30yrs ago, children could read better

[Anonymous]

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work).

Building and district leadership have it as part of their "strategic" so that they can have "data".

One of the hardest things about education in America is that every taxpayer is a stakeholder, and everyone thinks they're informed because they once went to school.

We have complaints and decisions being made by tons of people who NEVER go into schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should be required to be screen free the entire day. EdTech is a disaster for learning. It's not like back in the day when tech was something you had to learn to use. These days, even Gorillas and chipanzees can use Ipads! https://www.wired.com/2012/05/orangutans-use-the-ipad/

If there was one thing I could fire into the sun, it would be EdTech.

+ a million

On top of how it rots our kids' brain, it is an incredible waste of school system money that could be better spent on aides and the actual human beings that teach our children

+1, it's a scam. Also at the same time it's rewiring kids' brains for short attention spans and needing dopamine hits provide by interactive screens to maintain interest in something, it also contributes to weaker teaching skills. Teachers who become reliant on programs like iReady don't get as much experience as older teachers got with working with students, and young teachers need the reps.

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work). That's understandable, but short sighted. It's the same problem as you see with parents who rely on screens to distract kids -- the kids do not learn how to behave without the pacifier of the screen, and it leads to worse behavior long-term.

+2 What I don't understand is how there seemingly hasn't been much investigation into the corruption that is obviously happening. A lot of people are clearly getting paid to push this poison in schools.

Schools end up using technology to mitigate issues with overcrowding/understaffing.

We should properly fund our schools to reduce class size and bring in more teachers and reading specialists.

I'm a new parent to our public school system and there are So. Many. Apps. The lunch money one is particularly egregious because of the high fees. There is clearly some corruption going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should be required to be screen free the entire day. EdTech is a disaster for learning. It's not like back in the day when tech was something you had to learn to use. These days, even Gorillas and chipanzees can use Ipads! https://www.wired.com/2012/05/orangutans-use-the-ipad/

If there was one thing I could fire into the sun, it would be EdTech.

+ a million

On top of how it rots our kids' brain, it is an incredible waste of school system money that could be better spent on aides and the actual human beings that teach our children

+1, it's a scam. Also at the same time it's rewiring kids' brains for short attention spans and needing dopamine hits provide by interactive screens to maintain interest in something, it also contributes to weaker teaching skills. Teachers who become reliant on programs like iReady don't get as much experience as older teachers got with working with students, and young teachers need the reps.

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work). That's understandable, but short sighted. It's the same problem as you see with parents who rely on screens to distract kids -- the kids do not learn how to behave without the pacifier of the screen, and it leads to worse behavior long-term.

+2 What I don't understand is how there seemingly hasn't been much investigation into the corruption that is obviously happening. A lot of people are clearly getting paid to push this poison in schools.

I don’t understand why there were so few studies done before they implemented this everywhere. How hard would it have been to use elearning at half the schools in a district or half the students within a school and compared outcomes with students and teachers using traditional teaching methods?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Computers, social media and lack of printed newspapers and easy entertainment are to blame. Even I can't read the longer more intense novels I used to as a teen in the 90s.

It's not just kids. Adults are scoring lower in reading comprehension as well. It started, for kids and adults, in 2012/2013, although the pandemic exacerbated it. (In 2012, 4G LTE was rolling out nationwide and we went from slow 3G smartphones to fast 4G smartphones. And that was it.)

But, but, Lucy Calkins!

Kids get the double whammy.

This. It's both. The Lucy/F&P years + screen trends. School systems failed to counteract either of the two.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if part of the problem is that they don’t hold kids back anymore. I’m an adult psychiatrist, but I lived in a small town for a while and I saw the kids there too because there wasn’t anyone else there to see them.
Parents would bring kids in because they were having difficulty in school, and I would evaluate the child and talk to their parents and teachers, and a lot of kids didn’t have mental illness. They just weren’t able to keep up academically and just needed another year of second grade or whatever.
But the school didn’t have the funding to keep a kid an additional year. What they would get extra funding for is if the kid was on an IEP. So, we would give a diagnosis that most fit, get the kid extra support in the classroom, and the child would be moved up to the next grade level.
What was really crazy was that these kids were often starting school younger than their peers because their parents needed the childcare. So you might have a new seven year old who really needs another year of first grade being pushed into second grade with kids who are a year older.

I don’t know. This all seems so stupid to me. If you have a fourth grader who cannot read at a basic level, they should do fourth grade again. They should not become a fifth grader who cannot read at a basic level!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should be required to be screen free the entire day. EdTech is a disaster for learning. It's not like back in the day when tech was something you had to learn to use. These days, even Gorillas and chipanzees can use Ipads! https://www.wired.com/2012/05/orangutans-use-the-ipad/

The soft rollouts and pilot programs are all a sham anyway. I taught in a private where admin insisted on a pilot iPad program. Teachers did not like it and we said so. The full school wide program was rolled out the following year.

If there was one thing I could fire into the sun, it would be EdTech.

+ a million

On top of how it rots our kids' brain, it is an incredible waste of school system money that could be better spent on aides and the actual human beings that teach our children

+1, it's a scam. Also at the same time it's rewiring kids' brains for short attention spans and needing dopamine hits provide by interactive screens to maintain interest in something, it also contributes to weaker teaching skills. Teachers who become reliant on programs like iReady don't get as much experience as older teachers got with working with students, and young teachers need the reps.

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work). That's understandable, but short sighted. It's the same problem as you see with parents who rely on screens to distract kids -- the kids do not learn how to behave without the pacifier of the screen, and it leads to worse behavior long-term.

+2 What I don't understand is how there seemingly hasn't been much investigation into the corruption that is obviously happening. A lot of people are clearly getting paid to push this poison in schools.

I don’t understand why there were so few studies done before they implemented this everywhere. How hard would it have been to use elearning at half the schools in a district or half the students within a school and compared outcomes with students and teachers using traditional teaching methods?

[Anonymous]

I blame two things (1) Lucy Calkins - and before whiny McWhinerson jumps in, I've seen this first hand. We got phonics tutoring in 2nd grade and boom, my kid could read. We had testing, no dyslexia, just poor teaching and (2) Screens. Kids need to read books on paper and write on paper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if part of the problem is that they don’t hold kids back anymore. I’m an adult psychiatrist, but I lived in a small town for a while and I saw the kids there too because there wasn’t anyone else there to see them.
Parents would bring kids in because they were having difficulty in school, and I would evaluate the child and talk to their parents and teachers, and a lot of kids didn’t have mental illness. They just weren’t able to keep up academically and just needed another year of second grade or whatever.
But the school didn’t have the funding to keep a kid an additional year. What they would get extra funding for is if the kid was on an IEP. So, we would give a diagnosis that most fit, get the kid extra support in the classroom, and the child would be moved up to the next grade level.
What was really crazy was that these kids were often starting school younger than their peers because their parents needed the childcare. So you might have a new seven year old who really needs another year of first grade being pushed into second grade with kids who are a year older.

I don’t know. This all seems so stupid to me. If you have a fourth grader who cannot read at a basic level, they should do fourth grade again. They should not become a fifth grader who cannot read at a basic level!

100% agree. I don't know when schools decided they were going to stop failing children, but it needs to stop. Whatever they're getting measured on that is forcing them to move kids along that don't know how to read needs to go away. Is this No Child Left Behind metrics? FIX THAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any idea how other countries are doing literacy wise and as readers? When I went to Seoul, Korea this year, phones were ubiquitous and even younger kids had them. Would like to know how East Asian countries and Western European kids are doing. Don’t they use screens in school?

They do but not to the extent that the US does. Teachers are help up to a higher standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frightening article in the NYT today -

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/reading-skills-naep.html#commentsContainer

Yes and wonder why??

MAGA morons. MAGA stupid. MAGA cult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should be required to be screen free the entire day. EdTech is a disaster for learning. It's not like back in the day when tech was something you had to learn to use. These days, even Gorillas and chipanzees can use Ipads! https://www.wired.com/2012/05/orangutans-use-the-ipad/

If there was one thing I could fire into the sun, it would be EdTech.

+ a million

On top of how it rots our kids' brain, it is an incredible waste of school system money that could be better spent on aides and the actual human beings that teach our children

+1, it's a scam. Also at the same time it's rewiring kids' brains for short attention spans and needing dopamine hits provide by interactive screens to maintain interest in something, it also contributes to weaker teaching skills. Teachers who become reliant on programs like iReady don't get as much experience as older teachers got with working with students, and young teachers need the reps.

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work). That's understandable, but short sighted. It's the same problem as you see with parents who rely on screens to distract kids -- the kids do not learn how to behave without the pacifier of the screen, and it leads to worse behavior long-term.

+2 What I don't understand is how there seemingly hasn't been much investigation into the corruption that is obviously happening. A lot of people are clearly getting paid to push this poison in schools.

Schools end up using technology to mitigate issues with overcrowding/understaffing.

We should properly fund our schools to reduce class size and bring in more teachers and reading specialists.

I'm a new parent to our public school system and there are So. Many. Apps. The lunch money one is particularly egregious because of the high fees. There is clearly some corruption going on.

sweetie, we're not talking about parent apps, we're talking about what the children use. You can make your kid's lunch if you don't like MySchoolBucks (FCPS doesn't charge for MySchoolBucks, I know other counties do, that's on your county, not the app).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I found a paper I'd written as a third grader and almost died. I was so articulate compared to my current third grader (who is not considered behind). He could not have written even close to what I'd written, and I was by no means a genius or over achiever. The standards have shifted.

I totally had the same (sobering) experience, except it was a 6th grade paper, which is sort of even more frightening given that you would think my middle school DC certainly should have mastered basic grammar, sentence structure, vocab, etc. And although I became a better student, at that time I was middle-of-the-pack at my not especially fancy public school and a terrible speller to boot.

I feel like this is such an unwinnable war though because:
(1) Even though I "make" my kids read--and one of the two actually enjoys it --it is remarkable how "dumbed down" today's popular middle grade literature* is. When I read, even e.g. Harry Potter, I'm shocked by how much more advanced the writing is. And I pulled out the Wizard of Oz series at some point and you would have thought it was James Joyce from the kids' perspective.
(2) We limit screens to only weekends, but it is a lost cause given how much time the kids are on screens at school. They do work on screens, get rewarded with "educational" video games, do homework on screens. It is ubiquitous -- at least after e.g. mid elementary school.
(3) General screen addiction. I'm on them, DH is on them, the entire culture is working in memes and tweets and texts. Other than creating a separatist bubble, I am not sure what to do.

*I think all books are good books. But if kid's literature across-the-board is simplified and shortened, well... we end up in the situation we are in now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any idea how other countries are doing literacy wise and as readers? When I went to Seoul, Korea this year, phones were ubiquitous and even younger kids had them. Would like to know how East Asian countries and Western European kids are doing. Don’t they use screens in school?

They do but not to the extent that the US does. Teachers are help up to a higher standard.

They also aggressively track kids at a young age. Few to no mixed ability classrooms. Often only the university-tracked students get included in testing. Teaching is a highly-valued profession that requires an advanced degree and is supported by aides.

The equivalent of a fourth grade teacher in Germany is not asked to manage, on her own, a classroom of 30 of kids with wildly varying skills and abilities, 30% of whom have IEPs and 504s.

[Anonymous]

We’re readers. Therefore our child is too.



We’re also phone addicts, so she’s pretty tight with any video game. Also LOVES her iPad homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should be required to be screen free the entire day. EdTech is a disaster for learning. It's not like back in the day when tech was something you had to learn to use. These days, even Gorillas and chipanzees can use Ipads! https://www.wired.com/2012/05/orangutans-use-the-ipad/

The soft rollouts and pilot programs are all a sham anyway. I taught in a private where admin insisted on a pilot iPad program. Teachers did not like it and we said so. The full school wide program was rolled out the following year.

If there was one thing I could fire into the sun, it would be EdTech.

+ a million

On top of how it rots our kids' brain, it is an incredible waste of school system money that could be better spent on aides and the actual human beings that teach our children

+1, it's a scam. Also at the same time it's rewiring kids' brains for short attention spans and needing dopamine hits provide by interactive screens to maintain interest in something, it also contributes to weaker teaching skills. Teachers who become reliant on programs like iReady don't get as much experience as older teachers got with working with students, and young teachers need the reps.

Teachers often like iPads in classrooms because it gives them a break that they can use to work with small groups or individuals (other kids will be more engaged with a screen than they would be with solo work). That's understandable, but short sighted. It's the same problem as you see with parents who rely on screens to distract kids -- the kids do not learn how to behave without the pacifier of the screen, and it leads to worse behavior long-term.

+2 What I don't understand is how there seemingly hasn't been much investigation into the corruption that is obviously happening. A lot of people are clearly getting paid to push this poison in schools.

I don’t understand why there were so few studies done before they implemented this everywhere. How hard would it have been to use elearning at half the schools in a district or half the students within a school and compared outcomes with students and teachers using traditional teaching methods?

Theoretically this could be done, but then you’d have the confound of not knowing whether different outcomes are due to different schools or different teachers vs. tech or no tech. Even within a classroom you’d have to get parental consent for kids to be in the study and parents might complain that their kid is being randomly assigned to one condition or another yet they’re all being graded the same way. And in any of these situations you’d probably have to somehow control for baseline differences in test scores or whatnot. It seems that could be done if you have data from the year prior, so I think the other things are more likely to be issues.