
US School Kids Are Doing Better Than Ever – But You Never Hear It - pchristensen
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/11/02/why-us-school-kids-are-doing-better-than-ever-but-you-never-hear-it.aspx
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Alex3917
Wow, this has to be just about the most blatant propaganda piece I've ever
read. They somehow managed to avoid citing a single relevant fact or
statistic, and yet claim that there is 'evidence' that our school system is
largely succeeding. Reading this truly makes me feel like I'm from another
planet or something.

edit: Let me just preempt this whole discussion by saying that anyone who
claims that more people going through the system means that the system is of
high quality is being incredibly intellectually dishonest.

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scott_s
There is a correlation between people going through the system and people
actually getting an education. If the opposite were true - less people were
going through the system - I'd be very worried.

The problem with "high quality" is that I don't know how to measure it. If we
can't measure it, then it's difficult to have a meaningful discussion about
whether one thing is better than the other. That is, we're restricted to a
purely qualitative discussion that's not based on evidence. Graduation and
enrollment statistics don't measure quality, but I think they are a coarse
indicator of where we are.

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Zot95
Your mileage may vary, but I know that in California, the curriculum has
gotten a lot more ambitious. When I went to kindergarten, you learned the
alphabet, how to count to 12, played with blocks and finger painted. When my
son went to kindergarten, he knew how to read ("Dick and Jane" level text) and
add and subtract single digit numbers. Granted, blocks and finger painting
were gone, gone, gone, but kindergarten has gotten a lot more academic, at
least in CA.

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Periodic
Well, we need to make sure they're prepared for the standardized tests they'll
get in first grade. If we can start them on reading early then we can score
higher for our district and get some more money for our schools. If we let
them spend their time finger-painting then we might get tagged as a deficient
district!

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mikedouglas
While I think the constant pressure to reform is generally a positive force,
to hear that AP placement in math and sciences is triple what it was a decade
ago is a nice reminder of progress.

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jamesbressi
Finally someone shows the other side of the story about education in the U.S.
-- not saying either is right, but always great to have balance.

Education and Climate are currently the two most abused topics facing our
politics and society today.

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feverishaaron
A casual google search found this PDF which contradicts most of what this blog
postulates, at least among the fastest growing racial groups.
[http://www.highereducation.org/reports/pa_decline/pa_decline...](http://www.highereducation.org/reports/pa_decline/pa_decline.pdf)

~~~
scott_s
They're saying different things. The author's article looks at the US as a
whole, and using the most recent statistics of enrollment, concludes that our
school system is better now than it ever has been in the past.

The Higher Education paper uses current statistics on changing demographics in
the country, and the number of workers in those demographics with a college
degree, to project into the future. They predict that the educational gap
between whites and minorities will increase.

These are not mutually exclusive conclusions.

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mattheww
Newsweek also recently devoted its cover to shortening 4 year college programs
to 3 years (<http://www.newsweek.com/id/218183>) and also asked a team of
"experts" to discuss the idea (<http://www.newsweek.com/id/218234>).

Much like the blog post here, there was no discussion of the quality of
education. No statistics about the quality, effectiveness, or usefulness were
presented. The primary focus was cost and arguments about "development."

Unfortunately, discussions without supporting data seem to be the norm on this
topic.

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dstorrs
At the risk of sounding overly pedantic, I have a lot of trouble giving
credence to an education-related blog article that averages roughly 1 spelling
/ grammar error per sentence in the first paragraph.

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Periodic
It's interesting that this piece comes right after The Ph.D. Problem which was
posted yesterday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916850>).

In that piece, the author points out how graduate studies have gotten longer
and we are producing more graduates, but there are fewer positions and they
are getting less non-academic experience. Essentially, more Ph.D.s is a
problem in itself.

I'm not sure how that might translate to 4-year degrees though.

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DanielStraight
The US school system is more BS than ever. At the highschool closest to where
I live, teachers are _NOT ALLOWED_ to give a midterm grade lower than 60. The
student can literally do nothing and get a 60 on the midterm. Then it only
takes like a 75 on the second half of the class to pass. So overall, it's
something like 37 percent of the points the student actually has to earn to
pass. Even if 100% of kids passed that wouldn't be a sign of the kids doing
well. It would be a sign of a stupid system.

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char
I think it is useless to argue (as in this article) that students are doing
either better or worse in the American school systems now than in the past.

What is significant (and much more interesting) is the fact that compared to
other rapidly advancing countries (e.g. India), our educational system is much
less effective, and that this could have severe consequences for the US in the
near future.

