Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Dumb and Getting Dumber

—

by

James A. Bacon
in ,

Two years after the COVID school lockdowns, t

he collapse in K-12 learning still has significant downward momentum. Of the 1.4 million high school seniors who took the ACT college preparedness test in 2023, the percentage meeting all four benchmarks — English, math, reading, and science — was 20.8% — down 1.3 percentage points from the previous year, according to ACT.

That’s not 21% of all high school graduates, it’s 21% of students who took the exam, which varied from 2% in Maine to 100% in Alabama.

“This is the sixth consecutive year of declines in average scores, with average scores declining in every academic subject,” ACT CEO Janet Godwin said in a press release. “We are also continuing to see a rise in the number of seniors leaving high school without meeting any of the college readiness benchmarks, even as student GPAs continue to rise and students report that they feel prepared to be successful in college.”

In Virginia, a mere 8% of high school graduates took the ACT exams, meaning only a highly self-selected group of college-bound students participated. Here is the percentage of Virginia students meeting ACT benchmarks of having “a high probability of success in credit-bearing first-year college courses”:

English — 83%
Math — 72%
Reading — 61%
Science  — 63%

— JAB

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56 responses to “Dumb and Getting Dumber”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    “Spotsylvania elementary and high school students are nearing or have exceeded pre-pandemic performance on state English and math assessments, but middle school student performance remains below that of the 2018-19 school year. ”
    …
    ” The team presented both raw pass rates, which reflect how every student who took the SOL tests this past spring performed, and “accreditation rates,” which reflect adjustments made by the Virginia Department of Education to factor in growth demonstrated between the spring 2022 and spring 2023 results.

    To calculate accreditation, the VDOE also takes out the test scores of transfer students who spent less than 50% of the year in the division and those of English learners who are new to the country, explained Susan Thrift, the division’s coordinator of instructional support and assessment.

    The accreditation pass rate in English among elementary students was 86 for 2022-23, as compared to 83 in 2018-19 and 89 in 2021-22.

    Among high school students, the English accreditation pass rate was 88 for 2022-23, as compared to 89 in 2018-19 and 84 in 2021-22.

    The middle school pass rate in English was 71 in 2022-23, down from 74 in 2021-22 and 77 in 2018-19. ”

    https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/education/spotsylvania-instructional-staff-share-accreditation-information/article_01292326-677b-11ee-b15b-0bd1826c63e0.html#tncms-source=login

    makes me wonder if DOE also took out the scores for Economically Disadvantaged kids, would they be even more scores and rival top level scores in other countries!

    1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead

      Nonsense Mr. Larry. Spotsy students know very little. I am giving tours at Historic Kenmore in Fredericksburg as a side gig. We had three classes of advanced placement US History students pass thru the house tour. Courtland High kids. Kenmore was built in 1775. I asked the same question to all three classes. Can you name the historic event that occurred when Kenmore was built? Nothing. Not a clue. Threw out some big hints such as April, Paul Revere, they heard it around the world. Nobody could give an answer. Your property tax dollars are producing fine results.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        yeah but… what about those SOLs? 😉

        and I bet they are NO WORSE than the student at the schools where you taught!

        Hey what is that curriculum approach at Fork Union you have referred to? One something..??

        1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
          James Wyatt Whitehead

          In frustration I asked a kid this: When was the War of 1812? I got a very unsure voice that uttered 1812.

          I did write up something on the One Subject Plan. I have not submitted it. I don’t think anyone is serious about education reform. So why bother.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            You gotta start somewhere… and I wondered if DOD did anything similar that got them good results.
            Do you know of any other place that does it? Write a post and educate us!

      2. how_it_works Avatar
        how_it_works

        The first thing that I think of when I read the name Paul Revere:

        “The British are coming! The British are coming!”.

        I learned that over 30 years ago, probably. It’s memorable.

  2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
    Eric the half a troll

    “Roughly 1.4 million high school seniors took the ACT test, an increase over the 2022 graduating class.”

    A variable apparently not considered in this conclusion:

    “Two years after the COVID school lockdowns, the collapse in K-12 learning still has significant downward momentum.”

  3. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    AI is being successfully used to accelerate college student learning.

    Could it help solve the learning deficit in Virginia? Let’s go ask the Secretary of Technology. Oh right, that position was eliminated by Ralph Northam.

    How important is technology in today’s world anyway?

    But Northam did create a cabinet level position for DEI. Maybe we can ask that person about the use of AI to help our children.

    https://www.edweek.org/technology/an-ai-teaching-assistant-boosted-college-students-success-could-it-work-for-high-school/2023/10

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Oh yeah,. what was that.. at UVA MOOC… right? seems like there was a major dust-up about it.

      So Northam did bad… has Youngkin fixed it yet?

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Who runs the best schools in the US? Success Academies, Charter Schools, TED ? Nope!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b0851b79065de1dd9cf5a602b8a76d0d09532206cdb1975fa8c40e84b794e941.png

    “With about 66,000 students — more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle — the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of.

    On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam that is considered the gold standard for comparing states and large districts, the Defense Department’s schools outscored every jurisdiction in math and reading last year and managed to avoid widespread pandemic losses.”

    “Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students.

    Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school — suggesting lower family incomes, on average — performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates.

    The schools reopened relatively quickly during the pandemic, but last year’s results were no fluke.

    While the achievement of U.S. students overall has stagnated over the last decade, the military’s schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country’s lowest-performing students — in the bottom 25th percentile — have slipped further behind, the Defense Department’s lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html?unlocked_article_code=7dAONq4oyqtYtYEbkhpnXEqZUVD40mO-qdD5paHOhm3CCnFdlTyX2-dm4lfE-FAWh6W4gRpMotb5olyhu2uknQXZS29slXPfFiPOA_T8WDT_5KCco0sV87EttgY44CNU2zZPEIfqCb0IEzEHXSAMafaR6CWeLO2LTBs1DCIM6ZyOHQiuO2aG7awYN1VaheYIOSshHA-9DfSGTIPN2_zC1ZDXMiMT17ysQoqv88gqibizipN3Slvl4SeVHikkx8s4fk8KoxOjg-r9byWzB-MuA9FgpWxLwaj1ISaFm4QRnniCgJHejX2qz4XKOjEkTLOKisX9aw7EtPU8zhy5IjcTb9uYMXg1iqEW&smid=url-sharehttps://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca3913c10f0976ac9c968e7e2e70336e09e990f7bc7a6f302acb5db656ffca97.png

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca3913c10f0976ac9c968e7e2e70336e09e990f7bc7a6f302acb5db656ffca97.png

      1. Teddy007 Avatar
        Teddy007

        A better way to use NAEP scores is compare the scores for non-Hispanic white students across all states. There is no reason to give NJ, Conn, or Wisconsin an edge for having a much larger share of white students. Or one can compare the NAEP scores of black students across all states.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Can you get that specific data from NAEP?

          1. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            If one spends enough time, one can factor out race for most states. Here is a comparison done over a decade ago that showed that Wisconsin public schools are not that good but they are just very white compared to other large states. https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            using the data explorer… yes.. but not sure the point being made… with respect to DOD….or
            have we moved to something different? Why test different states on ethinicity?

            Also.. you do realize that NAEP does not test every public school, right?

          3. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            I believe all schools will eventually cycle through the NAEP tests. And it was a comment by someone else that brought up how to use the NAEP scores. If one wants to compare across states, then one need to compare for a single race since if one does not, one gets caught in Simpson’s paradox which is what happened in Paul Krugman tried to compare Wisconsin and Texas.

          4. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            It’s a big data problem to pick schools that “fit” the demographic. They only test a very few
            in Virginia each year.

            I still don’t understand why there is a need to compare by race.

            Are you using it as a proxy for low-income or what?

            Can you provide a link to the Klugman thing?

          5. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            As was shown by the Iowahawk data, a state can have better than average scores for white students, for black students, and for Hispanic student but be below average overall because most of the students are black or Hispanic. It is called Simpson’s paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

            I always loved that one of the realy examples was the different in men and women having different acceptance rate for graduate schools at UC-Berkeley.

          6. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            ” The paradox can be resolved when confounding variables and causal relations are appropriately addressed in the statistical modeling[4][5] (e.g., through cluster analysis[6])”

            seems like a known way to deal with it.. in data.. I’d be surprised if NAEP is not doing that. How they pick the schools to test is a big deal in terms of data… from what I’ve read. They do not pick random.

          7. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            The NAEP test givers cannot correct the state’s overall score by correcting the data to ensure that every state has the same proportion of white, black, or Hispanic students. Thus, one should not compare overall state averages but only the averages of the same demographic groups to reduce confounders. Remember, in all states that report NAEP scores for black students , whites score higher than blacks. And some of the states with the highest scores have the highest achievement gaps such as New Jersey. It is the old idea that do the test scores tell one about how the schools work or about what kind of students the schools have.

          8. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            so the NAEP data is wrong and you can’t compare the states?

          9. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            If one wants to compare states, then one needs to try to eliminate as many confounding variables such as race and set. If one just compares the gross average of each state, then what one is doing is comparing the demographic make up of the states. However, if one only compares non-Hispanic whites, some states do better than one would think like Texas but other states like the upper midwest do worse.

            Also, it is never a good look when one tries to intentionally misunderstand someone. NAEP scores are useful but have to be used carefully. As a writer several years ago noted after looking at NAEP scores, the low hanging fruit for improving education in the U.S. would be white males in many of the midwest states. But that is the last place anyone is going to invest more in education. The would rather spend their time trying to raise scores of urban core blacks which, in reality, are the highest hanging fruit in education.

          10. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            so the NAEP scores that ARE shown are not really correct? I’m pretty sure they DO correct for quite a few of the factors that could cause issues but I think the issues you are alluding to are your own
            ideas… and not necessarily “wrong” for NAEP, especially IQ which as far as I know is not collected
            at all… much less factored into scores at the school level nor state or NAEP. The thing about low and high hanging fruit seems to be purely a personal view.

            but if NAEP is valid for comparing states.. it ought to be also valid for comparing DOD IMO.

          11. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/assessment_process/selection.aspx#:~:text=Selecting%20Schools%20for%20NAEP,with%20state%20departments%20of%20education.

          12. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Does that also mean that we could actually get a good comparison between charter schools and regular public schoolslusing the data explorer tool?

    2. Kathleen Smith Avatar
      Kathleen Smith

      Just a memoir of being a military child in a DOD school: if any of us had the teacher trouble, the commander of the base called the parent. An overdue library book resulted in the same.

    3. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      The testing results compared only states, Larry. Charter schools are not states. TED is a lecture series.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        are you sure?

        ” NAEP assessments are administered to students in public, private, and charter schools at grades 4, 8, and 12.

        Public, Private, and Charter Schools Dashboard”

        https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
        dashboards/schools_dashboard.aspx#:~:text=
        NAEP%20assessments%20are%20administered%20to,4%2C%208%2C%20and%2012.

        1. Teddy007 Avatar
          Teddy007

          The private schools can opt out. The charter school test results would be lumped in with other public schools.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            You can get to the Charter-only with their data explorer..

      2. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3f41f30f177083525054b77f1e279d8d94c9a731b5fdf2f40575b69acf78a1e.png

    4. Kathleen Smith Avatar
      Kathleen Smith

      Just a memoir of being a military child in a DOD school: if any of us had the teacher trouble, the commander of the base called the parent. An overdue library book resulted in the same.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        so one of the things the DOD schools do I believe is a uniform standard curriculum across all their
        schools. If you move, and still stay in a DOD school, you’ll pick up where you left off. As a Marine Corps brat, we’d move every 2-3 years but I sent to public schools that did not use the same curriculum. So I missed stuff… especially grammar… The thing I don’t know is what DOD does
        about reading. Is it phonics-based?

      2. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        Exactly right. Comparing the DoD’s schools to typical public K-12 is ridiculous. Unless, of course, the comparison revolves around the issues of discipline and involved parents.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          so why don’t Conservatives advocate that we adopt DOD school approaches instead of Charter schools?

          From what I can tell, Charter Schools don’t do that well across the board like DOD does.

    5. Teddy007 Avatar
      Teddy007

      there are less than 70k kids, 2/3 of them are outside the U.S. and very few of them are high school students. The DODEA is a combination of outside the U.S. and the remains of schools set up to counteract Jim Crow laws in the south. Also, over the years, many of the DODEA schools have shut down and merged with the local school boards.

      A good data test would be to look at NAEP scores of local school district schools located on military bases such as Fort Belvoir or Fort Gregg-Adams compared to DODEA schools.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Interesting point. So the DODEA school scores in the US may not be good? Why would NAEP scores
        of conventional public schools outside of military bases be a good test or are you saying compare
        the DODEA scores in those military bases compared to the local schools?

        I don’t think you can get the data for either, can you?

        1. Teddy007 Avatar
          Teddy007

          Many military bases have an elementary school sitting inside the fences of the installation. Compare the NAEP scores of those schools with the NAEP scores of the DODEA schools to eliminate the confounders of every child having an employed parents and every child have a parent that scored above a cut off on an IQ test.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I’m not sure of what you just said… DODEA scores are not legitimate?

          2. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            Only some DOD installations have DODEA schools (in Virginia Quantico Marine Corps base does but Fort Belvoir, the Naval bases in the tidewater area, or Fort Gregg-Adams in Petersburg does not. Yet, all of those installations that do not have DODEA run schools inside their fence lines have elementary schools that are run by the local school district. A really interesting study would be to compare those non-DODEA schools that are filled with 100% DOD family members to the DODEA run schools.

          3. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I see your point. I suspect the DOD would be better.

          4. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            I suspect that they would end up statistically the same. It is not like DODEA schools have some magic way to teach fractions that no one else knows.

          5. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            then how do they top the NAEP?

          6. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            Because of the employment of parents, economic situation of the parents, IQ testing of parents, and the same sample size compared to states. However, if one just compared non-Hispanic white scores for each state, the DODEA gap closes.

          7. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Is the Demographic at DOD schools different in terms of “employment of parents, economic situation of the parents, IQ testing of parents, and the same sample size compared to states”

            How do you know of these “differences”? is it documented somewhere?

          8. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            Yes, the DODEA is the only state where 100% of the student have at least one employed parent. No state can get close to that. Because if the student did not have a parent in the military or employed by the DoD, they would not be a student in the DODEA schools to begin with.

          9. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            but how does that affect anything if you really can’t see the specific data which is not even
            tabulated for the states as far as I can tell….

            Are you familiar with the VDOE “build a table”? see the various criteria that you can
            break out the data? There is no category for the data, right?

          10. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            Every member of the military took an IQ test when they enlisted. There are cut off scores. Officers need to have college degrees and eventually need graduate degrees. To be in the DODEA schools, a parent have to be eligible to send a child to the DODEA school and that means being employed by the DOD. Look it up.

          11. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I don’t not believe it but how would you know in the data one way or the other for a given school DOD or public?

          12. Teddy007 Avatar
            Teddy007

            The DODEA schools are on military bases and are for the family members that are living on the base. There is no way for an unemployed single mother to enroll her child in a DOD school. And there is no way to get housing on a DOD facility without taking an IQ test (ASVAB test) or having a college degree. If one has a child attending a DODEA school, then one fits into certain defined categories. That is very unlike a public school that has to take everyone who is allowed to enroll.

  5. James C. Sherlock Avatar
    James C. Sherlock

    The scores represent a collapse of standards in K-12 schools.

    One signal is grade inflation. Last year Chalkbeat reported that high school student GPAs continue to rise, from an average of 2.68 in 1990 to 3.11 in 2019.

    H.S. graduation rates are rising along with soaring absenteeism. Petersburg H.S. had 48% chronic absenteeism and an 86% graduation rate. Try to rationalize that.

    So the colleges eliminated SAT test scores to pry tuition payments from those kids.

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      The colleges eliminated (or made optional) standardized test scores so they would not be accountable for their acceptance decisions. Despite almost every standardized test of K-12 learning going down, GPAs go up. More and more college bound students are clustered into the higher GPAs. Given that, how much do GPAs actually differentiate one student from the next?

      SAT/ACT scores are standardized and do differentiate among those who take the test.

      The answer from the colleges? Standardized tests favor the wealthy. Not really. Khan Academy offers personalized and interactive tools and resources for SAT study and prep. The site gives students a tailored practice plan based on their practice scores or previous scores. And it’s free.

      As for GPAs – do these college admission people really believe that wealthy families don’t pay for tutoring during the school year so their kids will have a higher GPA?

  6. Teddy007 Avatar
    Teddy007

    Considering that most of the highly selectiv euniversities have stopped accepting standardized test scores, doesn’t it make sense that the scores would go down. The scores matter less these days.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      How much did the cottage industry of boosting SATs play into the decisions to stop using them because not all students had equal access to courses and clinics to boost their SAT scores?

      1. Teddy007 Avatar
        Teddy007

        Very little. The decision was probably caused by the gap between Asian test takers and everyone else. If one does not have a hard number to compare students, it makes it easier to hide affirmative action, legacy admissions, athletes admissions, and employee admissions.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          At least some were at flagship schools without major athletic programs, though. The Asians are
          well known to engage in academic boot camps for admission into selective schools both College and K-12

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