Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Education United States

ACT Test Scores For US Students Drop To a 30-Year Low (npr.org) 102

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: High school students' scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test. Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in the class of 2023 whose scores were reported Wednesday were in their first year of high school when the virus reached the U.S.

The average ACT composite score for U.S. students was 19.5 out of 36. Last year, the average score was 19.8. The average scores in reading, science and math all were below benchmarks the ACT says students must reach to have a high probability of success in first-year college courses. The average score in English was just above the benchmark but still declined compared to last year.

About 1.4 million students in the U.S. took the ACT this year, an increase from last year. However, the numbers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. [Janet Godwin, chief executive officer for the nonprofit ACT] said she doesn't believe those numbers will ever fully recover, partly because of test-optional admission policies. Of students who were tested, only 21% met benchmarks for success in college-level classes in all subjects. Research from the nonprofit shows students who meet those benchmarks have a 50% chance of earning a B or better and nearly a 75% chance of earning a C or better in corresponding courses.
Further reading: Accounting Graduates Drop By Highest Percentage in Years
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

ACT Test Scores For US Students Drop To a 30-Year Low

Comments Filter:
  • Colleges aren't requiring tests any more. Better students have other means to depend on for acceptance. Is it just that the poorer students are the only ones taking the test?
    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Colleges aren't requiring tests any more. Better students have other means to depend on for acceptance. Is it just that the poorer students are the only ones taking the test?

      Or the higher performing students don't bother preparing as they used to. You can increase you score on these standardized tests significantly by getting a prep book with a few practice tests under timed conditions. There are two things that you need to score highly. (1) Understand the subject matters. (2) Be skilled in taking the test, note this is something separate from the subject matter. But understanding the questions quickly, they follow a template. Having an optimizing strategy, skip questions that

      • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @02:37AM (#63922071)
        All true. But there's an issue with all tests that claim to predict academic success, & that's construct validity, i.e. Is the test an accurate proxy for the knowledge, skills, & attitudes (learned content/subject matter knowledge) that a candidate needs for future success on the intended academic programmes? Evidence suggests that what many tests actually predict is candidates' ability to organise themselves, focus for long periods of time, prepare for the tests consistently, learn test-taking strategies, etc., (AKA "study skills") but not necessarily be any more knowledgeable in the subject matter than a lower-scoring candidate, which we can determine through giving candidates authentic/real-world tasks in authentic contexts that require them to apply what they know (or, in some cases giving candidates a "viva voce" format exam interview). In short, what many tests measure is "studiousness" more than subject matter knowledge, skills, & attitudes.

        I suspect that this is why many admissions assessors are giving potential candidates alternative ways to demonstrate their suitability for academic study &/or work. Most tests do kind of sort of work, i.e. candidates demonstrate abilities that are desirable, but those abilities are not necessarily related to the specific disciplines in which they intend to study/work. We can design "better" assessments but those tend to be narrower, more specific, context dependent, & more difficult & expensive to administer, especially at scale. In short, institutions & candidates don't really know if it's the right subject/discipline for them until they're actually enrolled on the programme. This is most likely why we see so many drop outs & changes in subject/discipline on academic programmes.
      • Because of scholarships - at least for now. The college my son is applying to this year gives automatic scholarships based on ACT/SAT score. He took both SAT and ACT twice to get the best score he could, as well as a prep class.

    • COVID-19 is a multi-organ disease that affects the brain as well (this has even been shown in MRI and histological studies). Many people suffer from brain fog, concentration difficulties and fatigue for a long period after the infection and there's no guarantee of a full recovery. Even though the brain of young people are more resilient, I'm pretty sure this plays at least some role in the drop of the results.
      • COVID-19 is a multi-organ disease that affects the brain as well (this has even been shown in MRI and histological studies). Many people suffer from brain fog, concentration difficulties and fatigue for a long period after the infection and there's no guarantee of a full recovery. Even though the brain of young people are more resilient, I'm pretty sure this plays at least some role in the drop of the results.

        While you are correct in your description, the prevalence of PACS in the younger demographics would be insufficient for a notable change in test scores. Organ scarring detected by MRIs and histograms correlate to severity of disease, and would not impact the test-taking population in any meaningful way. The symptoms you describe are uncommon (especially in the below-49 crowd), and most of the individuals with those symptoms recovered 6-24 months after the acute phase.

  • by Midnight_Falcon ( 2432802 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @07:13PM (#63921603)
    In Soviet Russia, achievement tests take you!
  • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @07:34PM (#63921627)
    https://www.ajc.com/education/... [ajc.com]

    On Wednesday, Godwin, the ACT CEO, said rising GPAs are giving students false hope.

    “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,” she said.

    No wonder there's a concerted effort against standardized testing, which could be the last line of defense left against a university who wants to reap tens of thousands in tuition from a student before he realizes he's made a mistake and ended up somewhere he can't succeed. I notice NPR left this quote out.

    • Graph (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @07:49PM (#63921653)
      p.s. The trend is pretty striking when graphed (even without 2023 data):
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        p.s. The trend is pretty striking when graphed (even without 2023 data): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        The way I read that graph, scores climbed through the 1990s, were basically flat from about 2000 to 2020, then fell off a cliff.

        What happened? Two possibilities. 1. COVID made everyone stupid. 2. Colleges stopped requiring the ACT, so people stopped doing ACT prep classes that artificially inflated their scores.

        One could also argue that math began trending down as early as 2013, but only barely enough to cancel out the bump caused by allowing calculators in the math section in late 2016, and this might

        • 1, sortof (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The idea that people should have to work hard to succeed has completely broken down. Partly it's from seeing so many people get rich without effort -- like all the crypto millionaires and meme stock millionaires. Partly it's all the criminality we're seeing in major cities. Partly it's seeing how "the rules" don't seem to apply to the rich and powerful (see, e.g. Gavin Newsom's dinner at the French Laundry while everyone else was locked down). Partly it is as you said, that a whole lot of people sat on thei

        • p.s. The trend is pretty striking when graphed (even without 2023 data):

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          The way I read that graph, scores climbed through the 1990s, were basically flat from about 2000 to 2020, then fell off a cliff.

          What happened? Two possibilities. 1. COVID made everyone stupid. 2. Colleges stopped requiring the ACT, so people stopped doing ACT prep classes that artificially inflated their scores.

          One could also argue that math began trending down as early as 2013, but only barely enough to cancel out the bump caused by allowing calculators in the math section in late 2016, and this might even be caused by kids not being used to using normal calculators anymore because they all have phones.

          English also arguably started trending down slightly from 2006, but the big drop still coincides with COVID.

          The drop also correlates with the political polarization, Trump, conspiracy theory nutterbutters, the rise of various idiot ideologies, angry feminism and incel stuff, and the general rise of coordinated social media disinformation. Ten years ago I never heard a single person say that a university education was a waste of time, but now I can see it on every social media platform. Ten years ago education and knowledge was lauded, I do not believe that is the case today.

        • Two possibilities. 1. COVID made everyone stupid.

          A significant drop and downward trend started 3 years before COVID.

          You left out a 3rd option. A significant change has occurred in the way various subjects have been taught in the early and mid 2010s which may not have produced the knowledge and capabilities people need. The downward trend of ACT results would also happily co-incide with people entering highschool in 2012-15 being fed the new curriculums that were introduced.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Education is an industry and a theology.

      You have a whole system that starts in academia with the idea that pedagogy and classroom management are things that can be taught. Probably true, no evidence really to suggest otherwise.

      However (and its to bad politics disappeared the study the Bush admin did on this) a handful of people set themselves up as the authorities on the subject around the turn of the century and setup university programs. The wrote the cannon based purely on their own experience and assum

      • The dumbing down of schools has been on going for generations.

        It used to be that kids in backwater bfe one room schools all learned Latin. My grandfather was one of those Latin teachers until he retired in the early 70s.

        Now kids are lucky to learn English.

        • by Lordfly ( 590616 )

          Is Latin a useful skill to have in Buckfum, Iowa?

          • Yes.

            English to a degree and the "Latin" languages to a great extent are surprisingly based on Latin. The value of knowing the base language should be self evident for educated people.

            Anyway, their math was more advanced, their English harder, their everything was more intense and serious than today. Latin is just an example.

    • The tuition comes from government loans which are later either defaulted or forgiven. It's a great grift.

  • Protip (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 )

    College is a scam, drop out and learn a trade instead.

    • College is a scam, drop out and learn a trade instead.

      As someone who has taken this path and constantly bitches about not having enough income, no - don't do this unless you're absolutely sure you'll be going into a trade that doesn't have a race to the bottom in wages because everybody and their brother also believed that it was a great way to skip college.

      Lie, cheat, fake it 'till you make it, do whatever it takes to get through college and get a nice well paying job for corporate America.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        College is a scam, drop out and learn a trade instead.

        As someone who has taken this path and constantly bitches about not having enough income, no - don't do this unless you're absolutely sure you'll be going into a trade that doesn't have a race to the bottom in wages because everybody and their brother also believed that it was a great way to skip college.

        Every career is a race to the bottom in terms of wages. If you're not part of the owning class, you're part of the wage slave class. The only difference is that some jobs are intellectually difficult enough and require enough training that it takes the owning class longer to break the backs of the workers.

        If you're lucky enough to take a job in such an industry close enough to the start of the bump, you can save up enough money during the upswing to not care about the negative wage growth during the inevi

        • College can be a good deal if you target a professional middle class career field early on and take internships/jobs to network. That coupled with cost saving measures, like in state public universities as opposed to brand name private schools. People run into trouble when they pay out of state tuition at a designer university to study Kinesiology or something with no further plan.

          But college can most definitely be a good deal. For example, who do you think designs airplanes, someone from trade school? Ho

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            College can be a good deal if you target a professional middle class career field early on and take internships/jobs to network. That coupled with cost saving measures, like in state public universities as opposed to brand name private schools. People run into trouble when they pay out of state tuition at a designer university to study Kinesiology or something with no further plan.

            I don't disagree, but one could cynically argue that when universities are a good deal, they're effectively a trade school by another name. You're learning the things needed for a career in a specific field. Unfortunately, that's kind of the opposite of what a university education traditionally is. In college, you should be broadening your education to make yourself a more well-rounded intellectual, not just doing a deep dive in a particular subject area. That's what a trade school is for.

            But college can most definitely be a good deal. For example, who do you think designs airplanes, someone from trade school? How about microprocessors? Those jobs go to the degreed professional middle class.

            Only because t

            • Your "trade school that teaches aeronautical engineering" is just what major classes are. You're effectively just arguing that core curriculum should be clipped. I may be wrong, but it sounds like you don't come from a college going family that knows how it works. The middle class uses colleges as a trade school for middle class professional jobs. The core just makes sure those professionals know basic science, reading, writing, government, and math.

              Now for those who don't realize how to use college, they e

              • Sounds unfair. Raise taxes to achieve equity.

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Your "trade school that teaches aeronautical engineering" is just what major classes are. You're effectively just arguing that core curriculum should be clipped. I may be wrong, but it sounds like you don't come from a college going family that knows how it works.

                You're very wrong on all counts. I have a Master's degree, and both my parents are retired college professors. Classes in your major are capped at a particular percentage of the total number of hours for a reason, despite a strong push, particularly from engineering departments, to raise that cap and let students spend more time working on their major area of study and less time learning other things. And I'm arguing that they're wrong to try to do that, because if all you're getting out of college is wh

                • I also have a Masters degree, and you've just drunk the coolaid because your parents are professors and drink it for a living. So I'll make my point in a few words, as opposed to a liberal arts essay no one will probably read:

                  No one changes from being an engineer to a nurse or an architect to a CPA without going back to school for another mountain of debt. A well rounded education makes someone mobile within a field, but it does not give someone a marketable skill. The skills businesses pay for are valuable

                  • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                    No one changes from being an engineer to a nurse or an architect to a CPA without going back to school for another mountain of debt.

                    Becoming a CPA requires professional certification above and beyond the college level. AFAIK, you don't have to major in a specific field. And while that might be true for nursing, it isn't true for becoming a doctor; the latter requires a post-college degree program, and doesn't require any specific major at the undergraduate level.

                    So it really isn't that simple. And not all career paths require a specific degree program. You can become a software engineer without a college degree, for example.

                    A well rounded education makes someone mobile within a field, but it does not give someone a marketable skill.

                    Neither

                    • If someone can't code their way out of a paper bag after a CS degree, then that University should lose funding. This is precisely why FAFSA is problematic: it encourages Universities to lower standards so far that the people arguing *for* college admit some people complete a degree and learned nothing.

                      Your image of a Renaissance man who can do it all being forged in the alma mater is just a bit much. CPAs, engineers, actuaries, data scientists, nurses, etc, are not produced by the learned intellectual doing

                    • You know what?

                      I changed my mind. I more agree than disagree with what you said after thinking about it. But I still stand by the fact that if a person doesn't get a high demand skill along the way, they're being setup for failure.

      • Re:Protip (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @09:14PM (#63921755)

        At least choose your major carefully;

        "According to the NASW study, the median annual salary for social workers that have earned a graduate degree $48,000."

        "The average salary for an electrician in Washington is around $76,710 per year."

        The amount of rewiring that will be needed to convert to an all-electric infrastructure will keep the electricians busy for a long time.

        • Pffft, don't use near worthless degree as benchmark.

          entry level EE in Washington makes $88K a year.

          Get the degree. Do first two years in community college and get last two years in nearby state school where you get resident discount.

          • EE = $88k starting, after 4 years of college
            Electrician = $77k, without needing 4 years of college.

            You definitely need to economize your degree to make being an EE worth it in any short period of time.

            Note: I figure that somebody with the ability to get an EE would be a top-percentage electrician.

            • How does an Electrician's pay go up year after year? The long term is important as well, not just starting. For an undergrad in Computer Engineering, I got a bit higher than the average starting (for the year), and it's gone up ~14% yearly (compounded) over the past 15 years. The college I got my degree from is charges $3200/Semester these days, and my hiring bonus wiped away my $10K student loan. The point I want to make is that engineering degrees can be super cheap (as iggymanz said), and can have lon
              • How does an Electrician's pay go up year after year?

                Apprentice->Journeyman->Master->Starting their own business.

              • by sfcat ( 872532 )
                And if you have your own business as an electrician, you make more a year than any EE working for someone else unless you are an executive. Oh, and even more fun, right around the time the electrician has enough experience to start their own business, is right about the time when an engineer's salary flat-lines. They still teach economics in college right?
            • I made $10/hour doing absolute bottom end tech work as a kid. When I retired years ago I was making over 300k plus RSUs and options worth millions.

              The only way the electrician can compete is to build a business managing other electricians but that means only the top guy makes big money. The rest are salaried and never make it big, by definition. They can't all be at the top.

              If you love your kids, you'll send them to college *and* make sure they don't get a stupid degree.

              • by kackle ( 910159 )
                That sounds like some good coin. May I ask what you did before you retired?
                • I was doing grunt level sysadmin work as a kid. Tape changing, printer fixing, laptop windows fixes. Total crap work.

                  By the end I was exec level leader of multiple teams in startups of various stages doing data center management, Devops, standard engineering/development, office sysamdin, etc, etc. basically CIO but at places too small to have a CIO, per se. I was actual CIO once. Same taste, different bottle.

                  I would stay until either company went under/I got laid off or the politics became untenable.

                  • by kackle ( 910159 )
                    When you say "startups", I automatically think of California, etc., but I am ignorant to that world. Is that where your jobs were pre-everyone-working-from-home?
            • You are ignorant of the process of becoming electrician, hint there is apprenticeship, training and of course licensing.

              • oh and I'll agree electrician can make more than EE in specialized and custom work, I worked with such at nuclear power plant. There are many other possibilities too. I

                • so if you are very aware it takes longer to become electrician with good pay than to complete college and get job with good pay why did you open your ignorant online mouth to imply otherwise?

              • Actually, it is you that is ignorant of my knowledge in this aspect. I am fully aware of the apprentice, journeyman, and master levels, and that it takes training and certification(testing) to mov3 up.

                Proof, in this very threading, 2 days before your reply:
                https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

                Now, I didn't mention training and licensing explicitly, but assuming ignorance from a single sentence is how you make a fool of yourself.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          At least choose your major carefully; "According to the NASW study, the median annual salary for social workers that have earned a graduate degree $48,000." "The average salary for an electrician in Washington is around $76,710 per year."

          And the average graduate degree STEM major is at $125K?

          The amount of rewiring that will be needed to convert to an all-electric infrastructure will keep the electricians busy for a long time.

          Don't forget the software that infrastructure will require. :-)

    • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      It's not a scam, it's just not the only path.
    • Plenty of opportunities for an adequate ditch digger.
    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

      College is a scam, drop out and learn a trade instead.

      Computer Science is my trade. I've done self taught and formal degree programs. Learned to program for fun, started school, a couple years in I dropped out for an exceptional job opportunity, went back to school during a "normal" job that followed - employer paid, at another "normal" job I did CS grad school - again employer paid. Note employer support is typically limited to their tax deduction, since I was attending State U I was within the limit. Ivy league would have required a lot of money from my pock

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )
        They do, both theory and practice are important. But, you paid for the theory and got paid for the practice. And the amounts you were paying and were paid were both substantial. It isn't education that lacks value, it is if the theory is so valuable as to justify the astronomical cost of college tuition. And if tuition continues to rise, at some point that ceases to be the case. The question is, have we gotten to that point yet? When we can compare the pay of a tradesman vs an engineer and we have to
        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          They do, both theory and practice are important. But, you paid for the theory and got paid for the practice.

          Not really. I paid for my first year and a half before I dropped out, but at State U the costs were reasonable and it was all worth it. Between self study and that year and a half of CS I could get a real job. Without that brief time in a CS program getting the job would have been much harder. Basically I had enough of the core classes that employers cared about, data structures and algorithms for example. For the latter two and a half years of a BS CS, and all of a MS CS, employers reimbursed me for school

    • You do know that they teach The Trades in college. If you go to the right type of college. :)

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @08:49PM (#63921717)
    Even before COVID my child had an A in calculus and the highest grade in his supposedly college-focused charter school. Then they got to college and learned that they actually had not learned calculus and I wound up tutoring them and learned just how much they had not learned. The lack of homework had made me suspicious, but high consistent grades had lulled me into a false sense they were learning something.
    • High schools usually teach "pre-calculus", not the same thing

      • High schools do teach Calculus, but usually only bigger ones since only a handful of students actually take it. Even at a university Calculus can vary. Usually, a standard Calculus class is just the first few parts of Stewart. Some wild Calculus classes are really Real Analysis lite, often based on Spivak.

        Also. Calculus 2 can crush even a moderately well prepared student who had Calculus 1. So it may have not been inadequate Calculus 1, just hardcore Calculus 2.

      • High schools usually teach "pre-calculus", not the same thing

        Calculus is widely taught in US high schools. The AP exam for Calculus AB (a.k.a. Calc 1) is the 7th most commonly administered AP exam among the 47 AP exams offered, putting it ahead of other, widely taught subjects such as Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Geography, and Economics, among many others.

        https://secure-media.collegebo... [collegeboard.org]

        • I can assure you I've had years of calculus, the differential, integral, multivariate and DFQ, intergo-differential, tensor. Came with the math minor with physics major.

          What is widely taught is pre-calculus.

          • What is widely taught is pre-calculus.

            I’ll agree that pre-calculus (basically trig) is even more widely taught than calculus, but you seem to be implying that calculus is not widely taught in the US, which is patently absurd and demonstrably false.

            • pre-calculus is not trig, you already show you don't know what you're blathering about

              I know what is taught in pre-calculus, you do not. It is advanced geometry and the beginnings of differentials and integrals

    • by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @11:40PM (#63921925)

      Out of curiosity, what all did they cover?

      20 years back I was told that I could go straight to Calc 3 when starting my freshman year because of my SAT, AP, transcript, and entrance exam test scores. I loved math, but I decided I could use an easy A, so I opted to take Calc 1. It handed me the first D I had ever received in my life, despite all of the topics being familiar. Calc 2 followed up by handing me my second (and last) D. I fell out of love with math.

      Took Calc 3 during a summer class at a community college and loved every minute of it. I had rediscovered my love of math. Likewise, back at the university the next year, with Linear Algebra and Discrete Math (never did take Diff EQ). Turns out that once I got past the weed out classes that were taught in an infuriating manner I was just fine.

      All of which is to say, sometimes the high school prep is fine and the material taught in the college class is fine, but the classes themselves are taught in a manner that can be a problem.

      • I had a similar experience except thankfully I got F's because at my school you can't retake a D.

        Once I took the intense summer calculus course and had nothing else on my schedule I finally figured it out and got 3rd highest grade in the class but definitely wasn't prepared going in from HS despite perfect grades and high test scores.

        My HS certainly didn't prepare me and with a 50% drop out rate at my college, apparently many others weren't prepared either.

  • by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Thursday October 12, 2023 @11:05PM (#63921891)

    Ever lower test scores only demonstrate with hard numbers how racism continues to grow in this country.

  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:15AM (#63921985) Journal

    I couldn't find any breakdown of the average ACT scores by type of school (private, public, homeschool, charter, for-profit, prep, military, etc.), or by type of curriculum (classical, traditional, AP, gifted/talented), nor by size of school system or by spending per student. There are breakdowns by race, sex, and state.

    We're not going to see any positive changes in the scores if we don't even measure the things that might make a difference. Perhaps this information is available and I just couldn't find it. But then why make it so hard to find? Of the three categories we do include -- race, sex, and state -- none of them tell us anything about WHY they work (or fail), they are correlative, not causally, related.

    If I were designing an experiment to test an hypothesis of how to produce the best ACT scores, these averages would fail as a proper test.

    • What those "broken down" scores tell you is that the whole deal shows only the tip of the ice berg that the problem in actuality is probably even worse. The best ACT results come from California and Washington D.C. which have a participation rate of 4 and 18 percent. In contrast, states with 100% participation barely reach the country average.

      What does this translate to?

      That in Cali and DC only those people who need an ACT score for the college of their choice will try to get one, and they will cram like ma

    • We're not going to see any positive changes in the scores if we don't even measure the things that might make a difference.

      lol, how adorable. You actually think that positive changes are desired.

      You desire positive changes, I desire positive changes, many people desire positive changes. None of us matter; otherwise, there would be positive changes.

      No. The deck is stacked. Good luck getting into the inner circle. You and your descendants will be playthings for the inner circle to use and discard on a whim. All of the social upheaval you see around you is merely a planned circus. Enjoy the ride. It doesn't get any better than thi

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @05:56AM (#63922253) Homepage

    The problems with US education are very simple, but fixing them is difficult.

    - Raise expectations of students. Study, do your work, get the grades that you deserve. Fail students when they deserve to fail. Ignore parents who think their kids deserve an A for showing up.

    - Remove disruptive kids. If they refuse to learn, they should not be allowed to prevent other students from learning.

    - Multiple tracks. Not all kids are intellectually equal. You need at least two tracks, better three, starting at latest around grades 3-4.

    - Qualified teachers. An "education" degree is near worthless. Teachers should major in actual subjects, with a minor in education.

    None of that is easy, but it is what successful private schools do. Finding the political will to fix public schools? Good luck with that...

    • How about something that's worked well in Finland: outlaw private schools. When rich people's kids have to go to school with everybody else, guess what...decent funding for public schools magically appears out of nowhere. And as a side effect, some schools don't get to cherry pick the best students and leave all the problem kids for an underfunded public school system.

      • The reason for private schools is demand because the supply of decent public schools is so low.

        You're blaming the victims who found an out.

        Disband the teacher's unions so shitty teachers can be fired and reduce administrative waste so more money gets to the classrooms then maybe public schools stand a chance.

  • Small wonder that people vote for such bozos.

  • The drop in results may be due to various factors. Higher education ceases to be compulsory. I generally pay for essay writing, I used https://ca.edubirdie.com/pay-for-essay-writing [edubirdie.com] for this. This has long ceased to be surprising. Now the main thing is knowledge when applying for a job.
  • The uneducated will be just as smart as the educated.
  • What states are they lowest in? Here's $1 that it's the Trump Crime Family (formerly the Grand Oligarchic Party) run states.

"I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet." "Now why didn't I think of that?" -- Post Bros. Comics

Working...