The educators I’ve interviewed teach different subjects to different age groups in different geographic areas, but when the topic of student performance arises, their experiences are universally and depressingly the same: the students who enter their classrooms are largely academically behind, unprepared, and unmotivated.
The data backs up their empirical evidence.
In September, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed stark and sobering declines in kids’ performance and abilities in math and reading. Only 22% of 12th graders scored at or above the “proficient” level in math, and only 35% demonstrated reading proficiency.
Those are the lowest scores in both areas in two decades, and the weakest in reading proficiency performance since the test first began in 1992.
Couple that with the fact that 45% of 12th graders tested below “basic” levels in math and 32% are below basic proficiency in reading, and you start to worry that Boomers in Internet Comments Sections might actually be right for once: kids today are demonstrably dumber.
It’s tempting to blame this all on COVID. After all, school closures, remote learning, and fractured routines disrupted things. But the data suggests there’s more than a pandemic at play – this downward trend predates COVID, and continues to worsen.
Additional contributing factors to our current curricular downward spiral include the usual (and probable) suspects: social media, ever-shortening attention spans, disparate academic funding/resources, changing dynamics in the home, in the classroom, and in education administration… and we cannot forget the increasing role that AI and TikTok “education” are playing in what and how (or if) our students learn.
The Atlantic recently ran an article that interviewed college English professors about what they’re seeing in their classrooms, and the experiences are sobering. Many of the students attending our nation’s universities admit to never having read six chapter books in their entirety prior to entering college.
Instead, the students tell their professors that their high school coursework relied on reading snippets of the books that previous generations were assigned in their entirety. And while there are chicken/egg causative arguments about whether this approach was done because of (study-confirmed) dwindling student attention spans or whether this practice is contributory to said spans, one need not be an English professor to realize that “Romeo and Juliet” is a meet-cute, boy-meets-girl romance if you’re only required to read Act I, Scene V of the play…
Maybe it’s important for reading comprehension that our kids learn to read and analyze the whole work?
But even accounting for The Usual Suspects (COVID, socials, lack of resources, changing life and academic dynamics, AI, and goldfish-envy attention spans), the NAEP found that the top 90% of student performers continue to rank in the top 90%.
So it’s not the high achievers who are statistically slipping. It’s everybody else.
This is particularly true of the kids who were already academically at the bottom, many of whom come from poor areas/households, or marginalized backgrounds, or have disabilities, or do not speak English as their first language (Source: Center for Reinventing Public Education).
Are we failing these kids by not providing the right resources for them to succeed? Or are they failing themselves because there have always been poor kids, and marginalized kids, and disabled kids, and non-native English speaking kids, and the test scores weren’t this low before?
A RAND study found that 49% of middle and high school students said they “lose interest” in math at least half the time, and 30% say they just don’t see themselves as “math people.”
So is this a “kids these days” problem?
Is it a teaching problem (Another study found that only 13% of elementary teacher training programs dedicate enough time to “fundamental math content.” Causative?)?
Is it an administration problem (Schools are being sued for failure to protect both students and teachers from harassment and violence. Spoiler: kids are getting Left Behind.)?
Is it a technology problem (ie. Why should I learn this? A computer can do it for me.)?
Is it an attention span problem? Or a parents-aren’t-being-hands-on-in-their-child’s-education problem?
Whatever the cause(s), we need to address them, because the results? Are becoming a societal problem.
Math and reading teach children how to think, analyze, and problem solve. Those skills are essential for successfully navigating all walks of life. And yet, a 2024 study from the National Center for Educational Statistics found that most of America’s 8th graders have difficulty with computational thinking and struggle to assess the credibility of information they see online.
These kids are the future of our country, and most of them can’t even do long division, read an entire book, or discern whether or not @PootieShoe on TikTok is telling them the truth about who they should vote for and why.
Which is terrifying.
It’s terrifying for the future of our workforce; it’s terrifying for the future of higher ed; it’s terrifying for America’s political landscape; it’s terrifying for any prospect of continued American ingenuity.
The data is clear: the American education system – and maybe even the way we teach our kids about the value and importance of education – needs an overhaul. The teachers are tired; the kids are lost, and we, as a nation, will end up paying the cost.
