If there's a sure fire solution for teenage apathy, which surely drives these numbers later on, I'm all for it. But here's a rough analogy:
TikTok is to today's teens what AOL was to the Internet in the 1990's. It's the walled garden. And the medium is the message, and culturally, reading ain't it.
I try hard to NOT heed standardized test scores, especially in reading. However, it still stings when my students don’t score as high as I thought they would. Or if they score lower on the winter than in the fall. How much emphasis do you put on standardized test scores when adjusting one’s pedagogical practice?
As far as adjusting pedagogical practice, I would urge paying more attention to tests aligned to content that has actually been taught than to standardized reading tests, which are essentially tests of general knowledge ("knowledge tests in disguise," as Dan Willingham has said).
That doesn't mean you just test kids on facts they can recall (although that's important too). You can ask them to make inferences about the content, or summarize it, or whatever is appropriate to the content and the students. But if the basis is content that has been taught, those tests (or writing assignments, or class discussion, or whatever) will be a more accurate guide to whether or not students are learning, and you can then make adjustments based on that data.
Retired educator here...this is so interesting, yet there's always the tension between standardized tests and interpreting data. We've all heard how important it is for students to have the background knowledge, which leads to the issue of vocabulary. As mentioned here, teaching it in the abstract hasn't been shown to work; in my experience students need a certain level of exposure to start, to be able to access text where they can learn new vocabulary in context. The heavy lifting of syntax, and basic literacy skills, seemed more difficult with each passing year. I taught mostly first grade, and noticed that my English only students were increasingly more similar to ESL students, who usually come in with significantly less language skills. It's difficult for education systems to breach this gap, this lack of early childhood exposure to language. My observation here is twofold: comparing scores of homogenous countries like Finland with that of the US doesn't help. Our systems and our learning will never look like Finland. And the lack of language seems to correlate with what anyone can observe at Starbucks: mothers with small children on their phones, instead of interacting with their children. Children have to hear language used, and in context, to develop the neural pathways used in language acquisition.
As a lay person just trying to think outside the box, could one reason that "the oldest adults declined by a full 16 points..." be linked to environmental causes? See for example this study on lead exposure:
"The findings, from Aaron Reuben, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University, and colleagues at Florida State University, suggest that Americans born before 1996 may now be at greater risk for lead-related health problems, such as faster aging of the brain. Leaded gas for cars was banned in the U.S. in 1996, but the researchers say that anyone born before the end of that era, and especially those at the peak of its use in the 1960s and 1970s, had concerningly high lead exposures as children."
"It may be too late to do much to help adults who have already left school acquire the knowledge they need to thrive..."
Perhaps that is too pessimistic. I think that motivation plays a big role in education, both for children and adults. Adults who appreciate the value of learning about the world can just start reading about whatever interests them. And if they stumble over words they don't understand, a dictionary can help them get over those hurdles. Consider the life of the escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, He became quite literate, mostly through his own efforts. As the Wikipedia article about him says: "Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself to read and write. He later often said, 'knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.'". He overcame much bigger obstacles to his education than those faced by today's students, despite having been provided with far fewer resources outside of his own will and desire to learn.
If there's a sure fire solution for teenage apathy, which surely drives these numbers later on, I'm all for it. But here's a rough analogy:
TikTok is to today's teens what AOL was to the Internet in the 1990's. It's the walled garden. And the medium is the message, and culturally, reading ain't it.
I try hard to NOT heed standardized test scores, especially in reading. However, it still stings when my students don’t score as high as I thought they would. Or if they score lower on the winter than in the fall. How much emphasis do you put on standardized test scores when adjusting one’s pedagogical practice?
As far as adjusting pedagogical practice, I would urge paying more attention to tests aligned to content that has actually been taught than to standardized reading tests, which are essentially tests of general knowledge ("knowledge tests in disguise," as Dan Willingham has said).
That doesn't mean you just test kids on facts they can recall (although that's important too). You can ask them to make inferences about the content, or summarize it, or whatever is appropriate to the content and the students. But if the basis is content that has been taught, those tests (or writing assignments, or class discussion, or whatever) will be a more accurate guide to whether or not students are learning, and you can then make adjustments based on that data.
The point about lack of paper pencil and the drop in scores for older testers points to a data quality issue that deserves attention.
Retired educator here...this is so interesting, yet there's always the tension between standardized tests and interpreting data. We've all heard how important it is for students to have the background knowledge, which leads to the issue of vocabulary. As mentioned here, teaching it in the abstract hasn't been shown to work; in my experience students need a certain level of exposure to start, to be able to access text where they can learn new vocabulary in context. The heavy lifting of syntax, and basic literacy skills, seemed more difficult with each passing year. I taught mostly first grade, and noticed that my English only students were increasingly more similar to ESL students, who usually come in with significantly less language skills. It's difficult for education systems to breach this gap, this lack of early childhood exposure to language. My observation here is twofold: comparing scores of homogenous countries like Finland with that of the US doesn't help. Our systems and our learning will never look like Finland. And the lack of language seems to correlate with what anyone can observe at Starbucks: mothers with small children on their phones, instead of interacting with their children. Children have to hear language used, and in context, to develop the neural pathways used in language acquisition.
As a lay person just trying to think outside the box, could one reason that "the oldest adults declined by a full 16 points..." be linked to environmental causes? See for example this study on lead exposure:
https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans
From the article:
"The findings, from Aaron Reuben, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University, and colleagues at Florida State University, suggest that Americans born before 1996 may now be at greater risk for lead-related health problems, such as faster aging of the brain. Leaded gas for cars was banned in the U.S. in 1996, but the researchers say that anyone born before the end of that era, and especially those at the peak of its use in the 1960s and 1970s, had concerningly high lead exposures as children."
"It may be too late to do much to help adults who have already left school acquire the knowledge they need to thrive..."
Perhaps that is too pessimistic. I think that motivation plays a big role in education, both for children and adults. Adults who appreciate the value of learning about the world can just start reading about whatever interests them. And if they stumble over words they don't understand, a dictionary can help them get over those hurdles. Consider the life of the escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, He became quite literate, mostly through his own efforts. As the Wikipedia article about him says: "Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself to read and write. He later often said, 'knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.'". He overcame much bigger obstacles to his education than those faced by today's students, despite having been provided with far fewer resources outside of his own will and desire to learn.