More (not so) fun facts:
54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level.
21% read below a 5th grade level, which is considered functionally illiterate.
High immigration numbers don't fully explain it either, as first gen immigrants only make up about 1/3 of those with low literacy.
Definitely backsliding.
We used to teach phonics, now a lot of schools use some bullshit called three-cueing which literally teaches kids to guess words they don't recognize.
“By the 1990s and early 2000s, research began to conclude that phonics was the necessary method of teaching reading to children, with an American congressional panel in 2000 concluding that the essential components of reading instruction were "vocabulary, comprehension and phonics". Programs began to re-incorporate phonics around this time, although three cueing remained a part of curriculums in the approaches of balanced literacy and whole language.[1][4] As of 2020, an estimated 75% of American teachers used three cueing”
I agree that we have made recent changes that were bad. But we've also expanded access to free lunches in some places, decreased some extreme poverty metrics, have expanded AuDD diagnosis and treatment, raised the minimum wage in a handful of large metro areas, etc.
Is it obvious that a worse teaching method (and the many other bits of bad policy) does more damage than the improvements? This isn't clear to me.
Considering the post and comments are about literacy specifically, and those things you mentioned don’t really have anything to do with literacy directly, I’m gunna go with yes.
I don't think specificity is enough to guarantee a large effect. We have tons of homeopathic ointments for extremely specific diseases, and their effect is entirely negligible compared to, say, improved sanitation.
Sorry are you saying that something like literacy, which has well-studied and accepted pathways to widespread adoption, is comparable in any way to homeopathy, which is pseudoscientific nonsense from start to end?
Because lol no, homeopathy is nonsense regardless of whatever other nonsense the education department is doing..?
I'm saying that just because something is specifically intended for something doesn't imply that it has a larger effect than other things which have broad effects.
So no, the fact that homeopathy is psudoscience is irrelevant for my example (and the argument as you phrased it above). I read you, effectively, as saying:
A worse teaching method would produce many generations of uneducated people. And education is important because even with all these advancements made right now, if in the future the people fail to keep up with it, its going to be nothing.
I agree bad teaching practices can have knock-on effects (though I don't think knowledge of phonetics was at real risk of dying out?). But so can bad health outcomes, learning environments, etc?
I think, especially in education, that effect sizes are difficult to judge. And I can't find good data for reading ability over time. So I am very interested in what we are sure about/evidence is.
Something that I did find is this. Its US-only and doesn't actually provide the numbers, but it tells you the general trend.
Ah, found one that does. 2022's decline seems pretty significant, in both mentioned subjects.
Yeah that's possible. Maybe in a few years, if the statistics stay the same, it's a teaching failure.