Now THAT's a headline.

[npars01@mstdn.social]

2/

In an effort to resegregate public education, billionaires & their bigots have torched the engine of American innovation & progress.

What's caused reading scores to drop to worst point in decades? Education expert weighs in

Math and reading scores dropped to their lowest levels in more than two decades among high school seniors. That's according to the Nation’s Report Card put out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It shows that student achievement has continued to decline since the pandemic. There are many theories about what’s going on, and William Brangham explored some of that with Thomas Kane.

PBS News (www.pbs.org)

Low Literacy Levels Among U.S. Adults Could Be Costing The Economy $2.2 Trillion A Year

A new study conducted by Gallup for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy finds that low levels of adult literary could be costing the U. S. as much $2.2 trillion a year.

Forbes (www.forbes.com)

Access to this page has been denied

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(thehill.com)

More Than Half of Americans Read Below 6th-Grade Level - New York Almanack

More than half of adults in the United States (54%) have a literacy below a 6th-grade level, with 20% below 5th-grade level.

New York Almanack (www.newyorkalmanack.com)

Mapped: The States With the Highest and Lowest Adult Literacy Rates

A major survey is spelling out trouble for the country's literacy rates.

Mental Floss (www.mentalfloss.com)

nytimes.com

(www.nytimes.com)

[nimx@mastodon.social]

@markhurst if that laptop is what they are using I'm sure they will have some kind of cognitive incapability

[abdulzefir@social.vivaldi.net]

@markhurst US have been degrading since at least 90s so no surprise here

[oscarfalcon@mastodon.social]

@markhurst

Which is exactly what they wanted, more stupid gringos...

[cindyg@mastodon.social]

@markhurst

Alarming given that, as Horvath put it:

“We’re facing challenges more complex and far-reaching than any in human history—from overpopulation to evolving diseases to moral drift. Now, more than ever, we need a generation able to grapple with nuance, hold multiple truths in tension, and creatively tackle problems that are stumping the greatest adult minds of today.”

[oldoldcojote@climatejustice.social]

@markhurst

Writing by hand is critically important to cognitive development. Probably eating ants out of small holes with a honey covered stick serves the same purpose, but we don't do that anymore. We are tool users. Our brains are wired for it.

[dacig@mastodon.social]

@markhurst Technosolutionism is a very bad habit.
Bill Gates has also implemented Ill conceived education schemes with bad outcomes for students https://apnews.com/article/bill-gates-670d3c2eb90c4a6db6cdb92ada3daa3b

[infoseepage@mastodon.social]

@markhurst Sure - It's the screens. Not at all anything to do with spending the last six years conducting the *stupidest experiment ever* of measuring the effects of repeatedly infecting children with a neuro-invasive virus noted for causing symptoms often described as brain fog.

[xs4me2@mastodon.social]

@markhurst

Illustrates the utter stupidity of the Trump administration, pure evil…

[skua@mastodon.social]

@Infoseepage @markhurst
"Fortune reported in 2017 that Maine’s public school test scores had not improved in the 15 years the state had implemented its technology initiative."

Test scores not improving in Maine for 15 years prior to 2017 is hard to attribute to the neuro-disruptive effects of COVID-19.

[rubinjoni@mastodon.social]

@markhurst Brainrot is real.

[infoseepage@mastodon.social]

@skua @markhurst Show me graphs of Maine's classroom teacher to student ratios for the last fifteen years. Show me teacher pay and average educational achievement. Show me child poverty rates. Show me data on kids needing food assistance and whether they are getting it. Show me vaccination rates.

[csolisr@hub.azkware.net]

@markhurst Tablets were supposed to complement textbooks, not replace them entirely!

[infoseepage@mastodon.social]

@skua @markhurst There are lots of confounding variables other than laptops and tablets, yet we always see articles like this and almost never on the other factors. Yeah, a lot of this predates Covid, but there is a general lack of willingness to even consider or acknowledge the effects of this disease on children and the culpability that schools, school boards and society at large have in not making every effort to reduce exposure in an environment they are forced into.

[pizzademon@mastodon.online]

@markhurst imagine being the kid picked for this picture

[jonathankoren@sfba.social]

@markhurst that stock photo looks like it's from 2000 or earlier. There doesn't even look to be a USB port anywhere on that Dell Latitude.

[luc0x61@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@markhurst My totally unfounded opinion is that any tentative to enrich didactics with totally new "special effects", "added interaction", etc., has had the finally effect of disrupting *attention*.
They've lost the basic attention that's needed to follow a (boring) old book, because they've found the /entertaining/ part of the process more interesting.
Who writes educational texts should follow a good course on psychology of communication.

[numodular@c.im]

@jonathankoren We used to give farmers more latitude back then, the farmer and the Dell notwithstanding.

[n_dimension@infosec.exchange]

@markhurst

Wow... So it wasn't AI afterall

[chessert@mastodon.online]

@markhurst

I can't be the only one unsurprised that billions into corporate profits produced far worse results than those same billions funneled directly into local school districts?