTHING they take from school will be determined by their ability to do these things. One grade - quantitative. Not the slightest qualitative recognition of their unique skill set, passions and so on. And all for a world which will be dominated by AI ! Rightly or wrongly, we're now in an era of 'instant'. This generation is NOT at fault for that, but they have grown up in it. Is it any wonder they have little appetite, or see much benefit of sitting in a classroom with people they don't like for 7 hours a day being droned at for an hour at a time. The system was set up for mass production, not the quality of learning- it's past its sell by date and they see this. Real learning - imho - should should focus on fundamental societal values, 'human skills', critical thinking and experiential learning driven by interest. Yes, yes, we need a basic level of literacy and numeracy, of course, but nobody can convince me there's a need to be good at solving quadratic equations and I *specialised* in maths during my teacher training... Rather than point the finger at young people for absenteeism we should be creatively trying to address it. Listening to them would be a good starting point. Sorry for the lengthy post - it's something that has been grinding my gears as an educator for YEARS!
It's interesting that many states are inverted from K-12 and higher educations. The northeast seems to do well with K-12 while not so well in higher education.
I agree with everything Davis has said here. Our culture over the last 10-15 years has become increasingly individual and much less conforming. For responsible people, this can and should be a good thing. But for the irresponsible, self-centered, and mentally unstable I think it is a terrible thing. I don’t think that this is a political issue. Both sides have their kooks. But the kooks need to be taken over to go sit off to the side on the couch with Mohammad, Jugdesh, and Sydney, not elected to public office. This is a two way street and neither side can deny that their own whackos have far too much influence on their policies. While I do know that pubic school systems have issues(what organization does not?), I believe that the public’s expectations are not in line with reality. Public schools have to serve everyone. You cannot expect that one organization can be everything to everybody. Each public school has to take care of all children from those of helicopter parents who expect prep school curriculums to the parents who dump their kids off as early and pick them up as late as possible so they can do nothing productive all day long. Along with these two extremes you have every possible situation in between. Schools with good principals almost always do a great job with the children who show up on time, have already had breakfast, have done their homework, and know that they are expected to behave and learn. Are there bad principals and teachers? Absolutely. Just as there are bad accountants, nurses, doctors, and auto mechanics. But having observed Mrs Aging work in education for 35 years I believe that most of our education “systems” issues start and end with the parents.
The Democrats deliberately lowered SAT scores with their open borders policies. When you look at PISA test scores by race Americans do surprisingly well. I
What I'm sure a bunch of people here don't know is that education used to also be a way of maintaining the social order that the right wing desperately wants to reintroduce. Keep the masses especially minorities and lower class kids from having access to degree programs so that only upper class white males can run everything.
You decided to pick and choose a single data point that gives you the answer you want. Not me. I provided a much more broad look at the topic.
No, I didn't notice that. Can you point to a Transgender story hour that took place in schools? What does any of what you suggest have to do with the pandemic?
The northeast is not so well in higher education? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking Ivies, Villanova, G'town, Temple, MIT, NYU, RIT, BC, Boston U, UConn . . . . there's no shortage of excellent universities in the northeast.
I don’t know what Friedman said about education (he personally spent years getting degrees from prestigious universities). He did say that illegal immigration from Mexico was a benefit to the Unites States and the illegal immigrants. Do you agree with him?
One thing the article mentioned (if you read it) is that digitizing education has made it easier blow off class. I found this to be true at the secondary level. Obviously, the pandemic accelerated this progression. “Just check Google classroom” is a poor replacement for actual teaching and learning. Way too much screen time at school. I tried to avoid using it too much, especially in AP. Certainly there are times where Chromebooks are a valuable tool but I think that we’ve become too dependent on them. Also, online textbooks suck. In some cases, districts/countries are moving away from them. Do students learn better with textbooks? Books trump screens when it comes to reading comprehension, as XXXX News reported. A new meta-analysis of the link between leisure reading and comprehension confirms previous findings that printed material beats digital content, finding that print is six times better at boosting comprehension skills. Dec 14, 2023
No doubt about screen time. Yesterday I sat in my office staring at my laptop for the majority of the workday and at the end my eyes looked like I was stoned to the bejeesus bill. When today's kids reach 30, they're probably gonna be all . . . E-texts are indeed a problem, too. Our uni is pushing to go 100% E-text, so they can charge a fee and make the $ that would otherwise go to the bookstore or external vendors. There has been a great deal of pushback from faculty and students, which seems to be pausing things.
Observations without any research… Education is shifting. we moved from an industrial age, to an information, and into a knowledge age. The knowledge age appears to be quickly eroding since knowledge (i.e. knowing stuff) is viewed as losing relevance with the hardware technology <—internet of things —> information <—LLM—> general AI. Education in the US, to be competitive with the likes of China and India has to move back towards ethics, philosophy, and reasoning.
