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Plunging test scores are a slow-moving catastrophe

207 points · 414 comments · vinni2

  1. niemandhier · · focus · HN ↗
    While kids practice the skills of the 21st century, testing got stuck in the 19 hundreds.

    I see kids train edge AI models, built things using coding assistants and discuss post-modern philosophy.

    I see the same kids struggle to write structured interpretations of 1950s texts they have no emotional connection to.

    Kids are worse in orthography, handwriting, and reading stuffy texts from front to end, but they are so much better in a plethora of skills that did not exist 20 years ago.

    1. trey-jones · · focus · HN ↗
      Yes - the older I get, the more obvious it is that the mind of a child (and young adult) is better suited to learning, reacts faster, and is more creative than mine.

      The attention-deficit that is so common among especially (but not only) young people today means that grabbing their interest is of paramount importance to their learning. Just repeating that kids are bad at reading stuffy texts. But if you can put them onto something that they find interesting, they can definitely excel. I've got tales of high school students who are terrible students, but give them a CAD and 3D printer and they will solve any problem you have.

      So - in other news, education is broken. How do we fix it?

      1. mschuster91 · · focus · HN ↗
        Education isn't broken, it's gotten too conservative and not able to keep up as a result.
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