Decline in K-12 National Reading, Math, Science Scores Probed By US Senate Panel (newhampshirebulletin.com)
- Reference: 0179376118
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/19/1926203/decline-in-k-12-national-reading-math-science-scores-probed-by-us-senate-panel
- Source link: https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2025/09/19/repub/decline-in-k-12-national-reading-math-science-scores-probed-by-us-senate-panel/
> The hearing in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions centered on the "state of K-12 education" -- which GOP members on the committee described as "troubling" -- in light of recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.
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> NAEP, regarded as the gold standard for tracking students' academic performance, showed that average science scores for eighth-graders decreased by 4 points since before the pandemic, in 2019. Average math and reading scores for 12th-graders also fell 3 points between 2019 and 2024. The assessments were administered between January and March of 2024. Results also showed that just one-third of 12th-graders are considered academically prepared for college in math -- a drop from 37% in 2019.
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> The committee's chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, said "it should concern us that children's reading, math and science scores have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels." The Louisiana Republican added that "success in education is not determined by how much we spend, but by who makes the decision and how wisely resources are directed," and "when states and local communities are empowered to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of students, innovation follows." On the other hand, Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the panel, said that "while we focus on education -- as important as that is -- we also have to focus on the conditions under which our children are living."
[1] https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2025/09/19/repub/decline-in-k-12-national-reading-math-science-scores-probed-by-us-senate-panel/
Hello Captain Obvious (Score:3)
Step #1: Pay teachers so little that you have to subsidize corporate housing to attract them to your school.
Step #2: Incentivize teachers to use personal funds to equip their students.
Step #3: Remove parental accountability from student behavior.
Step #4: Drive away teachers with a passion for teaching with administrative challenges and not supporting them in student/parent issues.
Step#5: Be left with those willing to stick it out until retirement OR those who can't get a real job OR those insanely crazy few who's passion keeps them there.
Step#6: Standardize Testing, Teach the Test, Ignore Critical Thinking skills.
Step #7: Accept resulting failure in results, give up, and start teaching critical race theory and transgender acceptance in math classes.
Step #8: ????
Step #9: Profit.
Re: Hello Captain Obvious (Score:3)
Let middle class students use vouchers for private school depriving public schools of funds. Then say they underperform.
Square this circle: (Score:1)
1 - Teachers make above the median wage in virtually every state, with far better benefits than the median.
2 - California spends twice as much per student than Florida, but is around twenty notches lower in the DOE NAEP national rankings.
3 - NYC’s lead charters cost less per student and accept the same exact demographic as its public schools, but are yielding far better results. The6 are incredibly popular among local minorities, and are only significantly opposed by white democrats and teachers union
Re: Square this circle: (Score:2)
I teach adjunct classes. 2 of them a week. 3 hours a class. I make $500 every 2 week. After grading, planning, etc I make $6.25 an hour. In only do it because surprise! The community college canâ(TM)t hire a full time teacher and I can afford to waste the time. Those kids are not getting a high quality education.
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California's education is extremely top heavy. Two of my son's teachers became "assistant superintendents" . They also build many "Taj Mahal" offices of education throughout the state.
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Politicize the education curriculum to the point where it disgusts teachers trying to do their jobs.
None of that will help much... (Score:2)
....unless you make education the primary and overriding goal of schools again. Schools today are seen and used more as day care and social welfare providers. We need to return them to being first and foremost educational establishments focused on providing different educational outcomes to different students...and that means being willing and able to fail students who don't make the required standards.
The call is coming from within the house (Score:3)
Republicans have repeatedly cut funding the schools and especially school lunch programs because the thought of hungry children excites them.
When my kid was in high school there was 45 kids to a class and the last 10 had the stand during the class. Several schools have been closed due to funding.
The Republican party actively sabotages public education to fool you into privatizing it so that they can profit from it.
They think you're stupid. Are you? Don't answer me. It's the Republican party you need to answer come to midterms.
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Sixty-two percent of my property taxes in California go toward education. They still want parents to supply classroom materials. Add to that, our lottery system funds education. It's corrupt.
"We have concluded- (Score:2)
-that we can do nothing and it's someone else's fault anyway." - US Congress
Study California, Florida, and Louisiana (Score:2)
California has been at the forefront of adopting modern pedological science for the last twenty years. But there’s a puzzle: its DOE NAEP test score national rank concurrently fell to the middle of the pack. Is it possible that “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and other lead pedagogy books are a garden path? Perhaps their recommendations are reducing disparity between group identities - their top goal - but lowering overall outcome? Here’s a sample of the recommendations in question:
Mains
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Keep in mind California spends DOUBLE per student in comparison to Florida.
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Yes, but can you tell me about White Genocide In South Africa?
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That has little to do with K-12 education unless perhaps you’re snarking about educational focus. It isn’t “racist” to discuss South Africa or any other nation.
Overall, critical thinking is FAR more important than critical theory, as the former is required to properly understand the latter.
Re: (Score:2)
I was more saying that your post looks like regurgitated mush shoveled up by Grok.
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Oh. Brilliant. You’re obviously a genius. Sigh.
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Some of those are valid criticisms... I'm strongly in favor of advanced classes and tracking, restoring ability to discipline disruptive students, and objective merit based admissions/hiring (though let's be real here, Republicans want to go back to bias in favor of white people, not create an actual level playing field).
But a handful of cherry picked examples doesn't erase the fact that as bad as those things are, they don't hold a candle to the damage inflicted by relentless attacks on education by conse
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I'm looking at the Naep website [1]state rankings [nationsreportcard.gov] for FL vs CA and they are slightly higher in math, slightly lower in reading. Apparently you've been lied to and didn't bother to check the data for yourself.
[1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/CA?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=RED&sj=CA&st=MN&year=2024R3&cti=PgTab_OT
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No. Check [1]https://www.nationsreportcard.... [nationsreportcard.gov] for comparisons between states.
If you want to drill down apples-to-apples, Louisiana before and after is a great case study.
[1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2024R3
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It’s admittedly sometimes tricky to deduce ranks directly from nationsreportcard.gov.
As an alternative, urban.org (Urban Institute) crunches the numbers pretty well:
[1]https://www.urban.org/sites/de... [urban.org]
[1] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/States_Demographically_Adjusted_Performance_on_the_2022_Nations_Report_Card.pdf
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> California has been at the forefront of adopting modern pedological science
It's not science, it's art. As a physics professor I can definitely say that a large number of new pedagogical methods are tested on students without much, if any, research backing them up. Even when an attempt at measuring objective outcomes is made it rarely, if ever uses a control group where two instructors teach two equivalent groups of students in two different ways. Instead it usually uses subjective interviews with students which are then analyzed in an attempt to extract some degree of mildly obje
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Too busy threatening the broadcast license of television networks. The fuck your feelings crowd sure does have some fragile feelings. [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/1... [cnbc.com]
I mean if that isn't a blatant first amendment violation then what is?
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/19/trump-threatening-broadcast-station-licenses-explained.html
The GOP solution (Score:1)
The 10 commandments displayed prominently and bibles for all white students.
Re: The GOP solution (Score:1)
Oh and I don't count that one as terroristic, just normal bad taste.
Re: (Score:2)
That's it! You were warned. You're being preempted indefinitely.
Re: (Score:2)
> "If I see a Black pilot, Iâ(TM)m going to be like, boy, I hope heâ(TM)s qualified. â" The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024"
Nice try, picking something out of context, which seems really, really popular now. His discussion was about DEI/Affirmative Action, specifically about airline pilot racial hiring quotas, and how quotas end up lowering excellence by displacing otherwise more qualified candidates. And what effect that can have on people's thinking by casting shadows of doubt. He s
Re: The GOP solution (Score:1)
Ah dog whistles, that thing where Democrats ascribe their evil to others? I like the term projection better.
In context the guy was clearly saying that if you let one group off with lower qualifications then people will rightly wonder about any member of that groups qualifications in the future. All around poor for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
> Nice try, picking something out of context, which seems really, really popular now. His discussion was about DEI/Affirmative Action, specifically about airline pilot racial hiring quotas, and how quotas end up lowering excellence by displacing otherwise more qualified candidates. And what effect that can have on people's thinking by casting shadows of doubt. He said, as part of a conversation:
If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022
Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
If I’m dealing with somebody in c
Sad, but it's worth it (Score:2)
To teach the youth that all of their idiosyncrasies and negative behaviors are to be cherished, fostered and enshrined in their "identities". Everything is permissible, especially failure, mediocrity, ugliness and hate. Who needs math, science or critical thinking. All I need is my democratic socialism and we're going to do it right finally. We've come so far, the utopias of my sci-fi dreams will spring from the classroom litter box, the 3500 hours of Fallout 4 I've accumulated, and of course the same way t
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> the 3500 hours of Fallout 4 I've accumulated,
iirc i played like 100 hours and was still only like 1/2 done through the main story (but it was Ultimate edition so maybe had DLCs too, but i don't even know if i got to them)
Re: Sad, but it's worth it (Score:1)
Say it with me in a kiddy singsong voice, we are going to turn the page, turn the page...
Re: (Score:2)
One day, people will learn that Republicans are neither democratic (chosen by the people) nor socialist (in service of the people), though they keep claiming that.
Re: Sad, but it's worth it (Score:1)
I really am unsure which definition is more comical. One smacks of election denial and the other of extreme naivete.
Abolish (Score:2)
No Child Left Behind. It's not going to fix everything, but it would be a start. Of course abolishing it would mean passing legislation - and that is not something Congress can do more than once or twice each year, so I do not see it happening any time...ever.
Crap show all around (Score:2)
Overworked parents turning to phones as babysitters combined with a nihlist mindset that hard work no longer pays off, and “why bother since the planet is on fire?”. So you have underprepared kids who don’t see the point flooding schools staffed by underpaid and frazzled teachers. Just a few kids that are way below grade level and not caring drags down the entire class. Various factors have also kept kids from being failed, so they get punted to the next grade to continue dragging every
Shows in ACT Scores (Score:2)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
ACT scores show a striking decline starting before the pandemic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Average_ACT_Scores.svg
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Meaning they took the test after four years under the first Trump administration.
Early 2017 (Score:2)
I remember the article where I first noticed the chart:
[1]ACT Test Scores For US Students Drop To a 30-Year Low [slashdot.org]
> Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That pegs the beginning of the decline to 2017 (probably in the spring), before most of his first four years.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/10/12/210211/act-test-scores-for-us-students-drop-to-a-30-year-low