What explains the decline in reading and math scores ?

[Anonymous]

Because it is impossible to learn math on a computer. Kids aren't being taught to work things out with pencil and paper. You learn much more when you learn from a textbook. The school districts have been Sold A Story by all of Ed Tech. My kids were regularly given time to play Prodigy instead of math in elementary school. In Prodigy, you spend a lot of time dressing your character, navigating them around the screen and then occasionally doing a rapid-fire math problem - which you can only do if you have committed your math facts to heart already.

iReady gives "brain breaks" in the middle of a test - basically a break to play a video game. Lexia has kids playing a video game to learn to read.

Is it really easier to stick kids in front of a computer than give them pencil and paper? This is a failed experiment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because it is impossible to learn math on a computer. Kids aren't being taught to work things out with pencil and paper. You learn much more when you learn from a textbook. The school districts have been Sold A Story by all of Ed Tech. My kids were regularly given time to play Prodigy instead of math in elementary school. In Prodigy, you spend a lot of time dressing your character, navigating them around the screen and then occasionally doing a rapid-fire math problem - which you can only do if you have committed your math facts to heart already.

iReady gives "brain breaks" in the middle of a test - basically a break to play a video game. Lexia has kids playing a video game to learn to read.

Is it really easier to stick kids in front of a computer than give them pencil and paper? This is a failed experiment.

Except it's not an experiment. This is how things are in many schools for the foreseeable future. It is disturbing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some kids read for fun. But I think it has dropped a ton. But that doesn’t really explain the drop in math. Sadly, and I know this will offend, but the “professionalization” of teaching has not improved the education of our children. So it’s kind of a failed profession. The best teachers are those who are passionate about the subjects they teach but so often administrators want to see BA in education plus masters in education and that doesn’t mean that person will be passionate when asked to teach history. I know a lot of very nice and smart people who dislike history a lot. Better to have a history buff teach history because authentic enthusiasm can be very engaging.

History teacher here in a private school without the Masters in Ed but a lot of other life experience and 10 years in the classroom. What teachers are trained to do often has nothing to do with showing kids that you care about the material so they should too.

They get lesson plans and exercises and gimmicks and stations and on and on. No one ever seems to teach them how to reach students with human to human rapport.

History can be terribly boring when taught badly, which is mostly is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lucy Culkin's set back a generation of children when it comes to reading. This is not an understatement. It will take years to reverse this damage.

Didn’t Caulkins type curriculum get popular in the 80: and 90s? That doesn’t explain why kids in high school 30+ years later can’t read.

Not correct. Tons of teachers today have graduated from the Readers and Writers Workshop at Columbia which IS the Lucy Culkins method and it is still touted as a great thing. Such a racket!! It’s terrible and people are pushing back but lots of people are very vested in insisting it works because they spent time and money getting trained in it. My kids just entered high school and most of their lower teachers were trained in it. It’s a now problem, not a former problem.

Does "the workshop model" in elementary and middle school always mean Caulkins or Caulkin-esque? I've heard mixed reviews and some parents say her approach is actually great for kids who are on-level or above. And I'm assuming workshop DOES work at the high school level.

There is substantial evidence that Calkins curricula (reading and writing) do not work. She primarily was targeting elementary schools, not high schools.

It is a big country, so exceptions likely exist somewhere in the US for anything, but normally "workshop model" is a marketing term implying the Calkins approach.

Her "Writers Workshop" approach included not ever correcting spelling or grammar -- as an example of its silliness, because 1st graders need to be free to "think big thoughts". What total crap. My 1st grader learned to write better by having his spelling and grammar get corrected by the teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because it is impossible to learn math on a computer. Kids aren't being taught to work things out with pencil and paper. You learn much more when you learn from a textbook. The school districts have been Sold A Story by all of Ed Tech. My kids were regularly given time to play Prodigy instead of math in elementary school. In Prodigy, you spend a lot of time dressing your character, navigating them around the screen and then occasionally doing a rapid-fire math problem - which you can only do if you have committed your math facts to heart already.

iReady gives "brain breaks" in the middle of a test - basically a break to play a video game. Lexia has kids playing a video game to learn to read.

Is it really easier to stick kids in front of a computer than give them pencil and paper? This is a failed experiment.

I agree with this. I think using apps to learn math, in particular, prevents kids from committing the information to long-term memory, which makes it impossible to build upon. I suspect it leads to summer regressions which results in more review the following year to help kids "catch up" but when the review again utilizes computer programs, kids will just lose it again.

The apps also condition kids to receive a little "reward" (it is not a real reward, it's usually a little chime or on-screen celebration that kids are conditioned to get a little hit of joy out of, like one of pavlov's dogs except those dogs actually did get food). It is not dissimilar to the way social media conditions people to seek out likes and comments on their posts. However, in both cases, these "rewards" lose their effect after a time. They aren't real so kids become immune to their effect.

With pencil and paper learning, rewards are harder to come by but more meaningful. They come with the discovery that you have actually mastered a subject. I remember the great satisfaction I discovered in geometry doing proofs, and discovering how they worked. That was what sold me on math ultimately. But it took time and practice to get there.

[Anonymous]

Covid infections - Most are on their 3rd, 4th, 5th infection by now

Study shows even mild SARS-CoV-2 infections cause changes in EEG signatures that indicate cognitive decline, also in children and adolescents.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-024-03481-1

COVID-19 Leaves Its Mark on the Brain. Significant Drops in IQ Scores Are Noted
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/

February 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that shows that every infection impacts the brain - Very large study that followed 800,000 people over three years. Link to study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330

Covid-19 can cause brain cells to fuse
https://news.uq.edu.au/2023-06-08-covid-19-can-cause-brain-cells-fuse

A study from Taiwan shows that in children ages 6 to 18 years, COVID infection can lead to changes in the brain that are associated with persistent headaches, memory, and attention problems.

MRI scans of the brain showed enlarged gray matter volumes in children with severe symptoms, correlating with visual perception deficits and neuropsychiatric complaints.

The severity of neuropsychiatric symptoms during the acute phase may serve as a predictive factor for the severity and brain volume differences of chronic phase.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887899425002541

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't read the link - are there actually low scores? Compared to what?

Another article

https://apnews.com/article/naep-reading-math-scores-12th-grade-c18d6e3fbc125f12948cc70cb85a520a

The actual report

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/science/2024/

Thank you. So, it looks like the top third or so is doing the same as they have, and the middle to bottom half is trending down but not by a huge number of points.