Another school finds standardized tests
- Thread starter GrimReaper
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Required reading creates stress on students and contributes to mental health issues.An interesting article from the same area code.
I Don’t Know Why Everyone’s in Denial About College Students Who Can’t Do the Reading
These kids aren’t lazy. We’re failing them.slate.com
We still have standards; they are just low.
The real point of the article is about how intrusive and crippling smartphone usage can be.
Somewhat related, but I was perusing Reddit the other day and came across a thread with “Tryna” in the title instead of “Trying to”. What kind of a$$hole types “Tryna”? “Trying to” is so much more difficult. Total douche.
Nicely crafted.I blame Prince. (After a while, “Prince” was even too much for him.)
I am not surprised at all. We’ve been passing kids through the system for at least the last 10 years and with the rise of online education from high schools since Covid there’s very little actual reading being done during the school day. Students are given assignments virtually and watch videos rather than read About the topic.An interesting article from the same area code.
I Don’t Know Why Everyone’s in Denial About College Students Who Can’t Do the Reading
These kids aren’t lazy. We’re failing them.
Add to the fact that in certain districts, they think teaching reading and using proper grammar is racist, it’s just easier for the school system to avoid doing it.
I see this even in my math classes though my calculus kids generally don’t have many issues, but my AP statistics classes which require much more contextual writing leave a lot to be desired. Not just reading ability, but spelling and reading comprehension is way down.
And yet no matter how much data those in education have that say this, they still allow kids to use their phones throughout the school day.
Teachers have their own class rules that require students to put their phones away but when a student refuses and administration does not back the teacher, because they say, well, there’s no official school rule on that, then that just leads to every kid using their phone.
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Me too, I live in one where theres always people protesting that we should not be teaching kids proper grammar or spelling.
Kotsko is, IMO, a bit "out there" on some topics. that said, there are some valid topics discussed within that piece.
Critical analysis is, of course, required to dig deep enough to start to compose remedies and improvements.
Echoing and building off of earlier comments: In broad strokes, the movement away from the foundation of the "Three Rs" (that is, of course, an oversimplification) and towards the SEL, DEI, CRT foundation for public education has ****ed public education at a rate that is almost unimaginable.
Critical analysis is, of course, required to dig deep enough to start to compose remedies and improvements.
Echoing and building off of earlier comments: In broad strokes, the movement away from the foundation of the "Three Rs" (that is, of course, an oversimplification) and towards the SEL, DEI, CRT foundation for public education has ****ed public education at a rate that is almost unimaginable.
In certain districts there are objections to trying to teach anything and they have nothing to do with race. Just give the kids an A so that they can feel good about themselves.
X 1,000,000
Amen
And in just the last few years that movement has swollen up like Barry Bonds on steroids.
Goes beyond that. Some parents believe it will give their children a better change to be admitted to highly selective schools (what they fail to grasp about a 3% admit rate at Harvard and 4% at Yale is beyond me). Or how long do folks believe it will take an admissions department to catch on that everyone from a certain high school has an all-A transcript, particularly when dozens more from that high school are applying?
@Bison13 works in my local school district and for a long time it really was a jewel in the public school crown. He’s privy to the nitty gritty in a way I’m not (my kids are a decade out of high school) and it’s not good to see him venting the way he has been lately. Add this to the fact that our superintendent has recently resigned over a snafu that was totally avoidable and the fallout entirely predictable. Parents are up in arms.
Absolutely. I sat in a math department meeting last month where they analyzed data at the school county and state level for their math students. The data was lower at the school level than other nearby schools that do not have as high of AP scores or SAT scores. Ultimately what they resolved is that the teachers in those other schools were not just giving kids a D to push them through but rather they were giving Cs.
The administration made the decision that maybe that school should do the same. So instead of trying to say that the other school was inflating grades too much, they just decided they wanted to do the same.
If only the public knew how many friends of hers that she hired to upper level administrative positions at the board….
The principal who is the main issue in all of this was a coworker of hers when they were working at the same middle school.
School at which my wife teaches just jacked up the GPs for all advanced level (I believe there can be as many as three) courses. Rationale was that other districts have higher GPs which gives their students an advantage in college admissions, despite being told that colleges pay little or no attention to the numeric weight. Head of guidance received more than one phone call from admissions directors along the lines of "wtf are you people doing? We thought that your district had some integrity, but now you're just like everyone else."
Off on a tangent, but it’s a good story. Back in our district’s heyday our superintendent was the highest paid in the country, very highly regarded. He grew up in Allen County, KS, as did my mother-in-law, I’d say 20 years apart. Both did really well, my mother in law was a biologist, the world’s expert on snail respiration, and she had a nice career teaching at the old MacMurray College, my father in law taught with her, from Quincy, he was into salamanders. Anyway, my wife was a local PTA prez and she sat down to lunch with the guy and of course she brings up Allen County, and he said that there were six in his hs graduating class and one of them was Miss America. In regards to how this fits into the thread, draw your own conclusions
It’s unconscionable that people‘s tax dollars are funding such utter bullsh|t.
One of the reasons I got admitted to main campus as a freshman was because my high school had some of the toughest grading standards in the state. You had to get a 95% to get an A and you had to get a 66%. To pass. Plus they didn’t do weighted grading where even if you took an AP or dual enrollment class the highest you could get is a 4.0.
We now have school systems that are calling regular English nine for all freshmen an honors course in hopes of jacking up their GPA’s. They tried to do that with algebra one until enough people fought back, telling them that algebra one was really an eighth grade math class, and the kids that were taking it in ninth grade were already a year behind.
Basically 2/3 of our regular curriculum is now called honors. We’ve got kids in there that IQ of 80 and can barely read at a second grade level but they’re in an honors class because that’s now the lowest level of biology or chemistry. The courses are so watered down now that I brag that I haven’t taken physics in 25 years but I would still get the highest grade in honors physics at our school. very few kids understand any of the energy formulations and conservation of energy blows their mind.
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Don't know what anyone thinks they're accomplishing. Takes very little time for admissions departments to recognize what's going on. And it's not as if the admission departments look the other way and ignore it.
Fixed. I would think that this would work just fine for around 60%-70% of the schools out there nowadays. Seems as if the enrollment numbers crunch is a real thing.
Yup that’s the thing, they’re actually hurting some of the kids because colleges will see that these grades are inflated and then the kids that actually deserve to go there or get some scholarship money eventually won’t be admitted or get any of the money they should.
The public school systems just wanna brag about the average GPA of their graduating seniors. Plus, they also tell their top kids to apply to as many schools as they can. They want their best kids applying and getting as much scholarship money offers as they can even if it’s a school they have no intention of going to. That way at graduation they can say our school had $10 million in scholarship offers from this senior class.
When you say "colleges pay little to no attention to the numeric weight," what, exactly are you saying? Are you claiming colleges would rather see a 4.0 taking College Prep courses than a 3.8 in Honors or AP courses?
No. Different high schools assign different weights to ostensibly the same level. School X gives 4.5 points for an A in an honors course, while School Y gives 4.3. College admissions at any school worth it's salt ignore the high school weights and assign their own. Many will assign additional weight based on their evaluation of the rigor of the particular high school.
Im curious why money matters though. Is it because those parents can pay for prep courses, or is it because them having money is a greater indicator they’re going to understand and instill in their children what needs done to succeed?
Reminds me of the stat about how children who are read to as toddlers are X% more likely to go to college or what have you. It’s not the reading that’s doing it, it’s that it shows parent who give a crap.
I think it's some combination of living in better zip codes = better public schools, other rich folks with money sending kids to private schools, paying for academic support (tutoring, etc.), wealthier parents caring more about education, etc. Things that poorer families are concerned about (food, safety, employment, proper clothing, etc.) aren't an issue.
It's also an excuse. My parents grew up in poverty (no central heat in the house, less than a weeks' worth of clothes, etc.); they both graduated high school, but neither had a had a chance to go to college. My dad worked in factories until he learned auto mechanics and my mom was a retail salesclerk. Despite that, they stressed education as way to a better life and encouraged their kids to do well academically. It worked. The thing is that their backgrounds and approach were anything but uncommon in the area where I grew up. Many children of parents who came from nothing earned college and advanced degrees and lived lives their parents could only dream about. Yes, there were kids from poor families that phoned in school and ended up with few options, but the issue wasn't money, it was approach, effort, and believing or not believing they could.
However you frame it, it’s still the best predictor of success on standardized tests - not the be all end all.
There are many valid arguments to be made that family wealth correlates with higher standardized tests scores (though that is a difficult parameter to isolate).
That is an interesting topic of discussion vav society at large, and public (K-12) education. i think it is an important societal discussion, FWIW.
But that isn't the question facing Higher Ed. The question facing Higher Ed is how do we predict success in Higher Ed. That, clearly is a question wherein "performance on Standardized test Scores" is answer #1.
It is neither the role of Higher Ed - nor within their purview to effect - the question of what makes a student prepared (in their pre-Higher Ed life) for success once entering Higher Ed. Filling college classrooms with those less prepared and less likely to be successful, does not serve societal interest. Quite the opposite.
That is an interesting topic of discussion vav society at large, and public (K-12) education. i think it is an important societal discussion, FWIW.
But that isn't the question facing Higher Ed. The question facing Higher Ed is how do we predict success in Higher Ed. That, clearly is a question wherein "performance on Standardized test Scores" is answer #1.
It is neither the role of Higher Ed - nor within their purview to effect - the question of what makes a student prepared (in their pre-Higher Ed life) for success once entering Higher Ed. Filling college classrooms with those less prepared and less likely to be successful, does not serve societal interest. Quite the opposite.
True, but as you alluded in an earlier post, family income is a catchall for a number of factors. So which one is it, or which one is the major contributor? Believe if we wash then out we might find that it's not income related at all i.e. it can be replicated in families that re not at high income levels.
Whatever it is appears to occur at a higher frequency with wealthier families - my guess is it’s parental involvement/interest….
Money helps put you wherever you want to be. That might mean a better town with better schools (and better influences around them). That may be more support ... whether that's tutoring, extra schooling (the big thing around here for math is enrolling your kids in "Russian math" schools, which you attend in addition to your normal schooling). That may be a private school (huge around here, even though the public schools are great and these same people pay out the nose for a better zip code). That may be better test prep.
There's definitely a benefit to having more intelligent, successful parents who stress academics and learning, but even the folks who aren't that traditionally academically "bright" but who made money (and you can tell their kids aren't the brightest bulbs, nor did the parents stress education/learning) are able to get their kids into better situations (private schools ... often via being good at sports).
We could have enrolled our kids in private schools (we still might), but they've been successful and comfortable in their public schools ... and we have the ability to get them the very best test prep for their standardized tests ... and they're doing things like attending classes at Ivy League schools during the summer to get ahead so that we feel they aren't missing out too much on what the private school kids are getting. Meanwhile, a few towns over, those kids have a much tougher road
