The decade-long "learning recession"

[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 absolutely agree that edtech has made the problem much, much worse. But you’d be shocked by how many K and 1st grade kids go to bed with an iPad or phone. I’m a teacher and I ask about their bedtime routines.

[Anonymous]

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

In ES, at least in Virginia, the technology enhanced items on the current state tests have made it much harder than the multiple choice tests we used years ago. I absolutely agree that student performance is in the toilet, but compar8ng test scores from 20 years ago to today in VA is not apples to apples.

[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 absolutely agree that edtech has made the problem much, much worse. But you’d be shocked by how many K and 1st grade kids go to bed with an iPad or phone. I’m a teacher and I ask about their bedtime routines.

It would be much easier to get rid of the devices if the school wasn't assigning homework on them. I have strict rules but the kids are always telling me they have to check this or that or do something in some app. I want no screens during the week but the schools undermine me every step of the way.

[Anonymous]

we’re moving out of US to remove ourselves from the overarching and overall mediocracy and subpar American education

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is in the homes too. Everyone is addicted to tech and it shows in parenting. Only the most egregious behavior gets parents off of their phones when it is home time, so the most egregious behavior is what kids learn and then schools have to unteach the unruly attention seeking behaviors. Sure, this may not be YOU (but if you look at your phone when you drive, it probably is), but it is a LOT of parents.

[Anonymous]

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

Absolutely.

[Anonymous]

The move away from teaching phonics is a major issue as well. An entire generation of kids who can’t read well.

[Anonymous]

Too many computers and devices in the classroom. Young kids don't need these to learn, and will be able to catch up in high school. The Internet, social media, and games are a huge distraction.

[Anonymous]

Boaler at Stanford is the Lucy Calkins for math instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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 absolutely agree that edtech has made the problem much, much worse. But you’d be shocked by how many K and 1st grade kids go to bed with an iPad or phone. I’m a teacher and I ask about their bedtime routines.

It would be much easier to get rid of the devices if the school wasn't assigning homework on them. I have strict rules but the kids are always telling me they have to check this or that or do something in some app. I want no screens during the week but the schools undermine me every step of the way.

+1
We wanted to restrict screens at home, but all their HW had to be done online. It was maddening. We could have said, "not screens during the week," except that they had HW every night of the week on the screens!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Yep!

[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.

You cannot compare tv watching to smartphones and iPads. They are not remotely the same experience.

[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.

You cannot compare tv watching to smartphones and iPads. They are not remotely the same experience.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The move away from teaching phonics is a major issue as well. An entire generation of kids who can’t read well.

That started in 2000 and ended around 2020 ish in this area so it isn’t just Lucy Caulkins.

It is tech. Tech is bad in schools and shouldn’t be used very much, but teachers can’t teach kids basic social skills all day long. Parents have to parent and get off their phones while doing so. It is a wicked spiral. Once again, the easy people to blame aren’t the tech companies for being evil and designing addiction into their systems. It isn’t Zuckerberg and Musk you are aiming the criticism at, it is the female dominated teaching force. Because they are easier to blame for being “lazy” and “relying on tech.” Get a clue and fight the right battle

[Anonymous]

The common core curriculum is not great. We have been overseas frequently for work and the private schools with a British curriculum are almost always more rigorous than ones with an American curriculum that typically follows common core.