OT: Inflation
- Thread starter Jeffreauxdawg
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I’m gonna guess the people doing the studies came up with the idea. It’s not a red/blue thing. It’s a working parents want free child care thing.
Oh, an opinion based on a total guess?
Sounds like you have it all figured out then.
That's a nice ancillary benefit, but yes - really - early childhood education has an extremely high correlation to future success.
The ACT testing standard hasn’t changed… But many people have discovered that if your child has any type of attentive disorder, you can take ACT sections for hours at a time. I don’t know much about this, but I know some who made 30+ because they “have ADHD” and received 2+ hours for each section. You can also super score now meaning you keep the highest section score from all individual ACTs"- ACT test scores still show how prepared for college level work and how well students have understood core high school classwork."
Asking because I don't know. Has the ACT test been made more difficult , less difficult or stayed the same over the last several decades ?
Edited: Well found out everything I ever wanted to know about the ACT including the fact that it is just as difficult as it has been.
Average ACT Score | BestColleges
Find the average ACT score range and more statistics — broken down by year, state, race/ethnicity, and gender — in our report.www.bestcolleges.com
Is it the early public education or parents active in their child’s education from an early age that leads to success?
You beat me to it. If you don't like ChatGPT, you can install your chosen AI program.
ETA: Luckily, my children are now grown. I pity anyone who has school-age children in this day and screwed up age.
....and then there's that 400lb gorilla in the corner......the deterioration of the "traditional family".
This post reads like a Business Insider or Forbes article from 2021.
Anyways, kudos on managing to fit CRT into the conversation.
Man, that boogeyman is a blast from the past. Haha, the hysyerics were everywhere...and it seemed like almost none of the examples were of CRT. Heck, it seemed like most screaming loudest didn't even understand CRT and used it as a blanket to air grievances about a ton of other things.
You can adjust for income, race, zip, etc and it's still an extremely strong correlation. Obviously, parents active in a kid's education is going to give even more of a slingshot.
Even the mere presence of books in a 3 year old's home produces more positive outcomes- which is why Dolly Parton's Imagination Library might just be my favorite charity out there.
Poopops are you mad you had to hand out too many $20s?
BTW I owe you a delivery.
My oldest has adhd, it's well documented, and she chose to not pursue extended time for the ACT.
But I looked into it on my own and the documentation needed to even request extended time was significantly more than just telling the ACT you 'have adhd'. Actual medical documentation was required and also be on file with the school district.
Maybe it's done differently in my state even though it's a national test.
...or maybe it isn't how you claim.
Oh, and I was told the reading portion would likely be 50% more time. Nobody mentioned over 2 hours per section.
No doubt education is beneficial, but is it the government offering the education, or the parents caring about the education. It’s basically the reverse of the argument that giving your kid a non-traditional name leads to failure. Maybe it’s the parents making bad choices that leads to kids failing in life at a higher rate than the kids of parents who make good choices.
Parents matter. Also, the government is just... us. And that collective "us" can make good choices and bad choices.
My experience with my kids in public school was that the majority of the “us” don’t care about anything other than someone taking care of their kids during the day so they don’t have to. Yes, I’m probably jaded by Memphis schools. I hope you have a better experience.
Average GPA of Harvard grads in 1965 was 2.8.
Average GPA of Harvard grads in 2023 was 3.98.
Average GPA of Harvard grads in 2023 was 3.98.
@PooPopsBaldHead sucks. He knows I’m not mature enough to refrain from trying to solve the world’s problems in these threads. Well played, di*k. **
I’m late to the party but just observations I’ve made as my daughters have gone through public school. They are in the 6th grade now so just entering middle school so I can really only give perspective on what I’ve seen to this point. Also I went to a private school from 1-12 that has pretty high standards so I do compare a little to what I did compared to them now.
I hate state testing or at least the way it’s presented now and a litmus test for each school. It puts a ton of pressure on the teachers BUT it makes them teach to the test. It takes a lot of the freedom teachers have to teach the way they want.
They barely have homework. Like I’m talking 20 minutes tops. I know that may change but I’ve been kinda shocked at how little they have to do outside of class. When I was in school I had at least 2 hours of homework when I was in 6th grade. It’s like night and day different.
Grading is so different too and they absolutely inflate grades.
I do feel like they have learned some things earlier now than what I did 30 years ago. They’re doing a lot more algebra in 6th grade that I really didn’t start learning until midway of 7th grade. Doing more chemistry and physics too.
just a few things I’ve noticed
I hate state testing or at least the way it’s presented now and a litmus test for each school. It puts a ton of pressure on the teachers BUT it makes them teach to the test. It takes a lot of the freedom teachers have to teach the way they want.
They barely have homework. Like I’m talking 20 minutes tops. I know that may change but I’ve been kinda shocked at how little they have to do outside of class. When I was in school I had at least 2 hours of homework when I was in 6th grade. It’s like night and day different.
Grading is so different too and they absolutely inflate grades.
I do feel like they have learned some things earlier now than what I did 30 years ago. They’re doing a lot more algebra in 6th grade that I really didn’t start learning until midway of 7th grade. Doing more chemistry and physics too.
just a few things I’ve noticed
Family literacy environment - seeing Dad actually read, having a newspaper around, actual books on the shelf instead of nicknacks, is one of the most reliable predictors of a child's personal and professional success there is. Kids from a high literacy environment read earlier and better, show better problem solving ability, are more cognitively adaptable in new situations, more likely to complete high school, more likely to seek higher education, the list goes on and on about the good stuff that family literacy variable is correlated with.
Dolly Parton's foundation has distributed 265 million books, during a time in a child's life when they have the greatest impact, targeting homes with low family literacy rates. I teach at a University in East TN. Most of my first generation college students were raised on Dolly Parton's books, and I have no doubt she's a big part of the reason I'm seeing them in my college classroom. Their kids are, in turn, going to be raised in a high family literacy environment, extending the impact of Ms Dolly's work. That lady is a saint.
Organizations often reward employees for doing precisely what they tell them to.
Yes it is systemic and societal if you are talking about kids with 2 parents doing better than kids with one or none. It’s really sad.
That’s the beauty of a charter and private school. If the parent/teacher doesn’t like the perceived value, they can go somewhere else.
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Yep. Cut the budget by 30%. Give that money back to the bottom 80% of tax payers.
divide the remaining 70% up amongst the states based on students per capita.
You could probably cut it a lot more than 30%.
I bet this leads to far better outcomes**********************************************************************************************************
Meh that’s partially true.
I learned a lot in 9-12 that helped me in college (mechanical engineering), but there should be cutoff. Below a certain proficiency and it you should be mandatory to take certain tech classes. Should be optional to take all tech classes if wanted.
Yep. This has been standard procedure with disability support services at schools and colleges.
An example: A dyslexic student in a class I taught was lawfully granted 50 percent additional time to take exams and quizzes once documentation was submitted.
Yea, I think that is a cautionary tale about confounding variables that a lot of people missed, particularly with the data that shows actually reading to the kids doesn't matter, just having the books there does.
I think may favorite non-smart *** approach to it I've heard is to ask, if you want to bet on a young child being a good reader later on, would you bet on the child with parents who like to read and do read regularly and have a lot of books in the house that they've read, but don't necessarily read to the child? Or on a child with parents who don't like to read and don't read, except that they read to their child fairly regularly from the only books in the house, which are children's books there to be read to the child?
I may have done a poor job explaining it, but I assure you the research is legit and peer reviewed. Gravity is just a theory, as I'm sure you're aware.
I mean, it'd hard to do worse than what we've been doing. I know I've said it a lot on here, but Mississippi is shooting up the ranks in education by pursuing ground breaking ideas like, teaching phonetics and making sure students can read before they leave third grade so the inability to read doesn't doom their learning in later grades.
Do we have mass abandonment of things that work across the country without a federal Department of Education to facilitate it? That's a legit question. The universities are certainly capable of spreading intellectual rot so maybe the Dep of Ed wasn't necessary.
I sent my kids to private school and I have no regrets. A Friend of mine, who sent his kid to public school, showed me a note that came home from his Sons ENGLISH teacher. It said, and I quote, “Edward beez not turning in his homework”. This was about 25 years ago so I can’t say for sure what the situation is currently, but I hear enough stories to think that things probably haven’t changed a whole lot. My grandkids go to private school and I am amazed by some of the things they are learning very early these days. Your mileage may vary in other parts of the State. I couldn’t say one way or the other.
"- ACT test scores still show how prepared for college level work and how well students have understood core high school classwork."
Asking because I don't know. Has the ACT test been made more difficult , less difficult or stayed the same over the last several decades ?
Edited: Well found out everything I ever wanted to know about the ACT including the fact that it is just as difficult as it has been.
Average ACT Score | BestColleges
Find the average ACT score range and more statistics — broken down by year, state, race/ethnicity, and gender — in our report.
I'm curious how much test prep services/classes have helped increase these scores? I took an 80 hour prep course on the GMAT 15 years or so after I took the ACT in high school. I beat my practice test by 50 or so points and ended up in the top 10% or so of GMAT test takers.
I have to think that had I prepped anything close to that for the ACT I would have ended up several points higher than I made by rolling into the testing center hungover from an all nighter as a high school junior with zero prep.
They may "fail" but they for sure can get promoted to the next grade anyway for a variety of dumb reasons. I'm not sure if private schools are any better in that you are directly compensating the school to educate your kid. I suspect that if you have enough money, you can make things happen. I know that is the case in sports, both public and private.
Yeah, prep definitely helps for ACT score- after having gone thru the process of finding which test prep process was best, I am very comfortable saying test prep helps improve scores. Test prep and practice tests(which are available for free too, fwiw).
I see people cite ACT scores in their town/school as evidence of grade/test inflation, and wonder what they really want as an alternative though. Do they seriously want kids to prepare less for the test?
Also, ACT scores have dropped a touch in recent years, and also havent really increased a bunch in aggregate over the last few decades, so it seems like there are just a lot more kids doing really well and more doing poorly...or its a case of social media just making it easier to push the narrative of a lot of kids are scoring high.