The decade-long "learning recession"

[Anonymous]

A NYTimes report describes how math and reading scores are down in large majorities of districts nationwide including the most affluent districts.

The article points to the end of NCLB and the rise of smartphones and social media. Where is the urgency to address this?

“There are a lot of people in affluent districts who think things are just fine, who have seen big losses over time,” said Professor Kane, the lead author of the report.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iFA.Ig-Y.5zgcVCTi1CMl&smid=nytcore-android-share

[Anonymous]

It's not just smart phones and social media. A lot of these losses are happening among elementary age kids who don't have access to either. But the reliance on Ed Tech to teach math and reading is a big problem. Blaming screens at home doesn't make sense because kids have been watching screens at home for decades, that's not something that started in 2015.

What shifted for kids is they went from mostly using books, paper, and pencil in the classroom to using 1:1 devices and ed tech software. That's true for kids who were get zero screen time at home, and it's true for kids who get hours of screen time at home every day.

Go back to physical books, handwriting, and working out math problems with pencil and paper. Studies show that children retain information better and longer when they learn it from physical media instead of digitally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just smart phones and social media. A lot of these losses are happening among elementary age kids who don't have access to either. But the reliance on Ed Tech to teach math and reading is a big problem. Blaming screens at home doesn't make sense because kids have been watching screens at home for decades, that's not something that started in 2015.

What shifted for kids is they went from mostly using books, paper, and pencil in the classroom to using 1:1 devices and ed tech software. That's true for kids who were get zero screen time at home, and it's true for kids who get hours of screen time at home every day.

Go back to physical books, handwriting, and working out math problems with pencil and paper. Studies show that children retain information better and longer when they learn it from physical media instead of digitally.

OP

I completely agree with you and am so discouraged by the edtech grift

[Anonymous]

Yep using an app to do math and having either multiple choice or getting the chance to do a lesson over and over, with the same questions, they eventually just remember the answer and pass the lesson. But they can't actually solve a problem on their own. I see what my kids are doing.

[Anonymous]

https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/take-action

Ive joined this group in the hopes of making a chapter in my district.

[Anonymous]

More data here: https://edopportunity.org/trends/

As the article notes, declines have occured for all groups, but the largest declines were for the most disadvantaged students, who were already the farthest behind. For them, a lot of the issue is truancy: Fewer hours in school means less learning.

[Anonymous]

Attuned parents have been saying this for the entire decade, and especially in the most affluent districts we have been scorned and downplayed. Those with means have helped their kids however they can (parent hands-on instruction, tutoring, private school) and the slightly mean rallying cry has been "You can't expect school to be the only place to educate your children you idiot," but those without time, know-how, money, or energy have kids getting progressively left behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More data here: https://edopportunity.org/trends/

As the article notes, declines have occured for all groups, but the largest declines were for the most disadvantaged students, who were already the farthest behind. For them, a lot of the issue is truancy: Fewer hours in school means less learning.

Yes but when school feels utterly pointless because it's largely "educational" web pages instead of person-to-person interaction, why?

Stumbled on this article lambasting iReady specifically, but it applies to basically all ed tech. My kid who spent 7 long years doing iReady before moving to private school was dying laughing over the accuracy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/iready-school-software-faces-parent-teacher-student-fury-rcna342850

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just smart phones and social media. A lot of these losses are happening among elementary age kids who don't have access to either. But the reliance on Ed Tech to teach math and reading is a big problem. Blaming screens at home doesn't make sense because kids have been watching screens at home for decades, that's not something that started in 2015.

What shifted for kids is they went from mostly using books, paper, and pencil in the classroom to using 1:1 devices and ed tech software. That's true for kids who were get zero screen time at home, and it's true for kids who get hours of screen time at home every day.

Go back to physical books, handwriting, and working out math problems with pencil and paper. Studies show that children retain information better and longer when they learn it from physical media instead of digitally.

I think one of the problems is that there's many causes of this all happening at once and it's hard to figure out what to do with all of them.

You're right it's not just smart phones, but lots of elementary schoolers are spending too much time at home on screens, screens that are appreciable different than the TVs and family computers we had growing up. Edtech is ALSO a huge issue, as is the fact that we spend years building around ineffective approaches to reading. The pandemic (and the spike in truancy that followed after we normalized not going to school) is also a factor though obviously not the only one since the problem both predates and postdates it.

I have no idea what the solution is, but the number of problems is seemingly endless.

[Anonymous]

People blamed pandemic shutdown but it was clearly happening years before that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not just smart phones and social media. A lot of these losses are happening among elementary age kids who don't have access to either. But the reliance on Ed Tech to teach math and reading is a big problem. Blaming screens at home doesn't make sense because kids have been watching screens at home for decades, that's not something that started in 2015.

What shifted for kids is they went from mostly using books, paper, and pencil in the classroom to using 1:1 devices and ed tech software. That's true for kids who were get zero screen time at home, and it's true for kids who get hours of screen time at home every day.

Go back to physical books, handwriting, and working out math problems with pencil and paper. Studies show that children retain information better and longer when they learn it from physical media instead of digitally.

I think one of the problems is that there's many causes of this all happening at once and it's hard to figure out what to do with all of them.

You're right it's not just smart phones, but lots of elementary schoolers are spending too much time at home on screens, screens that are appreciable different than the TVs and family computers we had growing up. Edtech is ALSO a huge issue, as is the fact that we spend years building around ineffective approaches to reading. The pandemic (and the spike in truancy that followed after we normalized not going to school) is also a factor though obviously not the only one since the problem both predates and postdates it.

I have no idea what the solution is, but the number of problems is seemingly endless.

I think you are wrong that the problems are "endless" or that the solution is unknowable.

Sure, some kids are getting lots of screen time at home, including on social media or apps like TikTok and Youtube with endless scroll and autoplay. That's an issue. But that's just some kids. And it's definitely also true that there have ALWAYS been parents making bad choices regarding screens or tech and their kids. Before social media and smart phones, it was video games and some kids being allowed to play repetitive, often violent, video games for hours on end. There are lots of bad parents.

But parenting is variable, and leads to variable results. Some kids don't have phones. They don't have access to TikTok. They don't get unlimited video games at home. But what this is showing is that *even these kids* are experiencing testing declines.

That indicates the problem is in schools, not in homes. If the problem is at home, you don't see trends that cross demographic and geographic divisions. That's what we see here.

Also, in terms of solutions, trying to change parenting is really hard. You can educate parents but you can't go and do it for them. There will always be parents making bad choices for their kids at home, you have to accept this.

But if we just look at Ed Tech in schools, how much time kids spend on devices in the classroom, and the replacement of physical learning media with devices and apps, this is remarkably easy to change. Just end the Ed Tech contracts, sell the devices, and go back to pencil and paper. The truth is that the Ed Tech revolution was greatly accelerated by Covid -- school rapidly adopted technology they'd been more slowly incorporating in order to pivot to "virtual school." That was a failed experiment and we can all see that now. So let's treat the current moment like a crisis just like we treated Covid like a crisis, and act with similar swiftness to undo this mistake. We don't even have to point fingers or lay blame, we can just recognize this didn't work and stop doing it.

[Anonymous]

There are too many problems in public schools to count. Tech is just one of them.

[Anonymous]

I think the problem is a system with no standards, no consequences for no work, pressure and coercion for teachers to grade inflation grade fix manipulation, as well as allowing crime, forbidding crime reports and firing teachers who follow the law.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if we’d get different results if standardized tests reverted to paper-based/scantron?

[Anonymous]

We moved here from Europe when the kids were in 5th and 6th grades respectively, and they started at Wood Acres and Pyle.

I was struck by the lack of agency given to teachers here.

For example, I was surprised that assignments were evaluated and graded based on rubriks, instead of the teacher having the leeway to give feedback based on each student's needs and weaknesses. Let's take writing: if the assignment was to write a thesis and back it up with evidence, the teacher didn't flag any other issues, like grammar or spelling or substance or flow. The kids could get an A on an essay that read like crap but that checked the box of "backed up the thesis with evidence."

Generally, you can tell by talking to teachers that they're just following orders from above and that they are so restrained by demands from parents ("I need to talk to you about my kid three times a week"), risk of scandal ("My kid says you wouldn't let them snack in class and I'm going to sue because they have diabetes"), budgetary constraints, time constraints. They seem to be just like factory workers moving wares along a conveyor belt.

And OMG the amount of bureaucracy in US schools. All the emails, parent evenings, standardized tests, questionnaires, busy work aka useless worksheets given to kids - it's a huge waste and drain on resources and morale.

There are many other issues of course but these are some of the issues that really stood out to me when we moved here.