US test scores failing: 24/45 in math, 15/63 in science

No worries! Having Bibles, The Ten Commandments, and returning the Pledge of Allegiance to the classroom will fix that right up!

I blame this on apathy. The US has excellent schools and well trained teachers. Its easy to blame "education" as the problem, it really isn't.

Kids don't want to push themselves to learn more or take challenging classes any more. Their desire for screen time keeps increasing every year.

I don't see US scores going up any time soon. The rest of the world, especially Asian countries understand the challenges and there is an unrelenting desire for success and the rewards it brings.

The US has a problem with being "famous" (and religion as noted above), whatever that means. The vast majority of kids don't grow up wanting to be engineers, scientists, teachers, etc. When they go online (especially the socials), they see influencers living a fake reality and making tons of $$$ and want that for themselves, no stupid education required.

Of course parents should take a lot of the blame, but people are going to people and blame someone else (the failed education system, which it is not).

However, it may not matter in the long run with the perverse desire to build AI and have robots replace as many human workers as possible

I agree with this in part. I teach college courses, and it has bled into that level as well. Colleges continually lower their standards to push students through and make sure they get their money. There is less rigor and less demand for students to sufficiently learn material. Parents also play a role. At the K-12 level, parental expectations have been lowered for many kids, and there is little reinforcement at home.

I will say, however, that it seems to me that as successful as Asian countries are at preparing students for standardized tests and rote memorization, they lag behind the U.S. creativity. A large portion of innovation comes from the U.S., whether it is technological advancement, medical advances, or the arts. Those skills do not always show up in standardized tests as clearly as memorizing facts and formulas.

Japan is the only country in the world with 100% Functional Literacy and 100% High School Diplomas and they did that in 1910, 114 years ago.

This is the first step to correct our problem.

As a retired, 30 year educator, I think we should return to some form of tracking students.

There are some who want to be challenged and work hard and others who, for a variety of reasons and circumstances do not.

We have to challenge the future engineers and software developers, etc and give a basic education to the future mechanics, cosmetologists and construction workers.

The reason is actually race.

White Americans outperform whites in other countries

Black Americans outperform blacks in other countries

Asian Americans outperform Asians in other countries

Etcetera

But, we have a different racial mix from other countries. So a country of all whites or all Asians may still outperform us.

But sure keep ranting about how US students are lazy or apathetic. These are safe, bluepill answers because you aren't allowed to talk about the above.

But how does the rest of the world compare in “ all boys aren’t blue” books?

I don’t know that things are any worse or better than they were when I was in school thirty years ago, only different. There are many exceptional kids today. Average SATs at a lot of colleges seem higher than they were thirty years ago, even though average scores overall are about the same (1003 in 1993 vs 1028 in 2023 (although they are about 40-50 pts higher after the 2017 format change). My general impression of kids today is favorable. Many are brilliant, others are morons. Same as when I was young. My kids are far smarter than I, which is a good thing.

Newton, Mass. tried multilevel classrooms. It has been a miserable failure.

bostonglobe.com

In Newton, we tried an experiment in educational equity. It has failed. - The Boston Globe

“Multilevel classrooms” are not working for teachers or students, writes the head of Newton South High School’s Faculty Council.

Link:www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/02/opinion...

re rising SAT scores, the scores were re-centered about 70-100 points upwards about 20 years ago. if you took the test before then, you have to make that mental math adjustment of what you would make now.

also, the US population since, say, 1980, has increased 50%. but most schools have stayed the same size. so standards have gone up. [kinda like, when women and minorities entered the workforce, suddenly a HS degree is not enough anymore.]

last, someone mentioned screen time. while most of this country fritters away the information value, or does superficial confirmation bias "research" to confirm existing beliefs, the internet is an amazing supplement to classroom teaching. stuff like khan academy. you have a mediocre calculus teacher or don't get a concept? look it up on khan. i was a pretty good student who went to a top 50 LAC and i think with access to the net -- which i predated -- i would have had near perfect grades and tests. setting aside having AI do it for you. for motivated kids there is less excuse to not get something or produce the product. the test scores should be getting higher and higher for the top end.

The tests are obviously looking for the wrong things and/or are becoming irrelevant to modern society. There is much more reward for becoming a 'content creator' than there is for becoming something like a teacher or engineer. The old world has been killed by the weirdo miscreants who created the digital age and they will only distort it further.

Besides, in the next few years our Democracy will have been replaced with an Authoritarian Oligarchy and the 'rewards' will increasingly be gobbled up by families and supplicants of the couple hundred or so richest people in the US. It will increasingly be the case that kids will be instantly set for life, or set for misery, at birth. The in-between we call The Middle Class will no longer exist.

But we are good at gender studies. If you put that into the ranking system, we will be number one in the world, and it is not even close.

Agreed. Throwing together 25 students with wildly different ability levels and goals wastes everyone's time. Teachers can only differentiate instruction so much, and even in doing so, the higher level students get bored and the lower level students get lost.

This is actually closer to the truth than you imagined. Scores are dependent on parental or guardian involvement and, sadly, household income. Parental values, akin to Biblical concepts, and the attributes that contribute to higher family income influence test scores dramatically.

Pouring money into education in low income areas with families missing fathers is futile. Until the families themselves change, nothing can be done about scores.

Well let's just get right to the logical conclusion of arguments like yours. All of the members of single parent families, as well as families producing poor performers, and maybe even families that aren't Christian Nationalist, are going to have to be killed.

Sorry, we cannot pour resources into poor performing families, neighborhoods, schools. They will continue to drain society of resources that should instead flow only to the virtuous (richest) among us and everyone else must simply cease to exist.

the answer to 99% of things in this country is "money."

for the poorest kids, that they don't get the same level of infrastructure, teaching, coaching, as private school or suburban kids, which also drags down the averages.

for the rest, that ever since about reagan all this place seems to prize is money and schemes to make it. despite consuming stuff that reflects other values, eg, religion, academia, art, music, a lot of what is put out there to consume is to make a fast back.

my theory on american class structure is the wealthy are free to pursue knowledge and major in what they want, with fewer worries about a job at the end, and thus may be, say, a yale history major (one of the most popular majors there). meanwhile the middle class and poor approach life as "i need a job." so the state colleges for the middle class are actually cutting back on that same history major to fund business departments and such. and the poor often aspire to a trade as a stable job is better than being broke. setting aside the resources discussion i began with, i think the class analysis points at another reason we suck at global academic comparisons. the middle and lower classes do not value a broad sense of academics. they see school as a tool to a job. they do enough to get to the job/money hamster wheel.

and yet a gender studies major or any other low revenue major you could name......makes far more money than your average HS grad.

they only make less than, say, science and business majors, and people with grad degrees.

also, people of your "ilk" tend to miss that you can turn basically most ANY college degree into teaching if you want. or they can get MBAs or law degrees. you're confusing "go to welding school to learn welding" with how after college works.

i do not work in the field i majored in undergrad. i think if i back off a few steps i see how it informs my work process. i do have a job in my graduate degree, but i don't actually do much with my academic foci there.

the idea all academics can do is play out their undergraduate major and what we take classes in, is nonsense.

kind of like i can live through but reject both my conservative HS econ and government classes, and the limited liberal woke stuff i got in college.

Good thing we locked up all the young people during critical developmental years so lefties' obese Grandmas would get another year of sofa sitting and Matlock reruns.