BTW, there's also PISA:

https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/pisa-education-and-skills/performance-trends.html

Interesting how the “age gap” in the US for numeracy and literacy is conspicuously small. But relatively large for problem solving.

In others, you can see recent history in really humongous gaps.

Also, I can’t help but wonder how much of that is a “normal” trend? I was stupider, and would have tested worse, at 16. Maybe at 20.

Is the test actually taken by 60 year olds, or are the results from when that generation became adults? Because in the former case, it's expected that their results would be worse. Your cognitive skills decline as you get older, and many people don't actually use the skills they've learned at their jobs, so there is also skill decay due to lack of usage. My mom would have probably been more literate than me when when we were both 20, but probably is not right now.

My point is, you can only make inter-generational comparisons by normalizing for age, say in the 20-30 peak range.

What are Finland, Japan, and Estonia doing to be at the top of those? The spread is not that wide, but still. The US seems super clustered while most other countries seem to show a generational difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

It’s everywhere.

Stopped reading here. TL;DR

the distinction between opinion pieces and news.

In fairness, media consolidation, rampant native advertising, and deluges of "infotainment" have made this distinction increasingly blurry.

I don’t know what to do about it, either, as people have shown they will always vote for the instant gratification of it

A lot of the information is pure junk, consumed entirely for recreation. What's to be done with people who watch the equivalent of telanovellas labeled as Breaking News?

Even when information is ostensibly useful, there's the endless debate of what to do with it.

I see this Shepherd's Tone coverage of education and intelligence, as though highly educated and deeply curious people had some sort of profound influence over the world twenty years ago that we've lost today.

If anything, the endless "everyone is getting stupider (except you, sweet beautiful reader)" seems to play directly into the narrative that democracy doesn't work and submission to authority is the logical choice.

It's gamified zombiefication, and I am a victim. I've been on the Internet since the 90s and I feel like those guys who spent 30 years mining coal wondering why they can't stop coughing.

it tanked during covid, because people were doing it from home. in college reviews , the people tht went through whole college online was very disasstified with thier education, they dint learn anything at all. so this caused a reduced enrollment in state unis all over the west. they got so desperate they were willing to accept hs students automatically if they complete certain courses instead of requiring the USUAL sat, and 3.0GPA, how long this bandaid will last is another thing.

some even said they transferred to a proper university to get a better opportunities for thier careers. not all universities are equal and then saw thier friends stayed in a state school and end up struggling to find a job after graduating. likely the more expensive school offered more volunteering, internship opportunities than a low-prestige schools which basically just pushes people as fast possible through the system, also giving bad advice through thier advisers.

This predates the current flood of tech in the classroom. It is due to the low standards of the American education system.

There are loads of reason why US schools are a failure: funding, teachers pay, multiple choice testing, politically driven curriculum, home schooling, anti-science mentality, just to list the biggest problems.

I'd love seeing the same research made where I live. I mean, as you don't specify it I guess you're American?

"College level" means more than most people know. Standardized tests have a tendency to be racist. The average going down is bad.

Also,

The survey, first spotted by the Economist

sus

That’s why I measure the quality of my end of life care in millimeters. Specifically 9 of them.

There's also a major issue: we have a lot of low selectivity colleges, which includes scam diploma mills. Other countries have some low selectivity institutions, but I bet the leaders in this survey have a higher proportion of them. That means there's inherent selection bias.

Should make sense; entry exams obviously filter out students with poor reading and math skills.

Im Polish and what is this?

I'm kinda 50/50 on that. Parents should be doing better, but most are probably unequipped to fight A.I., short-form video, social media, and other things that harm focus and education. You also cannot just expect parents to do better and hope that they will change. Parenting is not subject to very much government regulation (for obvious practical and ethical reasons) but education systems are, and can be changed systematically through law or policy.

So I agree that parents are responsible, but there's not really any kind of systematic change that I can imagine would fix that problem.

I agree but also would say they're powerless to fix it if they want to. Everyone is on the hamster wheel, zero support from government and society for dual income families, run between work and childcare/school, after school activities, caring for aging parents. If you're a single income family perhaps you trade better parental engagement for the crushing weight of financial woes. Parents are stuck doing the bare minimum and just surviving, not thriving.

In the United States, No Child Left Behind tied school funding to standardized test results, while also increasing the required number of standardized tests. These are already biased to favor white, middle and upper class boys, anyway. Teachers taught rote, that's basically it, to improve test scores, not learning. Before that, you can look for Lee Atwater's full interview about the Southern Strategy he did with The Nation. But in introduction to sociology, in college, it discusses how schools were designed to teach kids enough to understand and follow orders, not enough to question those orders. That makes for a hella compliant work force, military, police, FBI/NSA force. Other Western states followed suit, some got the privilege to pay for it, others the privilege of having it deducted from pay, through taxes, which is fine if it were to actually...educate.

I think graded levels are a terrible idea and that all schools should follow the Montessori model.

Teacher: (looking at term paper which consists entirely of em dashes and explanations why it is a large language model) "Well, this student hasn't paid any attention in class all year, has managed not to be automatically failed through skipping classes, but only just, shows no sign of actually wanting to learn anything, swears at me when I say they should be doing schoolwork in the classroom, lies to their parents that I'm failing them because I'm racist, and is supported in those lies by their friends and family. I could fail them, which will bring them back to this school, and probably my classroom, and probably with a grudge against me, and the admin will say I failed as a teacher by not getting them to learn enough to pass... or I could give them just enough credit to get a D-- and make them some other teacher's problem so I can concentrate on the students I really feel like I can help next year.
...
Have fun in college, shithead."

its simple, participation grades. they were already doing this int he early 2000s, it began with if you made slightly under a D- , or an F thats close to a D, or C you get a C. nowadays you have to pass people no matter what, because the schools dont get funding. the SIMPSON episode where lisa cheated on a test, and the principal begged her not to report it because it funds the school, since shes pratically the genius students that is raising her schools statistics up, they cant afford a fail/expel.

plus in HS they have all these useless class for struggling students that they shunt them to be babysat so the school doesnt lose funding if they fail the core classes.

when i was in CC, my math prof(terribl prof) said people were graduating HS with only 9th grade math, and this pretty generous to be honest, so many people were in arithemetic classes when i was in CC. and english only 10th grade comprehension, this includes writing.

Is it all just money?

Yes.

I'm here to tell you the U.S. does not care about literally anything else.

Sure, here in my European country you just pay and get in. College is for everyone.

There are a few exceptions, mostly medical degrees, but generally there's no competing for spots.

One CC I tried made me take a placement test, but I tested out of the one class I was going for.

CCs will take just about anyone with a HS diploma or GED. There's not really an option to redo those courses, so you just start at the entry level stuff in CC, which is the stuff you should have been taught in HS anyway. It doesn't matter because you're expect to use very, very little of that you take all that time and money learning. It's all very performative.

There’s religion based homeschooling in both countries, which might have something to do with it

israel likely depends on the US/EU for all its industries, they are completely reliant. many universities are a pipeline to multiple industries in israel hence why so many universities are funded by certain donors , yet not directly working or living in the country. that make sense.

That's not even a conspiracy theory. There's sects like Opus Dei with their private schools pushing for defending of public education. Catholic institutional memory still has that medieval control of knowledge baked in.

What kind of critical thinking skills do you really need to understand the phrase, "The President of the United States is a pedophile?" You don't even need to read it, either, you can just hear someone say it.