https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/
The confluence of societal and governmental factors leading to these outcomes is an irredeemable tragedy. Nobody gives a fuck about education and the consequences are accelerating
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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So I see these sort of headlines. And then I look at the sort of school work my kid has, and it seems so much more advanced than what I was doing at his age a few decades back. Which makes me think that there’s some disconnect between the changes in the material getting taught and the changes in how it’s taught. Especially as I frequently see stories about how many tweens and teens are suffering from burnout, it points to a system that mistakes grinding kids out quicker for one that makes them smarter.
Every teacher I teacher I know thinks standardized testing is bullshit. They're forced to "teach the test". At the same time, a decline in test scores means the system is failing even by its own metrics . If I ever heard a teacher say "yeah, their test scores are lacking, but they're definitely gaining a valuble education," then the decline in test scores wouldn't be concerning. But I've never heard that.
Since "No Child Left Behind" came into effect, it's nearly impossible to hold kids back, so many just keep advancing through the grades even though they can't read or do basic match. There's over 2 decades of kids that were pushed through no matter what to make the numbers look good. Obviously not true of all kids, parents and exceptional teachers can still intervene when the system fails a student, but a large amount of kids coming out of high school fell behind a long time ago.
it also certainly depends on the school. the school i work in has students in essentially the same curricula i saw 20 years ago. part of the thing with burnout as well is that it's somewhat motivation dependent. when the kids don't care about school, when their entire social reality completely grates against our pedagogical methods, they genuinely get burned out much quicker despite actually learning much less.
I've seen a lot of people upset at children at how they don't care about school. They lack motivation and "they don't care"
Of course they blame it on tablets and shit and it's like. Kids and teens are not fucking stupid. Why should they care about school when it just means they'll be on the street or living with their abusive parents because they can't get a job or apartment. Climate change is here and a transportation crisis is looming near.
Like shit is fucking BLEAK for the next generation.
Also means they are going to be a driving force for change. So we best be reaching out to them and helping them with their politics.
counterpoint but I didn't care about school and I still did great, I HAD TO if I wanted to fuck off and spend the rest of class reading/sleeping
countercounterpoint but I'm also a college dropout paralyzed by low executive function so
many of them do, but even more of them aren't willing to admit it or are still gleefully unaware. they can't be actively afraid of climate change or the economy when they can't and don't read. the vast majority of the students are simply more interested in whatever they have going on in their personal lives, goofing with their friends. those with lib parents will sometimes parrot lib talking points.
i don't at all disagree with your solution that we must raise their class consciousness, but in my anecdotal experience, they are much much less advanced than what i understand you to be suggesting.
Its not really a matter of how advanced they are. The material conditions are going to force their hands to action at some point. The big question is will they be reactionary or not. When I say work on their politics, I mean this. How reactionary they are is going to be very important.
The kids will toss brown people into a woodchipper while fortnite dancing mark my words
I think it depends on the kid. Bright and motivated kids have access to more resources than ever, including computers and also AI. Paradoxically it's never been easier to do self-directed learning. But that would be the extreme minority, it won't make up for catastrophic erosion in the baseline
is it more advanced or does it just seem more advanced because the last time I saw the common core math they were teaching kids it was like, wow, this is a lot of unwieldy and useless bullshit
iirc I think I was looking at what was basically chunking (where you break up numbers into easier to manage segments) but written down in some weird way where I imagined I'd spend as much time learning the notation as learning the actual math
It’s a downward spiral, overtesting creates a “teaching to the test” environment which erodes creative and critical thinking, which leads to lower test scores. The bureaucrats look at this and come to the conclusion that more testing is needed so they can get more metrics to “analyze.” Rinse and repeat.
Common Core math actually is pretty good/fine in concept, but the execution is where it's terrible. A lot of "common core" math textbooks (if the school even bothers with textbooks anymore instead of digital problem banks) are a complete scam, for one thing, just repackaged versions of older books. And a lot of the teachers, especially in lower grades, themselves do not have strong enough of a math background to have a "big picture" view of math education and so have no idea how to bridge earlier concepts to later concepts. The fact that calculator usage is allowed way too early in a lot of places is one symptom of this -- they do it so that students' lack of basic arithmetic skills doesn't get in the way of learning algebraic skills without realizing that it's all one and the same. Or sometimes they do know but simply have no choice because the kids are already behind and they have to do "something."
(and nowadays if the teachers don't care the kids don't care either and will skip the calculators entirely and ask ChatGPT for answers...)
Nah, the common core math method is different from the traditional notation I grew up with, but I get that it’s presenting kids with a variety of options to complete the problem so they can choose the one that fits their processing style. Whereas the “one size fits all” approach with traditional notation is intuitive for some kids, some kids can muscle through it, and some kids, well they end up being the people that say “I’m not a math person”.
Not to mention that my feeling isn’t just coming from the math work, if anything it’s the writing work that feels more advanced.