As a mom whose first born child entered the public school system (for transitional kindergarten) in August of 2020, I have witnessed the failings of ed tech and the deleterious effects of an attention economy on our kids, which have obviously been amplified by the pandemic. I have been an in-classroom parent volunteer for 4 years at my daughter's public school (kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and now 3rd grade) and was initially shocked by how little teachers are actually able to teach due a significant portion of children not being able to focus. Last year my daughter's second grade class had such a large number of students (all boys) who were disruptive that the teacher was assigned a Behavioral Interventionist to work full-time in the classroom. I witnessed one boy unable to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because he couldn't take his eyes off the Youtube video he was watching on his Chromebook. Another student would shout out expletives when he couldn't get his Chromebook to function as desired. I once asked him what his favorite thing to do on the weekend was and he cited watching LankyBox videos on YouTube and buying LankyBox "merch" at Target. This year, I've observed my daughter's current third grade teacher basically give up teaching math and resort to turning on a video because the kids struggle so much with it and are unable to sit and focus. It's sad and foreboding. I don't fault the teachers. It's a current that's almost impossible to swim against. If kids aren't being taught to focus and learn at home, there's no way teachers are going to be able to enforce the practice in and from the classroom, especially public school educators.
So... what accounts for the crummy student scores on criterion-referenced tests back in your generation of the 1970s and 1980s? Oh, I remember. Allen Bloom said 1980s students were lazy, dogmatic, mentally ill, suicidal, selfish, uneducable, criminal, and unemployable, A Nation at Risk (1983) condemned low student achievement, and Tipper Gore told us pop culture and music were to blame. Every generation, decade after decade, has been condemned by its teachers with identical vitriol. At least you'd think the elders could come up with original epithets.
I work as a mental health consultant for an education support agency, and I think I understand what you're saying when you noted that "grades are going up" and "performance is going down". This might seem contradictory at first. Correct me if any of this is wrong:
"Grades are going up": This refers to class averages for daily assignments, tests, and class projects. You're suggesting that rigor for these assignments has decreased, making the assignments easier, and resulting in higher grades.
"Performance is going down": This refers to standardized test scores, which are usually based on a set of academic skills that are developmentally normed by grade level and grouped by subject area. You're suggesting that students are failing to learn the developmentally normed academic skills, or are failing to demonstrate that knowledge via test.
Your hypothesis is the most likely one I can see. The knowledge standards don't change year-to-year, but if teachers make assignments easier it will create the illusion that students are doing better until they take the test which is based on skills that are beyond what they've practiced in preparation for the test.
Parting question: I wonder how many states have gone to completely digital format tests, and when? I know that the STAAR test went completely online for the 2022-2023 school year in Texas. Could this have some impact?
I am a high school social studies teacher, and I have stopped assigning regular homework. I was putting so much time and effort into creating assignments that couldn't be cheated on, and it was exhausting. I gave up. I still have students read one narrative nonfiction book of their choice in my U.S. history course. The assessment is to have a conversation with me about it. Faced with that, several students opted to simply not do it.
I agree with your assessment that #5 is the most likely culprit for this phenomenon. Lowering standards pretty obviously leads to a sense of non-urgency among students over homework. If you don't need to do extra work at home to get an A, why do it? It's also rather unsustainable for teachers to grade homework in any sort of substantive way, and most research suggests that simply assigning points for completion doesn't help students (though many teachers do this). If a grade is not assigned, most students won't complete the homework. I think something about the culture/ecosystem of instant stimulation/gratification/feedback that students get from devices cannot be matched in a classroom. Most students seem to truly not know what they can learn from long-term commitments to homework, reading books, writing essays and waiting for the feedback two weeks later... Teachers need to find ways to show that not doing homework will lead to negative consequences for students' learning outcomes (not just their grades, but their actual *learning*) and they need to hold their ground when parents freak out about that.
If the correlation between time spent on homework and academic acheivement is sketchy (which I believe was one reason that public schools began reducing homework around 2015), maybe the changes are happening independently. I do know that teachers seem to offer "makeups" and "do-overs" more often then they used to -thus enabling students to bring up their grades in spite of failure or missed assignments. I object to the notion that a lack of homework detracts enough from a child's work ethic to overcome other factors such as enabled parenting and lack of exposure to discomfort and disappointment.
Your conclusion is sadly true. I’ve watched this evolution over the last 8 years with three boys now ages 23, 20, and 16, all of whom have been in different types of schools: public, public arts charter, and private Catholic. Public schools have downgraded quality the most. My hope is that the shift in culture brought on by this election will begin to get us back on track.
It's not just our imaginations; kids are literally getting dumber, lazier, more entitled, and being rewarded for it.
And now they're entering the workforce with those same expectations, backed by a narrative that they can become a protected class simply with a diagnosis, and never be removed from their jobs.
#5
As a mom whose first born child entered the public school system (for transitional kindergarten) in August of 2020, I have witnessed the failings of ed tech and the deleterious effects of an attention economy on our kids, which have obviously been amplified by the pandemic. I have been an in-classroom parent volunteer for 4 years at my daughter's public school (kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and now 3rd grade) and was initially shocked by how little teachers are actually able to teach due a significant portion of children not being able to focus. Last year my daughter's second grade class had such a large number of students (all boys) who were disruptive that the teacher was assigned a Behavioral Interventionist to work full-time in the classroom. I witnessed one boy unable to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because he couldn't take his eyes off the Youtube video he was watching on his Chromebook. Another student would shout out expletives when he couldn't get his Chromebook to function as desired. I once asked him what his favorite thing to do on the weekend was and he cited watching LankyBox videos on YouTube and buying LankyBox "merch" at Target. This year, I've observed my daughter's current third grade teacher basically give up teaching math and resort to turning on a video because the kids struggle so much with it and are unable to sit and focus. It's sad and foreboding. I don't fault the teachers. It's a current that's almost impossible to swim against. If kids aren't being taught to focus and learn at home, there's no way teachers are going to be able to enforce the practice in and from the classroom, especially public school educators.
So... what accounts for the crummy student scores on criterion-referenced tests back in your generation of the 1970s and 1980s? Oh, I remember. Allen Bloom said 1980s students were lazy, dogmatic, mentally ill, suicidal, selfish, uneducable, criminal, and unemployable, A Nation at Risk (1983) condemned low student achievement, and Tipper Gore told us pop culture and music were to blame. Every generation, decade after decade, has been condemned by its teachers with identical vitriol. At least you'd think the elders could come up with original epithets.
I work as a mental health consultant for an education support agency, and I think I understand what you're saying when you noted that "grades are going up" and "performance is going down". This might seem contradictory at first. Correct me if any of this is wrong:
"Grades are going up": This refers to class averages for daily assignments, tests, and class projects. You're suggesting that rigor for these assignments has decreased, making the assignments easier, and resulting in higher grades.
"Performance is going down": This refers to standardized test scores, which are usually based on a set of academic skills that are developmentally normed by grade level and grouped by subject area. You're suggesting that students are failing to learn the developmentally normed academic skills, or are failing to demonstrate that knowledge via test.
Your hypothesis is the most likely one I can see. The knowledge standards don't change year-to-year, but if teachers make assignments easier it will create the illusion that students are doing better until they take the test which is based on skills that are beyond what they've practiced in preparation for the test.
Parting question: I wonder how many states have gone to completely digital format tests, and when? I know that the STAAR test went completely online for the 2022-2023 school year in Texas. Could this have some impact?
I am a high school social studies teacher, and I have stopped assigning regular homework. I was putting so much time and effort into creating assignments that couldn't be cheated on, and it was exhausting. I gave up. I still have students read one narrative nonfiction book of their choice in my U.S. history course. The assessment is to have a conversation with me about it. Faced with that, several students opted to simply not do it.
I agree with your assessment that #5 is the most likely culprit for this phenomenon. Lowering standards pretty obviously leads to a sense of non-urgency among students over homework. If you don't need to do extra work at home to get an A, why do it? It's also rather unsustainable for teachers to grade homework in any sort of substantive way, and most research suggests that simply assigning points for completion doesn't help students (though many teachers do this). If a grade is not assigned, most students won't complete the homework. I think something about the culture/ecosystem of instant stimulation/gratification/feedback that students get from devices cannot be matched in a classroom. Most students seem to truly not know what they can learn from long-term commitments to homework, reading books, writing essays and waiting for the feedback two weeks later... Teachers need to find ways to show that not doing homework will lead to negative consequences for students' learning outcomes (not just their grades, but their actual *learning*) and they need to hold their ground when parents freak out about that.
If the correlation between time spent on homework and academic acheivement is sketchy (which I believe was one reason that public schools began reducing homework around 2015), maybe the changes are happening independently. I do know that teachers seem to offer "makeups" and "do-overs" more often then they used to -thus enabling students to bring up their grades in spite of failure or missed assignments. I object to the notion that a lack of homework detracts enough from a child's work ethic to overcome other factors such as enabled parenting and lack of exposure to discomfort and disappointment.
Your conclusion is sadly true. I’ve watched this evolution over the last 8 years with three boys now ages 23, 20, and 16, all of whom have been in different types of schools: public, public arts charter, and private Catholic. Public schools have downgraded quality the most. My hope is that the shift in culture brought on by this election will begin to get us back on track.
It's not just our imaginations; kids are literally getting dumber, lazier, more entitled, and being rewarded for it.
And now they're entering the workforce with those same expectations, backed by a narrative that they can become a protected class simply with a diagnosis, and never be removed from their jobs.
Lovely.