Grade Inflation Sends AP Test Scores Soaring

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why college is so hard to get into and why students are so unprepared once they get there. They all get As and top scores. It means nothing.

I simply disagree with this. My kids worked hard and earned their AP scores; they are also doing very well in college — 100% prepared (more so than I ever was). It’s like kids can’t ever win today. If they earn straight A’s, everyone screams “grade inflation” without having any knowledge of how hard they worked. If a kid gets a 5 on an AP test, it’s grade inflation again. If they earn A’s in college, it’s also grade inflation. But I know my kids and they are hard-working and better prepared than people of my generation. The conversations I have with my kids are more well-informed, and they are excellent writers and critical thinkers. I just don’t get all this talk about kids being stupid, because they are not.

Good for you but it isn’t doing your kids any favors when they are all lumped together with students who have the same gpa but it’s from lax policies like retakes and no late penalties.

Just stop. The benchmark is whether someone knows the info by the end of the course. That's it. You don't get brownie point for knowing it in Nov vs May. If that's the system you want (so you can feed your ego), then advocate for CB to offer the tests earlier as an option. Doubt many want that. Or maybe your superstar kid can take the AP exam without taking the class (which is already an option to show you are superior to others). Otherwise, stop trying to one-up the other students by wanting credit for non-benchmark achievement. The benchmark is: what did you learn at the END of the course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why college is so hard to get into and why students are so unprepared once they get there. They all get As and top scores. It means nothing.

I simply disagree with this. My kids worked hard and earned their AP scores; they are also doing very well in college — 100% prepared (more so than I ever was). It’s like kids can’t ever win today. If they earn straight A’s, everyone screams “grade inflation” without having any knowledge of how hard they worked. If a kid gets a 5 on an AP test, it’s grade inflation again. If they earn A’s in college, it’s also grade inflation. But I know my kids and they are hard-working and better prepared than people of my generation. The conversations I have with my kids are more well-informed, and they are excellent writers and critical thinkers. I just don’t get all this talk about kids being stupid, because they are not.

You miss the point. If your kids are hard workers and are doing well, good for them. The problem is that the majority of the grades are inflated and as a whole, students are definitely not as prepared for college as they used to.

I don’t get that students aren’t as prepared for college as they used to. What’s your evidence? Are flunk rates higher? Graduation rates lower? Sorry, we can’t just live on DCUM anecdotes.

I recall having many useless teachers back in HS that phoned it in. I think people forget their own Hs years.

Agree. While my kids don't do a lot of homework, they are well-prepared for college (FCPS HS). My kids aren't even super achievers. But somehow, they are learning. I know they are prepared for college because one is now a college sophomore, and the other has taken 3 college classes during summer (now a rising HS senior).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why college is so hard to get into and why students are so unprepared once they get there. They all get As and top scores. It means nothing.

I simply disagree with this. My kids worked hard and earned their AP scores; they are also doing very well in college — 100% prepared (more so than I ever was). It’s like kids can’t ever win today. If they earn straight A’s, everyone screams “grade inflation” without having any knowledge of how hard they worked. If a kid gets a 5 on an AP test, it’s grade inflation again. If they earn A’s in college, it’s also grade inflation. But I know my kids and they are hard-working and better prepared than people of my generation. The conversations I have with my kids are more well-informed, and they are excellent writers and critical thinkers. I just don’t get all this talk about kids being stupid, because they are not.

Good for you but it isn’t doing your kids any favors when they are all lumped together with students who have the same gpa but it’s from lax policies like retakes and no late penalties.

Just stop. The benchmark is whether someone knows the info by the end of the course. That's it. You don't get brownie point for knowing it in Nov vs May. If that's the system you want (so you can feed your ego), then advocate for CB to offer the tests earlier as an option. Doubt many want that. Or maybe your superstar kid can take the AP exam without taking the class (which is already an option to show you are superior to others). Otherwise, stop trying to one-up the other students by wanting credit for non-benchmark achievement. The benchmark is: what did you learn at the END of the course.

You just stop. The benchmarks have been lowered, the students have not gotten smarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

This is so bizarre to me. Can I ask what type of institution you teach at? Are you teaching elite students, average kids, kids that the school knew needed extra supports? I was a high achieving HS student as was my husband. We are continually shocked by how much more prepared our children are in math and science at least than we were. And our kids are not by any means unusual in their peer group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

This is so bizarre to me. Can I ask what type of institution you teach at? Are you teaching elite students, average kids, kids that the school knew needed extra supports? I was a high achieving HS student as was my husband. We are continually shocked by how much more prepared our children are in math and science at least than we were. And our kids are not by any means unusual in their peer group.

This is a fairly selective university. Yes that is my experience as well that the high achieving kids are accomplishing much more than before, but that the distribution now includes a small number of students who struggle far more than before. I am not a counselor, so I cannot actually tell if the struggle is due to lack of preparedness or poor mental health. But it is very difficult to prepare a single course with a single grading scale when some of the class has already covered college level material in high school and some of the class is so far behind that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

I could look up the data…but I’m not the one claiming kids are under prepared.

You work in Academia…yet somehow you can’t reference any studies to support your position? That doesn’t make much sense to me. You also have access to academic databases that I don’t have…so seems like you aren’t actually interested in showing much proof.

Haven’t the bottom 5%-10% of a class always struggled? Even back in the early 90s, 5-10% of kids in any of my classes did poorly (most drop the class vs having a D or F get printed…really the worst is a C at that point).

Unless you teach Precalc for the remedial college kids, you still aren’t supporting your conclusions very well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

I could look up the data…but I’m not the one claiming kids are under prepared.

You work in Academia…yet somehow you can’t reference any studies to support your position? That doesn’t make much sense to me. You also have access to academic databases that I don’t have…so seems like you aren’t actually interested in showing much proof.

Haven’t the bottom 5%-10% of a class always struggled? Even back in the early 90s, 5-10% of kids in any of my classes did poorly (most drop the class vs having a D or F get printed…really the worst is a C at that point).

Unless you teach Precalc for the remedial college kids, you still aren’t supporting your conclusions very well.

You seem determined to believe that there is no problem, perhaps because your kids attend school in DCUM-landia which is minimally affected since 9/10 kids are overachievers. How do you explain the standardized test score drops at the mid and upper tiers, and how do could they not obviously indicate that students are not as prepared as a whole? Also, I am not an educational researcher, nor have I ever claimed to. So I do not feel like spending hours looking for more data when you haven't even addressed the data I've already presented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

"WHO"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

I could look up the data…but I’m not the one claiming kids are under prepared.

You work in Academia…yet somehow you can’t reference any studies to support your position? That doesn’t make much sense to me. You also have access to academic databases that I don’t have…so seems like you aren’t actually interested in showing much proof.

Haven’t the bottom 5%-10% of a class always struggled? Even back in the early 90s, 5-10% of kids in any of my classes did poorly (most drop the class vs having a D or F get printed…really the worst is a C at that point).

Unless you teach Precalc for the remedial college kids, you still aren’t supporting your conclusions very well.

You seem determined to believe that there is no problem, perhaps because your kids attend school in DCUM-landia which is minimally affected since 9/10 kids are overachievers. How do you explain the standardized test score drops at the mid and upper tiers, and how do could they not obviously indicate that students are not as prepared as a whole? Also, I am not an educational researcher, nor have I ever claimed to. So I do not feel like spending hours looking for more data when you haven't even addressed the data I've already presented.

You haven’t presented any data…you even posted you can’t provide any “proof”. I presented data that there are 1MM fewer kids in college bs 10 years ago…so the kids with poor scores may not attend college at all. Also, even with TO, top schools have 75%+ of admitted students submitting scores and the scores are off the charts.

I am not saying there isn’t a problem…just find it laughable that an academic thinks opinions, anecdotes and conjecture get an A grade.

Would it really take you hours to find this study (maybe it doesn’t exist)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually, the only one that should matter right now is the PSAT/NMSQT test. One test. One score. The end.

This would match how other countries do it. It creates a different kind of pressure though, and the pressure hits younger.

Yes and it is what is wrong with other countries. There is no chance for growth. In France you are marked at a young age for your potential. Nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

I could look up the data…but I’m not the one claiming kids are under prepared.

You work in Academia…yet somehow you can’t reference any studies to support your position? That doesn’t make much sense to me. You also have access to academic databases that I don’t have…so seems like you aren’t actually interested in showing much proof.

Haven’t the bottom 5%-10% of a class always struggled? Even back in the early 90s, 5-10% of kids in any of my classes did poorly (most drop the class vs having a D or F get printed…really the worst is a C at that point).

Unless you teach Precalc for the remedial college kids, you still aren’t supporting your conclusions very well.

Different professor here at a midrange university. In the last two decades student performance in my courses and at my institution has definitely changed, and not for the better. I don't think the issues are intellectual: the problems are more psychological or social, on a large scale. My students genuinely think that having to work hard means something is wrong, sometimes with them, sometimes with me. They arrive at college unprepared for the demands on their executive functioning and really unable to distill information from what they read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ p.s. I suspect most posters here have kids in the best public or private schools in the country, so maybe this doesn't apply to your kid, but I'm still surprised people aren't aware there is an overall problem for college preparedness.

Show me the stats on college performance that prove this.

You may be correct.

At the college level, all I have are my personal experiences as a professor, as well as the impressions of my colleagues, which I know is not the kind of "proof" you are looking for. Our teaching and grading scales have had to change a bit too in order to accommodate. The problem is that the national/international level standardized tests are only given to children in k-12. At the college level there is no such thing as the PISA or MCAP, etc. as an independent benchmark of high-level performance. But if 11th and 12th graders are performing poorly, and standardized reading and math scores are at their lowest levels in decades, it seems pretty safe to assume that these students are not miraculously making up that deficiency in the summer before they start college.

Cmon professor…there must be stats on flunk rates / dropout rates (though that could be financial vs failing) or other academic studies you can provide to us.

Fewer HS kids are attending college vs 10 years ago (a lot fewer…over 1MM) so those poorly performing 11th and 12th may not attend college at all. That’s a different problem.

However, we aren’t talking about kids that never go to college.

Dropout rates can't tell the whole story since colleges are also very hard pressed to keep the dropout rates low. Thankfully, there is much more effort to keep struggling students onboard these days than in the olden days.

I'm hardly saying the kids are dumb. The grad students are exceptional, and the undergrad students are also extremely impressive. But the bottom 5-10% or so are increasingly struggling to even pass my courses. However, more is definitely being done by the university to keep these students on board, which I think is the right thing to do. Colleagues at other universities report more problems with engagement and performance even from the mid tiers.

If you're really interested, you can also look up the trends. It's not just the low performing range where you see drops in scores. Middle and high range students scores have dropped as well, especially in math. College bound kids are affected, even though they haven't shown as sharp a drop as the lowest performers. I'm guessing DCUM-landia is minimally affected, but it doesn't mean the trends don't exist.

I could look up the data…but I’m not the one claiming kids are under prepared.

You work in Academia…yet somehow you can’t reference any studies to support your position? That doesn’t make much sense to me. You also have access to academic databases that I don’t have…so seems like you aren’t actually interested in showing much proof.

Haven’t the bottom 5%-10% of a class always struggled? Even back in the early 90s, 5-10% of kids in any of my classes did poorly (most drop the class vs having a D or F get printed…really the worst is a C at that point).

Unless you teach Precalc for the remedial college kids, you still aren’t supporting your conclusions very well.

You seem determined to believe that there is no problem, perhaps because your kids attend school in DCUM-landia which is minimally affected since 9/10 kids are overachievers. How do you explain the standardized test score drops at the mid and upper tiers, and how do could they not obviously indicate that students are not as prepared as a whole? Also, I am not an educational researcher, nor have I ever claimed to. So I do not feel like spending hours looking for more data when you haven't even addressed the data I've already presented.

You haven’t presented any data…you even posted you can’t provide any “proof”. I presented data that there are 1MM fewer kids in college bs 10 years ago…so the kids with poor scores may not attend college at all. Also, even with TO, top schools have 75%+ of admitted students submitting scores and the scores are off the charts.

I am not saying there isn’t a problem…just find it laughable that an academic thinks opinions, anecdotes and conjecture get an A grade.

Would it really take you hours to find this study (maybe it doesn’t exist)?

NAEP data was already presented. And yes, studies at the college level don't exist because widely distributed standardized tests are not administered in college, as I already stated. Perhaps you can get funding to do the study, though.