On May 15 2026 07:00 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Generational decline in math scores throughout the USA. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.htmlShow nested quote +Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops. the chickens are coming home to rooster the harvest they reaped.  alls i gotta say is cleaning up the messes created by junior actuarial analysts under age 24 is big business. They are fucking up .. .and they are fucking up huge. Because no one was passing the exams they decided to create a university credit equivalency system. Now we've got Beavis and Butthead running around doing reserve analysis. Cha-Ching! Also, we live in a super-paranoid, risk-averse nation with crumbling infrastructure and broke governments unable to repair anything. This creates even more demand for new insurance products. This is a perfect opening for all these whiney tech sector employees out of a job.
No, this is not a US nor math specific problem. I think there are many explanitions:
-Impression bombing content from an early age damages patience and attention spans.
-More screen time, especially using touch screens.
-Less focus on creative and physical activities.
-Teachers are understaffed, overworked and underpaid.
-Less handwriting.
-Less unsupervised playing with other kids.
-Kids are more inside, unable to explore and move outdoors.
-Gearing classes to score well on specific, general tests.
I think we will be surprised to see most of Gen Alpha will still grow up to become decent adults, but I have a strong feeling many get rude awakenings at the University level, where they have to tackle responsability.
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On May 15 2026 04:01 Falling wrote:@Jankisa As far as I can tell in reading back, oBlade has made a separation between 'interesting' and 'information source'. And then there was separation between the 'hacks' like Shapiro and the 'conservative zeitgeist'. He gave an equivalent to TYT as Valutainment and then he lists what is key to the conservative zeitgeist at the time: Bannon's War Room, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, etc. However, I think all of them still fit in his 'interesting' category. The confusing thing is I think Wombat was seeing oBlade shooting down many of the typical examples of conservative talking heads as being 'hacks' and not representative of the conservative zeitgeist (fast forward, turns out Shapiro was in process of being sidelined. Well, and he was only ever reluctantly defended Trump in the first place, thought he could break free after January 6 and then quickly toed the line again as under Trump, Jan 6/ stolen election is the Shibboleth loyalty test for anyone who dares call themselves conservative in the public sphere.). So Wombat asked, who do you actually recommend? And I don't think oBlade ever answered that, despite saying they were 'key'. He also separates voices from thinkers but only lists voices. But is he cosigning the voices or at least the unlisted thinkers behind the voices? Or are they just 'interesting' as in a piece of trivia? Because he ends with: So that whole list were 'interesting interviewers'... interesting for what reason? Presumably, not as a source of information. But yet they are keys to understanding the conservative zeitgeist... as a conservative source of entertainment? Or they use it as a source of information, but he does not?
This is mostly spot on, there is nobody from any ideology I would recommend for their ideas being correct, because I don't believe any specific ideology is correct, and I don't believe any people are specifically correct. Certainly no media figures are simply sources of what is correct. That's not their job and that's not how people should rely on them. People should either figure something out for themselves or be content not knowing, it is better to admit ignorance than get answers on faith fed to you like a faucet. That's the behavior of dogmas and religions and is not necessary when there's nothing pressuring people to have answers for everything.
On May 15 2026 04:01 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +Shirley was also a great call by me who noticed his promise before you knew him - which you do now. @oBlade You saw his promise early and liked that he goes right to where the current events are- what do you think about his characterization of the US funding the war in Ukraine?
Thank you for acknowledging my tea leaf reading sense on Shapiro and Shirley. I don't know what Shirley characterization you are referring to though. There is a lot of bullshit in Ukraine rhetoric, like people characterizing literal purchases as free aid for one. Shirley is not immune to the mistakes any media make when they take shortcuts through stupidity or dishonesty. Like when the MSM took Trump's comments about the danger of "coyotes" (meaning human smugglers) and said actually there's no coyotes in this area it's not their habitat - I remember Nick Shirley standing in front of an apartment building with a post office on the first floor and saying there are a bunch of people registered to vote from this address. He is young so generally makes the mistakes that are associated with youth. His strength certainly wouldn't be in being right or wrong about Ukraine, it's other things.
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On May 15 2026 07:00 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Generational decline in math scores throughout the USA. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.htmlShow nested quote +Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops. the chickens are coming home to rooster the harvest they reaped.
I don't understand your chicken reference, but as Slydie, Simberto, Fleetfeet, micronesia, and others have pointed out, there are a variety of issues that have likely played a role in this, ranging from technology and social media (screen time increasing, ability to focus decreasing, apps and AI becoming shortcuts for obtaining answers and cheating the learning process) to the covid pandemic, teacher shortages, ineffective school planning, and often a lack of leadership at local, state, and federal levels.
It's extremely difficult to address every single potential factor all at once, which makes it all the more important to gather data and at least take a swing at whichever issues might be most prevalent (within a district, throughout a state, etc.). For example, starting next school year, New Jersey will be implementing a general ban on cell phone usage throughout the day for all public school students (except for emergencies and other extenuating circumstances). This is a pretty big swing, and although I've personally been able to make occasional cell phone usage an academic net-benefit in my classroom, I think it's probably a very smart move. Removing the #1 potential distraction from classrooms is definitely a way to encourage students to pay more attention to the lesson being taught, and it reduces the ease with which students can lazily look up answers.
With every big swing, there are going to be tons of questions, critiques, and pushbacks. For example, for the cell phone ban, storing cell phones can be an issue if teachers need to take them away from students, not having cell phones as an educational back-up can be problematic if we encourage the use of technology but don't make sure students always have a functioning laptop/iPad, students and parents will push for individual exceptions and might have issues with the way the administration and teachers are implementing the policy, etc. There are ways to navigate these potential issues, and so all parties involved need to be regularly communicating and recognizing that we all have the same goal - to improve the education of our kids - even if we disagree with how that's accomplished.
On the topic of math, in particular, being able to focus on the day-to-day lessons is an absolute imperative. Tuesday's lesson assumes you understand Monday's lesson; chapter two builds on chapter one; to understand calculus, you should first understand the previous few years of high school math. Technology, as always, can be a valuable asset or a wasted crutch, and there are definitely ways to helpfully (or harmfully) invoke calculators, graphing websites like Desmos, apps/software, and even AI. It's very hard to keep all of that under control though - especially when juggling 30 students at once - even when schools try to preemptively manage situations by banning certain websites from their network, adding lockdown-browser capabilities on student laptops/iPads, and having (sometimes effective, sometimes ineffective) professional development sessions. Each obstacle eventually gets circumvented, one way or another, if the students are motivated enough to look for loopholes.
Maybe we'll see more and more teachers voluntarily attempt to go back to paper copies of everything, removing the potential distractions of technology altogether, even though it would really suck to print out thousands of pieces of paper every year (per teacher, that is). I just hope that we keep trying to improve, instead of giving up altogether.
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EPT
