Parents respected teachers and schools more; less entitlement by the families; less "what can you do for my snowflake (even though he totally disrupts the class and everything around him)"? Less teaching to the test.

Class of '88. FCPS.

My classmates saw some failed educational experiments; open classrooms AKA pods that were trendy in the late 70s, early 80s, then a scramble to add temporary walls and then later, classrooms.

We had textbooks and workbooks and (I'm old) dittos. We checked out books from the school library to help with our school projects. I learned to use encyclopedias and reference books in second grade.

Spelling tests! Vocabulary tests! Current events drills! Pull down maps in classrooms. Handwriting - printing and cursive. Neatness counted. Flash cards. Math facts. Spelling bees (3x champ here). The Presidential Fitness Award.

Field day was a mini Olympics with (gasp!) 1st/2nd/3rd place ribbons and a winners' stand. It would then be class vs. class.

Student Government and elections. You really did run for office and created a platform and really could get involved.

On the last day of school, our teacher would give us a huge stack of spelling lists, handwriting worksheets, math facts...to take home and work on over the summer. Or, for kids like me, use these to play school.

I had both a visually impaired and a hearing impaired classmate. "Gifted and talented" students were pulled out to meet in one classroom for more challenging work, then they came back to their regular class.

Attended school with some recent immigrants, but they all spoke English, albeit some had accents.

There was a level of formality and professional distance with our teachers. They were mostly mysterious, but each seemed to build class camaraderie. Your class was your unit, your world, dysfunction and cliques and all.

Mostly, our parents stood at a distance and didn't get (hyper) involved. My dad was our ES PTA president and so meetings were at night.

Parents were peripheral. They weren't walking us (or driving us...unthinkable) to school, or meeting us on our walk home.
My mom wrote notes to my teacher if there was a concern. Parents didn't chaperone in-school events, either.

Literacy has not declined or stayed the same.

We count all kids in the average now. It's basic math.

Anonymous wrote:Phonics in English is hilarious. It's fine to start reading but switching to sight words ASAP is essential. Yes, it's harder because English is hard.

Many people pick up the rules for English, maybe without even realizing it, but some need explicit teaching. You are the former. Others are the latter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher and 80s baby here.

I think teachers lost their authority in a lot of ways. We're expected to act in ways that are similar to a customer service representative where the parent or external body is always right. We also shifted to a homogeneous approach where "every child is gifted." We say "we're meeting every child where they're at," but we're really appealing to the lowest common denominator. We also treat education like a right and not a privilege, and we continue to devalue it every time we allow someone to remain in the classroom if they refuse to do any work, become completely disruptive, or assault a teacher. To cap it all off, the entire system has shifted to quantifying success in the form of test scores instead of tracking how our graduates fair in life 2, 4, 6 years after graduation.

+1

So many troubled and troublesome kids aren't getting what (intangibles) they need at home, and the class pays for it. Not to mention, the parents who are just looking to point fingers, instead of getting their child the hope they need.

Parents expect teachers to make up for what kids are missing at home.

I was born in 1979 and was in gifted programs from 3rd-12th grade.

My kids are both on the gifted track and I feel like they get more challenging work than I did back then. Their writing assignments have harder questions. More long term, multi step projects.

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular answer: Any kid with SN severe enough to keep them below grade level and/or disruptive behaviors was not mainstreamed. There were plenty of latchkey kids, for sure, but most parents who were at least middle class made it pretty clear that 1. College was NOT optional and 2. Good grades were expected, and had to be earned.

+1

The whole premise of this thread was misleading. The study says that:

"The long-term stagnation cannot be attributed to racial or ethnic differences in the U.S. population. Literacy scores for white students peaked in 1975; in math, scores peaked in the early 1990s."

It was the "average OECD country" that saw those people born between 1978 and 1987 score significantly better than all previous generations.

Phonics in English is hilarious. It's fine to start reading but switching to sight words ASAP is essential. Yes, it's harder because English is hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an 86 baby and I saw the shift to testing. There was little to no testing when I was in elementary and middle school. But by high school, my teachers spent MONTHS teaching towards the yearly tests. I remember being in AP Calc and then having to focus on basic geometry or long division for stupid tests. It was demoralizing. Plus, the state tests never factored into your grades. So you have college applications and high schools only caring about your grades and then there's this bogus state test.

Also, I think there was a big shift into not valuing teachers or paying them highly. Nurses are paid much higher and thus get smarter students. I knew so many friends in college who nearly dropped out but were able to change to an Education major and easily make A's. And then later on, these teachers only worked a few years before becoming SAHMs. Whereas growing up my teachers truly loved teaching and saw it as a passion.

Well that, and it used to be that women could really only go into teaching or nursing so you got a lot of REALLY intelligent people who became teachers because they wanted to go to college and have a career but there weren’t many other options. Now that women can go into whatever field they want, most of the best and brightest have no interest in going into teaching. Not that I blame them. You can make so much more money doing other things and get way more respect and not have to deal with all the BS.

There were also more career teachers back then because teachers’ pensions and benefits were even better back then.

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular answer: Any kid with SN severe enough to keep them below grade level and/or disruptive behaviors was not mainstreamed. There were plenty of latchkey kids, for sure, but most parents who were at least middle class made it pretty clear that 1. College was NOT optional and 2. Good grades were expected, and had to be earned.

Agree. And micro for sure but my African American mom was a teacher and she made sure every kid in our family got what they needed. I was an early reader and fast tracked into talented and gifted programs, but my brother went to different schools than I did because he was a different learner, she got tutors for my cousins when they struggled with reading or math, she got us all into enrichment programs during the summer and so on. We all went to college and are doing well now.

Way fewer ESOL back then. Resources get sucked away into another need area. Twice exceptional, SpEd, administration to manage all the programs.

It’s hilarious to me that people think that it’s the MC/UMC households and their electronics than are responsible for the decline in literacy rates. This study isn’t about Ava and Theo, who may spend too much time on Minecraft but can make their way through a Fly Guy book.

1978

-Phonics
-Grammar
-No test or quiz retakes
-Very rare to ever get an extension on homework. Only if you were really sick.
-Individual desks facing the front of the room. No desks pushed together or group desks.
-Having our own supplies. No shared bins in the middle of group desks.
-Textbooks! Workbooks!
-Parents were not involved. If a teacher complained about us, we would be worried about our parents reaction to US. They wouldn’t defend us to the teachers
-latchkey kid. Made me learn how to manage my time on my own.
-Letter grades in elementary. No wishy washy grading.
-No cell phones and no kid shows on tv other than for a hour or so after school and on Saturday mornings. So we read a lot more books, newspapers and magazines. Also played outside a TON.

Anonymous wrote:People born 1978-1987
Had computers as children

Played video games

Watched a ton of television

Had cellphones.

We're the generator that started participation trophies.

The vast majority of these people grew up in the 90s. I assure you we were spoiled AF.

Nope. I didn’t have any of it until college/grad school.