What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in math, simply because my new school moved at a significantly faster pace and had higher expectations of students. But I eventually caught up, and it was fine. So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated.
It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared. We rely a lot on "social promotion", where mere age and time spent in seats is taken as the standard for educational level.
> But I eventually caught up, and it was fine. So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated.
Alternative explanation: you are acting like there is no problem based on anecdotal evidence that is irrelevant to the current situation - At the same time there might be a very serious one as quite a few kids basically have missed proper school for about 2 years. Let's not even try to pretend that lockdowns have no negative effects at all.
>Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth
The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite direction. The main determinant of whether a school is "good" is the average academic ability of the students who attend the school. And that, statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income.
Policy interventions based on the idea that school quality determines student performance have consistently failed to show significant results. These interventions include local and regional busing. Putting lower-achieving students in close physical proximity to higher-achieving students doesn't make much of a long-term difference.
The schooling system is designed to fail the expectations of those who think its purpose is to educate people, and succeed in full-filling other purposes. If you're curious about what those other purposes might be, I recommend reading the books of John Taylor Gatto [1].
Also, the School Sucks Project [2] is a great source of knowledge about the history of schooling, as well as education solutions and alternatives to schooling. They have just launched a re-broadcast of the essential 50 episodes (of their over a decade of 800 episodes) that covers the full spectrum of the relevant topics.
Is extending parental dependency the problem? If someone starts college at 20 instead of 18 they are likely at home longer. But a lot of people aren't leaving home for college anyway, or they return home after college whether they graduate or not.
If a bunch of kids start high school at 16 instead of 14 is it going to cause serious problems? It seems to me the only issues would be those that we create by our own expectations.
Home schooling is quantifiably far superior to public schooling, pretty much independent of socioeconomic status[1].
As one would expect, the education level of parents did affect the results. For example, home-school students of parents without college degrees scored, on average, at the 83rd percentile for the core subjects. When one parent had a college degree, those students scored at the 86th percentile, and when both parents had a college degree, those students scored at the 90th percentile. There was virtually no difference, however, between the scores of students whose parents were certified teachers and those who were not.
It amuses me that apparently certified teachers are no better at teaching than any other concerned parent. In fact, a concerned parent will wildly outperform a school teacher. This ought to be unsurprising to anyone who is aware of the mind-boggling two standard deviation improvement tutoring provides. A home-school is essentially a tutoring arrangement.
> So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated.
> It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared.
Huh? So you think the problem of being behind is overstated, but observed many students not being properly prepared yourself when you taught?
I've heard from private school teachers that they expected exactly this to happen, and enrollment in private schools has boomed as parents that could used the schools that cared about staying open (and opened as soon as they could).
This was well supported and non-controversial pre-pandemic, where we had research results showing that simply having participation in remote schooling lowers high school graduation rate by a significant fraction. But during the pandemic, we still closed schools for most pupils in the developed world.
This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)".
No idea why you were getting downvoted this month, what you said was largely fact. I have a son that went through 6th grade virtually, and 7th grade in-person but masked. We were able to stay on top of him, so he's doing well enough academically (honor roll for 3 terms so far this year, although the work has been easier). Socially and developmentally has been a big issue, and he suffered a lot, in a first world way. He'll be fine, but this has scarred his generation and the results will be felt on society in the coming decades - I don't know how, but it will.
But he tells me of all the kids that are just simply failing, and have barely learning anything this year, let along last when many were sitting home by themselves all day.
I don't understand exactly what you're complaining about. Has anyone ignored the cost of closing schools? My impression has always been that everyone has known about the high cost, but, well, millions more dead isn't exactly a small cost either.
I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?
> This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)".
My wife teaches 2nd grade in a public school. She has kids this year who had not been in school since kindergarten. It is difficult to cover such an achievement gap when other kids in the class are on level. It's worse yet when our state has outsourced federal pandemic education fund distribution to 3rd parties which allowed people to purchase Xboxes and TVs. And even worse yet as her district is focusing on putting AppleTVs in every room while buying curriculum that has no books. Last week we had a family emergency and had to leave town for 1 day, she spent all day Sunday working on a plan and preparing work for her class and the "substitute" played youtube videos and let them draw all day, did not even move the plan she put on the desk. I hope other districts are taking this seriously because there are lots of good teachers flooding away from this one and it directly relates to the actions taken by the district admin and it's not good for our kids even after the pandemic has subsided, mostly.
> And even worse yet as her district is focusing on putting AppleTVs in every room while buying curriculum that has no books.
I agree that Apple TVs in classrooms is a waste of money, but I don't remember text books being particularly useful, either. We covered between 25% and 50% of the contents of the book, and maybe had assigned reading for half of what was covered.
Textbooks are also a bit of a racket, too. The contents and pedagogy generally move very slowly, but legislators and parents like to micromanage contents, and textbook makers are happy to oblige. The number of, say, algebra, books across the US is probably embarrassing, as is the fact that there isn't a movement for public domain textbooks.
Novels are different. With 5 books per year at $4 per book with books lasting a few years, I'm less concerned.
Over a decade ago my aunt taught 4th grade. She told me that a lot of kids were getting there who couldn't read and it was impossible to teach them 4th grade material.
This seems like that on greater scale.
More granular mastery-based progression seems like it would be a good start.
What are your(/her) thoughts on gifted programs? I can say personally that gifted programs saved me from this fate of slogging through high school during these pandemic years. For some reason some gifted programs get dragged but having actual difficult assignments instead of just crap I can google, honestly 100% saved me from mediocrity.
Serious question, what are you learning between kindergarten and 2nd grade that's so important?
I remember my time there being effectively day-care, I learned more outside of class than inside it. The only real benefit was socializing with kids my age but otherwise everything I learned in those 2 years could've been taught in a week.
Especially in high school, an astounding amount of time, money, space, and personnel are dedicated to sports, and this does not just impact the athletes. In many schools the entire day is structured around the football team's practice schedule. Make school sports a truly after-hours extracurricular activity and remove their impact from non-participants, and I'd estimate you could see around 20% improvement time spent on classroom instruction on core subjects.
My oldest son started in secondary school last year, so his first two years were largely in lockdown. He's quite introverted (and by now extremely so), so he enjoyed not having to meet people, but his school discipline suffered enormously. I already caught him gaming instead of following classes during the lockdown, and he apparently never learned to finish his homework. He's got more failing than passing grades.
Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is.
> Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is.
It's sad to me that this is the way things work. Being smart and understanding the material are the important endpoints. If he's already achieving those then it's backwards to make him do lots of extra work just to jump through the hoops of exams.
Any guesses what the long term consequences might be? I have a hard time imagining anything more dire than the immediate consequences of social isolation during the pandemic.
In other words, I think the kids that make it through are going to be okay.
The effects will probably be small but measurable on average, with significantly worse effects on poorer kids or kids that were already struggling to begin with.
The closest example to something like this happening is probably major teacher strikes. Kids in Argentina during the teachers strikes of the 1980s lost an average of 88 days of primary education and today make about 3% less per year than you would expect given their age.[0] This effect largely comes from lower income groups being less likely than usual to achieve higher levels of education and being more likely to be unemployed.
I'm curious which is worse, social isolation, or mass consumption of video media. I bet Netflix is worse. The social isolation was bad, no question. But during the early school lockdowns I saw first hand what 12+ hours a day of modern TV does to a person's brain in a short period of time. It's nothing like what TV was like in the 80s when I was a kid. The social isolation gets a lot of air time. I'd guess it's not the worst thing the lock downs did to kids. I bet the loss of education and the overdose of TV are in the top two.
Probably not much, is my gut. Catching up on relevant academic items is easier than we typically acknowledge. Is why those kids that were reading at an early age are typically not that ahead in a few years.
Not that this should be dismissed. But I hazard it is not a panic item.
At least in the US they're able to quantify the issue somewhat. In Norway they just canceled exams for multiple years in a row, and those students passed whether they were prepared or not.
Simply end social promotion. You shouldn't move up to the next level of a class until you've mastered the current level. (Levels can be much smaller than a year.) Being at a different pace isn't a problem if you can just make up the time. The side effect bonus is letting other students test out of levels they don't need, they can finish early while others end later.
I agree with what you say in an ideal world where every teacher is of good quality but given that many teacher are incompetent or actively despise their students[1], how can I trust them that they're evaluating students in a unbiased, just, meritocratic fashion. I've always had top grades but seeing teachers' behavior has never let me trust them. I have respect for the job, I've even passed the exam to become a teacher (!) but it takes a toll on your mental health knowing that the majority of your coworker is unrespectable.
They would have to end this concept of no child left behind. Also such a meritocracy system would likely be perceived as racist as the students with more time and financial support become more likely to succeed.
This solution appeals to me, though I'm wondering what the implications are. Like what does a 12 year old who finished the curriculum do for the next 6 years? Early college? Continue to go to public school anyway even though they've mastered everything?
I'm not suggesting the solution wouldn't work. Just interesting to think about the new problems that would arise from it. Especially given that public school doubles as "babysitting" for a lot of working parents.
Being 19 weeks behind doesn't sound that bad to me. It sounds like one of those things you can measure but you can't notice otherwise. Sure, still a thing to think about. But haven't you all had a friend who got sick and missed a lot of school? Can you tell from meeting adults that they were ill for half a year during their childhood? Maybe the numbers will capture it, but it doesn't seem like enough to worry about.
What I can say is I'm not surprised if people get lower scores after missing school, because a lot of exams benefit from freshness. You sit there and memorize things that are only useful for the exam, you do the exam, and then you flush the double angle formulas from your cache.
What really matters is that you have some tools, both intellectual and psychological, to keep learning new things for the rest of your life.
Well when you focus on activism and not academics, why would anyone be surprised that the academics suffer?
Easy fix though, lower standards! Lots of districts are already figuring that out. If you take away the primary means to hold the educational system accountable then you have teachers who are unaccountable. All of the sudden all of them are good at their jobs and the teacher mafia… I mean union… can continue to demand more money for the children and won’t even have to deliver anything measurable. It’s genius!
Why is the title missing "behind"? I get that the second "far" is perhaps sensationalistic, but without "behind" the meaning is lost and perhaps inverted.
One thing I don't think I've ever seen in my life and never expect to see is a statement along the following lines: "Yeah, those cranks and 'conspiracy theorists' were right again." And this will stay true no matter how many times they are right.
The credit will always go to some academic who discovers the obvious after the damage is done.
You can't easily conclude "right" here, but you can very easily adjust the narrative to fit certain biases.
There's at least one study that tried to link loss of education with a greater long-term loss of life than the short-term losses avoided with closures... but there are a lot of holes and assumptions so it's far from reliable.
> In the districts that stayed remote for most of last year, the outcome was as if Black and Hispanic students had lost four to five more weeks of instruction than white students had.
Is this referring to differences b/w students in the same schools, but of different ethnicity? I don't really understand the racial implications this article is making.
My guess would be yes. The implication seems that pushing the school burden home is hardest on the homes that are already heavily burdened, and that that is more true of minority families?
It's the ratio of (sane, emotionally mature) adults to children that's important. A decent ratio is no greater than 6:1. Most of our schools are more like 30:1. In other words the "dosage" of tutoring (to use the article's bizarre metaphor) is ~5x too low.
- - - -
The second major problem, after chronic and extreme under-staffing, is that our didactic methods are designed (inadvertently but surely) to be slow and ineffective. If you teach children well they learn happily and rapidly. What we do instead is teach poorly and so "eduction" is slow, boring, uncool, and ephemeral (i.e. people forget what they "learned".)
Was interesting to see the variance between US states and countries with the various lockdowns and even quite a big variance between schools in the same region. In the UK aside from a couple of terms my kids were generally in school full time. Fortunately both kids were in early stages of primary school. My son has been hitting some good milestones with his maths and english, especially reading although perhaps understandably the teachers are reluctant to compare their abilities based on previous years.
Conversely my friends in Asia and California saw their kids out of school for very extended periods.
Wild speculation: interestingly, school's often underrated original function "to keep children off the streets" rephrased as "protecting against harmful influence of the world until your frontal lobe develops" means they might be reinvented to be digital limiting structures instead of physical limiting structures.
I think school is more about protecting parents working capacity from their children than protecing children from the world.
Children compulsively and under duress are exposed to so many horrible people and behaviors at school that the rest of the world seems mostly like sheltered, peaceful place by comparison.
I don't know how it's in other countries but in Spain school is glorified children care to ensure kids below 12 are kept occupied until at least 5 and even 6 with additional after school activities.
The reason we moved to a private school. Kids under 12 should not be 9 hours at school everyday.
Doesn't this just prove the fact that the US education system was never good in the first place (especially for the lower and middle class)? There's absolutely nothing scientific or moral about forcing a kid from age 6 to sit in a classroom for 8 hours straight twiddling their thumbs longingly looking outside the window. Forcing them from a young age to do regimented work that is clearly meant to be done at a later developmental stage will just cause them to hate it and zone out, which is what caused the problem the author is describing. If you're not truly engaging with kids, how will you get the results you want?
None of those suggestions will solve the fact that the education system itself is incredibly flawed and near collapse.
Pre pandemic the US educational system was behind compared to most other developed countries. Now it's just sad. People don't seem to care. And those that do put their kids in private schools that provide better education.
I remember feeling smart for the first time in my life when I went to a public high school. My peers were not dumb but the average level of knowledge was pretty shallow and not so wide. This was a smallish high school in a small state (2000ish kids in new england) in the early 2000s. I know its worse now.
[+] [-] lapcat|3 years ago|reply
It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared. We rely a lot on "social promotion", where mere age and time spent in seats is taken as the standard for educational level.
[+] [-] ekianjo|3 years ago|reply
Alternative explanation: you are acting like there is no problem based on anecdotal evidence that is irrelevant to the current situation - At the same time there might be a very serious one as quite a few kids basically have missed proper school for about 2 years. Let's not even try to pretend that lockdowns have no negative effects at all.
[+] [-] 015UUZn8aEvW|3 years ago|reply
The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite direction. The main determinant of whether a school is "good" is the average academic ability of the students who attend the school. And that, statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income.
Policy interventions based on the idea that school quality determines student performance have consistently failed to show significant results. These interventions include local and regional busing. Putting lower-achieving students in close physical proximity to higher-achieving students doesn't make much of a long-term difference.
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
Not exactly. Most states and the federal government adjust funding to send it to the schools that need it most.
https://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/research/school-fundi...
[+] [-] magicink81|3 years ago|reply
Also, the School Sucks Project [2] is a great source of knowledge about the history of schooling, as well as education solutions and alternatives to schooling. They have just launched a re-broadcast of the essential 50 episodes (of their over a decade of 800 episodes) that covers the full spectrum of the relevant topics.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/John-Taylor-Gatto/e/B001K7S0AE%3Fref=... [2] https://schoolsucksproject.com
[+] [-] markvdb|3 years ago|reply
In my case as a guitar teacher, I see two patterns:
- Students with less support at home or natural feeling for guitar are about a year behind where they would normally be after four years of studying.
- My most motivated, talented and best supported students are on schedule or slightly ahead.
[+] [-] tejohnso|3 years ago|reply
Or matter?
Is extending parental dependency the problem? If someone starts college at 20 instead of 18 they are likely at home longer. But a lot of people aren't leaving home for college anyway, or they return home after college whether they graduate or not.
If a bunch of kids start high school at 16 instead of 14 is it going to cause serious problems? It seems to me the only issues would be those that we create by our own expectations.
[+] [-] User23|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/30/home-school...
[+] [-] endisneigh|3 years ago|reply
> It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared.
Huh? So you think the problem of being behind is overstated, but observed many students not being properly prepared yourself when you taught?
[+] [-] Allower|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ovi256|3 years ago|reply
This was well supported and non-controversial pre-pandemic, where we had research results showing that simply having participation in remote schooling lowers high school graduation rate by a significant fraction. But during the pandemic, we still closed schools for most pupils in the developed world.
This was one more problem where the contemporary governance mechanism is "we pretend it won't/isn't/didn't happen because it's politically inconvenient as it contradicts high level leadership decisions (and we can't cause face loss to said leadership)".
[+] [-] gilbetron|3 years ago|reply
But he tells me of all the kids that are just simply failing, and have barely learning anything this year, let along last when many were sitting home by themselves all day.
We did our kids dirty last year :(
[+] [-] mort96|3 years ago|reply
I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?
[+] [-] makeitdouble|3 years ago|reply
Can this be more factually false:
https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/data
first sentence:
> COVID-19 and the 2021-2022 School Year
> Students learn best when they're safely in school, in-person.
[+] [-] tfandango|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
I agree that Apple TVs in classrooms is a waste of money, but I don't remember text books being particularly useful, either. We covered between 25% and 50% of the contents of the book, and maybe had assigned reading for half of what was covered.
Textbooks are also a bit of a racket, too. The contents and pedagogy generally move very slowly, but legislators and parents like to micromanage contents, and textbook makers are happy to oblige. The number of, say, algebra, books across the US is probably embarrassing, as is the fact that there isn't a movement for public domain textbooks.
Novels are different. With 5 books per year at $4 per book with books lasting a few years, I'm less concerned.
[+] [-] beej71|3 years ago|reply
This seems like that on greater scale.
More granular mastery-based progression seems like it would be a good start.
[+] [-] sodality2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreilys|3 years ago|reply
I remember my time there being effectively day-care, I learned more outside of class than inside it. The only real benefit was socializing with kids my age but otherwise everything I learned in those 2 years could've been taught in a week.
[+] [-] buildsjets|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|3 years ago|reply
Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is.
[+] [-] OscarCunningham|3 years ago|reply
It's sad to me that this is the way things work. Being smart and understanding the material are the important endpoints. If he's already achieving those then it's backwards to make him do lots of extra work just to jump through the hoops of exams.
[+] [-] criddell|3 years ago|reply
In other words, I think the kids that make it through are going to be okay.
[+] [-] DoughnutHole|3 years ago|reply
The closest example to something like this happening is probably major teacher strikes. Kids in Argentina during the teachers strikes of the 1980s lost an average of 88 days of primary education and today make about 3% less per year than you would expect given their age.[0] This effect largely comes from lower income groups being less likely than usual to achieve higher levels of education and being more likely to be unemployed.
[0]: https://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/d...
[+] [-] JohnDeHope|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taeric|3 years ago|reply
Not that this should be dismissed. But I hazard it is not a panic item.
[+] [-] jl6|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmcknight|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annyeonghada|3 years ago|reply
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482113
[+] [-] izzydata|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiderice|3 years ago|reply
I'm not suggesting the solution wouldn't work. Just interesting to think about the new problems that would arise from it. Especially given that public school doubles as "babysitting" for a lot of working parents.
[+] [-] lordnacho|3 years ago|reply
What I can say is I'm not surprised if people get lower scores after missing school, because a lot of exams benefit from freshness. You sit there and memorize things that are only useful for the exam, you do the exam, and then you flush the double angle formulas from your cache.
What really matters is that you have some tools, both intellectual and psychological, to keep learning new things for the rest of your life.
[+] [-] namelessoracle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cassac|3 years ago|reply
Easy fix though, lower standards! Lots of districts are already figuring that out. If you take away the primary means to hold the educational system accountable then you have teachers who are unaccountable. All of the sudden all of them are good at their jobs and the teacher mafia… I mean union… can continue to demand more money for the children and won’t even have to deliver anything measurable. It’s genius!
[+] [-] gnicholas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameishere|3 years ago|reply
The credit will always go to some academic who discovers the obvious after the damage is done.
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|3 years ago|reply
There's at least one study that tried to link loss of education with a greater long-term loss of life than the short-term losses avoided with closures... but there are a lot of holes and assumptions so it's far from reliable.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/31/962090342/did-closing-schools...
[+] [-] cassianoleal|3 years ago|reply
This is survivorship bias.
[+] [-] nverno|3 years ago|reply
Is this referring to differences b/w students in the same schools, but of different ethnicity? I don't really understand the racial implications this article is making.
[+] [-] taeric|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|3 years ago|reply
- - - -
The second major problem, after chronic and extreme under-staffing, is that our didactic methods are designed (inadvertently but surely) to be slow and ineffective. If you teach children well they learn happily and rapidly. What we do instead is teach poorly and so "eduction" is slow, boring, uncool, and ephemeral (i.e. people forget what they "learned".)
[+] [-] thorin|3 years ago|reply
Conversely my friends in Asia and California saw their kids out of school for very extended periods.
[+] [-] thejackgoode|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|3 years ago|reply
Children compulsively and under duress are exposed to so many horrible people and behaviors at school that the rest of the world seems mostly like sheltered, peaceful place by comparison.
[+] [-] oneoff786|3 years ago|reply
That’s a generous take.
[+] [-] voisin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|3 years ago|reply
The reason we moved to a private school. Kids under 12 should not be 9 hours at school everyday.
[+] [-] redlights|3 years ago|reply
None of those suggestions will solve the fact that the education system itself is incredibly flawed and near collapse.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|3 years ago|reply
I remember feeling smart for the first time in my life when I went to a public high school. My peers were not dumb but the average level of knowledge was pretty shallow and not so wide. This was a smallish high school in a small state (2000ish kids in new england) in the early 2000s. I know its worse now.