The drop from 2018 to 2022 is as big as the one from 2022 to 2026, so it's not obvious whether AI had a role at all, although it's highly plausible.
I suspect the bigger culprit is the optimized monetization of human attention, because pre-algorithmic social media doesn't seem to be as destructive. The fact that science wasn't as affected as math and reading (both of which rely more on attention/practice than rote memorization) somewhat supports this.
the event in 2020 would've only been the last straw in a series of bad policy in education. It might've brought forward this same outcome a few years in advance, but it isn't a root cause.
Yeah, I am genuinely confused how the grandparent comment just glossed over it.
I believe that both COVID and LLMs are disrupting educational metrics. But in terms of which one did more short-term scale damage (i.e, within 4 years), I would wager it was COVID.
Wouldn’t there be recovery? Especially for the cohort that started school after the end of restrictions.
A continuous decline across both COVID and llms points towards a different causal relationship to me. I would be more likely to believe algorithmic social media or computerized teaching tools are to blame, but that is pure conjecture.
By what mechanism is that recovery supposed to happen? AFAIK students who studied less during the pandemic weren't made to study more later to compensate, so by default they'll permanently have done less studying than other cohorts at the same age.
If I missed a year of fifth grade in 2020, I have had 5 years to recover any lost progress and should do better in 10th grade than the kids that just missed a year. Especially when you consider that many of the topics being tested against are not even introduced until after 5th grade. Sure you might miss out on some arithmetic, but you have had half a decade to correct and your trigonometry scores should be better than students that missed out on trigonometry the same year.
I think the pandemic had some effect on the current cohort of 15 year olds, but it should not be as large of an effect as the students who were 15 in 2020.
If I missed a week of math class at age ten would it have the same effect on a test given when I was 15 as if I had missed a week of math class just before the test? Your position seems to be that missing math class at any point in your schooling is a permanent unrecoverable setback
No, my position is that a recoverable setback will nonetheless remain unrecovered if there is no restorative force driving the recovery.
A student who is bad at arithmetic will tend to struggle to learn trigonometry. A good teacher can realize this and allocate time to arithmetic practice instead. But this time has to come somewhere. As long as the number of teaching hours remains the same, they have to sacrifice something else. So if the students are all caught up in arithmetic, they will be behind in trigonometry by the same amount.
To fully catch up without sacrifices, students who studied less would need to study correspondingly more to compensate, but there was no concerted effort to make that happen, although the opportunity certainly existed.
But if the drop between 2018 and 2022 was AS LARGE as the drop between 2022 and 2026, this implies that something happened that was as large as a global pandemic for students' education happened in the last four years. I believe the OP is implying this could have been AI. However, something else could be happening, such as use of phones and other devices or another fundamental problem in the education system.
The "trauma" from staying at home? Please. If the parents let them watch youtube for 2 years then the parents were stupid. I have 3 kids in school, all but one of them were in school at the time. Staying at home with Grandma and Papa while they did zoom school didn't break their brains. You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.
Now, I will say that the Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it. Those people were somebody's neighbors, grandparents, uncles, etc. So maybe the realization that "nobody gives a shit about you except for your productivity" was a lesson they internalized?
Largely, I think it is the parents though. Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.
So they got at least some of what a lot of kids missed out on: socialization.
With homeschooling, parents go out of their way to find other kids for theirs to socialize with, but during lockdowns this wasn't allowed (if the parents even had any idea about it, since it was forced on them and not something they chose to do).
I live in Alaska, there were only like 3 months were things were actually curtailed in any meaningful way. We didn't really "lock down" here really. Again, the socialization thing? Not a problem from COVID, now, maybe the skinner box I see kids carrying around in their pockets? Yeah, probably not great? But they didn't lose their socialization here despite whatever right-wing grifters say.
I think the only thing that was really curtailed was my sons took a few months off of karate? A lot more traumatic was probably mom having to sleep in a hotel for a few nights because she got inadvertently exposed to COVID as nurse (when we really didn't know how dangerous things were), or me having to camp out in my folks' motorhome for a week because I was at the tip of the spear medevac-ing people out of camps in the arctic. I know that was scary for my kids because they told me it was.
Them not being able to have playdates being some generational trauma is nonsense. What wasn't nonsense was watching aunts and uncles die from a pandemic that we did next to nothing to fix in America until the vax came out. Also, I would not be surprised if there aren't some cognitive effects to COVID. Despite being very careful, we got it too. Everyone had it here. That probably ain't good for kids' development.
But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too. Read this paper:
<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310
If people like doom scrolling more than they like screwing, it's probably not unlikely that they like doom scrolling better than studying.
> I live in Alaska, there were only like 3 months were things were actually curtailed in any meaningful way.
Here in Illinois it was over a year, possibly two in some places. The schools didn't return to in-person right away after the government mandates were lifted.
Edit:
> But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too.
Please re-read the comment from the other person you originally replied to.
Yeah, because everywhere in the world is Alaska and did exactly what Alaska did. Man, somehow you out-US-exceptionalismed the usual US exceptionalism you see around here.
You guys have no idea of just how bad it was here. No idea. A million people died. That did not happen in say, Spain. But the kids missing school for a little bit was not as big of a deal as people are trying to retcon now.
Obviusly you and your family were not affected by lockdown so badly, congrats. Not everyone was so lucky though.
> Staying at home with Grandma and Papa
Lockdown prevented relatives visits.
> Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it.
Millions die every year, that is normal for a country with 350 million people!
> You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.
My kid did not had device before pandemic, we got tablet for lockdowns. My kid was social and full of energy, it always wanted to play outside and climb trees. Two years of isolation, in tiny apartment were pretty bad!
Now it does not want to go outside, it does not want to socialize! It adapted and got new hobies.
> Largely, I think it is the parents though
Yes, i blame myself. For not ignoring lockdowns and not fighting back! Against sociopaths who enforced this bs!
You should direct your anger at sociopaths, who can't keep their asses at home with the first symptoms of illness or who couldn't skip partying for dutation of few months, showing middle finger to all of us and especially to medical services who were actually the main advocates of the lockdown, because well, the hospitals were overcrowded. If you would bother to remember all this of course
Seriously. I cannot stand this revisionist history nonsense about how "terrible" the lockdowns were.
Meanwhile my wife was on the front lines watching people die on vents, and I was literally medevac-ing people out of camp in the arctic with totally inadequate PPE (but we had to do what we had to do, if it got into the camp there was no way to treat people). Seriously one of the most stressful times of my life and I see these people trying to reimagine the history of this. I remember this, I was there...
Alaska had very limited lockdown for only 2 months. I also imagine you have a fairly large house, with huge garden.
It is not "revisionist history nonsense". Lockdowns were pretty brutal, lasted almost 18 months total, and several people committed suicide over it.
> I remember this, I was there
You were not there! You were at Alaska!
Like celebrities claiming "we are in this together" from their mansions!
Dude I was pulling dying people out of the arctic and my wife was putting patients on ventilators.
But “oh no… I was bummed because I couldn’t go to the mall!” You have no idea.
Not to mention, I literally got sick that winter with something else and had a self-imposed lockdown because I was immunocompromised for like a year. It wasn’t great but it was fine.
This heartburn about this like it was some big task to stay home while there were people out there literally in the thick of it, watching people get sick and die, or dying themselves? Miss me with that. I think my kids did zoom school for something like a year? It wasn’t great but it was fine. Grow up.
> Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.
This is a massive, wide-spread decline, it's not isolated to the US, and all you can think of is to brag about how you're a better parent than the average? As if kids who made the mistake of having being born to parents who are "stupid" unlike you should just be left hanging in the wind? Come on.
So much about how so many acted during the pandemic, both pro and contra, whatever, was messed up, and a lot of kids got to pay a hefty price for it through no fault of their own. And I think much more interesting than what exactly caused it how much and who should be ranked where on the value totem when it comes to how they handled this or what they proposed, is how to change it, how to help.
And for that I'd rather listen to affected kids than parents parading their personal achievements, because while that is all very good, and well done, if you don't understand the sheer vastness and range of humans and how they live, it's still like someone who has perfect photographic memory wondering why cameras are so popular, or why people re-read books instead of saving time by remembering anything they read forever. It's precisely because you are so far above the average parent that you offer nothing helpful.
If you’re not trying to push your kids to do better and have some agency etc., you’re doing a bad job at parenting. People have a responsibility to their kids and to the future, and part of that responsibility involves trying to teach people that they can always improve that they’re not stuck being at whatever level they’re at etc. the big thing I see is teaching kids that “it’s important to give a shit.”
I’m not saying it’s the kids’ fault that they’re not doing as well, but the parents definitely have a responsibility to try harder.
People should actually make their kids do stuff that’s intellectually challenging and push them to succeed. The test scores are in part (in my opinion) because people can’t be bothered to give a damn. Get off your collective asses and make your kids read a book, do their homework, and turn the f-ing iPad off.
> Places that have avoided declines deserve more attention. Britain is one. In 2009 its pupils scraped into the world’s top 30 in maths and reading. Now they sit in the top ten.
How do you explain this then? The article mentions things like curriculum changes, but you think parents in the UK did and do something they don't do elsewhere. People just "stopped giving a damn", except in the UK and other places, and unlike you. Sure thing.
I haven’t dug into the stats, but if they just stayed level while everyone else fell it would look like a rise relative to everyone else, no? This could just be them staying level while everyone else slumps - or maybe British parents just care more and started caring more.
But at least here in the states I think a lot of people dgaf. And yes, I do gaf.
What I can’t figure out is why you’re so upset about this - my intuition is that “the lady doth protest too much.” Maybe you know, deep down inside of you, that people aren’t caring as much. Maybe you feel it too - the impulse to not care. Maybe you feel attacked.
If you’re a parent, then my reply would be “good!” People should be doing a better job pushing their kids to excel to the limits of their capabilities and passions.
- Students who entered the education system in the COVID years are still taking tests today. They didn’t automatically relearn everything.
- Schools have not gone back to pre-COVID practices. Online courses, use of digital tools, fewer tests, dropping SAT/ACT requirements, and most of all budget cuts in school districts – all are still happening today.
You mentioned budget cuts and yet if I remember the data there is almost no correlation between school budget and results.
On the other hand, you have the Mississippi miracle, achieved at a budget increase of $35 per student, and a total budget of around $12k per student-- a far cry from the more recent example of education failure in New York City at $26k/student (elementary) and $32k/student (middle school)
you are correct, but budget cuts are happening nevertheless and it's being used to justify laying off teachers (while admin staff stay employed... strange?)
One can try to tease out effects by looking at per-country or per-state breakdowns. It seems to me that:
- there are lots of different long term trends that vary by country
- some seem to have started too long ago to be tick tock or similar
- some countries see a pandemic drop and recovery
- this implies to me that:
(I) the pandemic had a strong temporary effect on average educational attainment (though I have strong priors here), and
(II) other things like long-term trends in teaching approaches, new distractions for students, or availability of AI for ‘cheating’ also have an impact
See coverage of the recent test results in the FT here: <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/724f8ecb-1e2b-4c7f-bbb6-14239abd50dd" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/724f8ecb-1e2b-4c7f-bbb6-14239abd5...
dumberquestions · · focus · HN ↗
I suspect the bigger culprit is the optimized monetization of human attention, because pre-algorithmic social media doesn't seem to be as destructive. The fact that science wasn't as affected as math and reading (both of which rely more on attention/practice than rote memorization) somewhat supports this.
binlog · · focus · HN ↗
chii · · focus · HN ↗
filoleg · · focus · HN ↗
I believe that both COVID and LLMs are disrupting educational metrics. But in terms of which one did more short-term scale damage (i.e, within 4 years), I would wager it was COVID.
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
A continuous decline across both COVID and llms points towards a different causal relationship to me. I would be more likely to believe algorithmic social media or computerized teaching tools are to blame, but that is pure conjecture.
yorwba · · focus · HN ↗
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
yorwba · · focus · HN ↗
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
I think the pandemic had some effect on the current cohort of 15 year olds, but it should not be as large of an effect as the students who were 15 in 2020.
If I missed a week of math class at age ten would it have the same effect on a test given when I was 15 as if I had missed a week of math class just before the test? Your position seems to be that missing math class at any point in your schooling is a permanent unrecoverable setback
yorwba · · focus · HN ↗
A student who is bad at arithmetic will tend to struggle to learn trigonometry. A good teacher can realize this and allocate time to arithmetic practice instead. But this time has to come somewhere. As long as the number of teaching hours remains the same, they have to sacrifice something else. So if the students are all caught up in arithmetic, they will be behind in trigonometry by the same amount.
To fully catch up without sacrifices, students who studied less would need to study correspondingly more to compensate, but there was no concerted effort to make that happen, although the opportunity certainly existed.
graemep · · focus · HN ↗
ameminator · · focus · HN ↗
throw93038383 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
smugma · · focus · HN ↗
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
Now, I will say that the Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it. Those people were somebody's neighbors, grandparents, uncles, etc. So maybe the realization that "nobody gives a shit about you except for your productivity" was a lesson they internalized?
Largely, I think it is the parents though. Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.
Izkata · · focus · HN ↗
So they got at least some of what a lot of kids missed out on: socialization.
With homeschooling, parents go out of their way to find other kids for theirs to socialize with, but during lockdowns this wasn't allowed (if the parents even had any idea about it, since it was forced on them and not something they chose to do).
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
I think the only thing that was really curtailed was my sons took a few months off of karate? A lot more traumatic was probably mom having to sleep in a hotel for a few nights because she got inadvertently exposed to COVID as nurse (when we really didn't know how dangerous things were), or me having to camp out in my folks' motorhome for a week because I was at the tip of the spear medevac-ing people out of camps in the arctic. I know that was scary for my kids because they told me it was.
Them not being able to have playdates being some generational trauma is nonsense. What wasn't nonsense was watching aunts and uncles die from a pandemic that we did next to nothing to fix in America until the vax came out. Also, I would not be surprised if there aren't some cognitive effects to COVID. Despite being very careful, we got it too. Everyone had it here. That probably ain't good for kids' development.
But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too. Read this paper: <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310
If people like doom scrolling more than they like screwing, it's probably not unlikely that they like doom scrolling better than studying.
Izkata · · focus · HN ↗
Here in Illinois it was over a year, possibly two in some places. The schools didn't return to in-person right away after the government mandates were lifted.
Edit:
> But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too.
Please re-read the comment from the other person you originally replied to.
(2nd edit: removed something based on a misread)
throw-the-towel · · focus · HN ↗
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
throw93038383 · · focus · HN ↗
> Staying at home with Grandma and Papa
Lockdown prevented relatives visits.
> Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it.
Millions die every year, that is normal for a country with 350 million people!
> You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.
My kid did not had device before pandemic, we got tablet for lockdowns. My kid was social and full of energy, it always wanted to play outside and climb trees. Two years of isolation, in tiny apartment were pretty bad!
Now it does not want to go outside, it does not want to socialize! It adapted and got new hobies.
> Largely, I think it is the parents though
Yes, i blame myself. For not ignoring lockdowns and not fighting back! Against sociopaths who enforced this bs!
zqna · · focus · HN ↗
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
Meanwhile my wife was on the front lines watching people die on vents, and I was literally medevac-ing people out of camp in the arctic with totally inadequate PPE (but we had to do what we had to do, if it got into the camp there was no way to treat people). Seriously one of the most stressful times of my life and I see these people trying to reimagine the history of this. I remember this, I was there...
throw93038383 · · focus · HN ↗
It is not "revisionist history nonsense". Lockdowns were pretty brutal, lasted almost 18 months total, and several people committed suicide over it.
> I remember this, I was there
You were not there! You were at Alaska!
Like celebrities claiming "we are in this together" from their mansions!
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
But “oh no… I was bummed because I couldn’t go to the mall!” You have no idea.
Not to mention, I literally got sick that winter with something else and had a self-imposed lockdown because I was immunocompromised for like a year. It wasn’t great but it was fine.
This heartburn about this like it was some big task to stay home while there were people out there literally in the thick of it, watching people get sick and die, or dying themselves? Miss me with that. I think my kids did zoom school for something like a year? It wasn’t great but it was fine. Grow up.
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
customguy · · focus · HN ↗
This is a massive, wide-spread decline, it's not isolated to the US, and all you can think of is to brag about how you're a better parent than the average? As if kids who made the mistake of having being born to parents who are "stupid" unlike you should just be left hanging in the wind? Come on.
So much about how so many acted during the pandemic, both pro and contra, whatever, was messed up, and a lot of kids got to pay a hefty price for it through no fault of their own. And I think much more interesting than what exactly caused it how much and who should be ranked where on the value totem when it comes to how they handled this or what they proposed, is how to change it, how to help.
And for that I'd rather listen to affected kids than parents parading their personal achievements, because while that is all very good, and well done, if you don't understand the sheer vastness and range of humans and how they live, it's still like someone who has perfect photographic memory wondering why cameras are so popular, or why people re-read books instead of saving time by remembering anything they read forever. It's precisely because you are so far above the average parent that you offer nothing helpful.
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
I’m not saying it’s the kids’ fault that they’re not doing as well, but the parents definitely have a responsibility to try harder.
customguy · · focus · HN ↗
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
People should actually make their kids do stuff that’s intellectually challenging and push them to succeed. The test scores are in part (in my opinion) because people can’t be bothered to give a damn. Get off your collective asses and make your kids read a book, do their homework, and turn the f-ing iPad off.
customguy · · focus · HN ↗
How do you explain this then? The article mentions things like curriculum changes, but you think parents in the UK did and do something they don't do elsewhere. People just "stopped giving a damn", except in the UK and other places, and unlike you. Sure thing.
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
But at least here in the states I think a lot of people dgaf. And yes, I do gaf.
What I can’t figure out is why you’re so upset about this - my intuition is that “the lady doth protest too much.” Maybe you know, deep down inside of you, that people aren’t caring as much. Maybe you feel it too - the impulse to not care. Maybe you feel attacked.
If you’re a parent, then my reply would be “good!” People should be doing a better job pushing their kids to excel to the limits of their capabilities and passions.
binlog · · focus · HN ↗
- Schools have not gone back to pre-COVID practices. Online courses, use of digital tools, fewer tests, dropping SAT/ACT requirements, and most of all budget cuts in school districts – all are still happening today.
readthenotes1 · · focus · HN ↗
On the other hand, you have the Mississippi miracle, achieved at a budget increase of $35 per student, and a total budget of around $12k per student-- a far cry from the more recent example of education failure in New York City at $26k/student (elementary) and $32k/student (middle school)
piloto_ciego · · focus · HN ↗
robotresearcher · · focus · HN ↗
The chief costs for schools are salaries and premises, both of which are highly location dependent.
dan-robertson · · focus · HN ↗
- there are lots of different long term trends that vary by country
- some seem to have started too long ago to be tick tock or similar
- some countries see a pandemic drop and recovery
- this implies to me that:
(I) the pandemic had a strong temporary effect on average educational attainment (though I have strong priors here), and
(II) other things like long-term trends in teaching approaches, new distractions for students, or availability of AI for ‘cheating’ also have an impact
See coverage of the recent test results in the FT here: <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/724f8ecb-1e2b-4c7f-bbb6-14239abd50dd" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/724f8ecb-1e2b-4c7f-bbb6-14239abd5...