Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students

Discussion in 'Education' started by perdidochas, Oct 30, 2019.

  1. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    https://www.usnews.com/news/educati...ores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students

    Most interesting comment in this article:

    My answer: NCLB was passed in 2001. It really didn't start to get into place for a few years. My educated guess is that had not NCLB been passed, progress would have been better. NCLB solidified the whole minimalist education model, where students are primarily just taught reading and math to take a standardized test. This minimal education has resulted in stagnation, and a total disdain for learning by most students.
     
    Adfundum likes this.
  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I wonder how the figures would look if they were adjusted for Asian background students.

    Probably would have been no overall improvement in average math scores at all.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  3. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Prejudice guides your unsupported speculation.
     
  4. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You know I'm probably right though.
     
  5. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't. I know that you are probably a racist though.
     
  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Care to make any hypothesis on why national test scores seem to be going down across the board?
     
  7. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    They are really just stagnant. Two years of a slight reduction is not really "going down across the board." What disturbs me is that we were on a positive trend until NCLB hit, then we stagnated.
     
  8. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    Where is the middle finger button?

    I am so sick of people accusing others of racism.

    If the facts are racist it's not racism to point out the facts..

    For instance most gun related murder is young black men shooting other young black men..

    There I'm a racist and ageist and a sexist.
    And i am right!
     
  9. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    IMO, all these education initiatives that become mandates clog the arteries of good education. It becomes so monotonous that students lose interest. This movement towards centralized education focuses more on being able to collect data uniformly than about having an educated public that doesn't see learning as a boring but necessary pain in the behind. In other words, if the focus is on data collection, then why would students care about achievement?
     
  10. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Why would it be any kind of "pain in the behind"?
     
  11. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Because that is one way to measure achievement.
     
  12. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Student test in the upper half of all nations it seems good enough.
     
  13. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Because the required test prep and the overall focus on the test turns education into binge and purge learning that is quickly forgotten. Students see it as monotonous and pointless. Education should be about learning to understand the world, not generating test scores for patting principals on the back. Tests are not interesting. Obsessive focus on testing quickly gets to be quite boring.

    The standardized, one-size-fits-all approach is a poor way to measure, and definitely not the only way. The reality is that those scores tell us little about what students actually know. Students are aware of certain strategies for passing tests that really don't require much knowledge of a subject. For those who aren't going to college, the tests mean almost nothing. For those going to college, the test is important only for entrance, and cheating is more common that we like to think. When we started testing on laptops, students quickly found ways to get around filters and firewalls. Not sure how they did that, but they may have connected a phone to a cell tower and set up wifi sharing. We collected phones and other devices before the test. You'd be amazed at how many have second phones used for turning in to teachers before testing. You'd be amazed at how many students still rely on the old "C" rule to pass the test (yes, it still works if you know a certain strategy).
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2019

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