There aren’t changes IMO. In the “Good Old Days” many dropped out of school - hence - not making the stats for reading ability. Of my grandparents, only 1 finished high school. Another dropped out at age 9 so she could go to work. None were dumb. Doubtful any were introduced to Algebra.
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Disagree
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Well, there is a very worrisome lack in the number of people speaking/reading Latin.
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Well, every study I have read or teacher I have consulted opined students are reading ( yeah, in English) less than ever before due to smartphones. But YMMV.
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I do not think intelligence per se has changed over the years but expectations definitely have changed. For students in the top 15% (generalizing) most are taking AP or honors courses requiring lots of homework and study time. And yes @Creekland algebra I was offered to kids in 8th grade who scored high on the assessment tests and whose parents would allow them to take the class. I was offered a spot but my parents declined because they felt it would be too much. Today, most kids are taking advanced classes starting in 8th grade or earlier. Many of my sons friends have already completed the math sequence for college engineering (in high school) definitely not the norm many years ago. And reading skills have declined in my opinion because a lot of it is done on a device. Hard to annotate or really absorb the information as well… just what my kids have told me. I think @roycroftmom has a point maybe both are true.
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My observation is that the tails have widened and narrowed in education.
So mediocre schools “back in the day” are now terrible (i.e. worse than mediocre). Excellent schools are now better-- substantially better.
But that leaves what- 70% of HS students in the middle of the distribution- some good teachers, some bad, some in places trying to make academics better and some in places which don’t care.
If you are a kid caught up at the tail end of a really bad school system- it is really bad. HS graduates reading at a 7th grade level. Math topping out at long division and percentages.
So yes- it is possible that schools are both better than and worse than they were back in the day. Trenton and Camden NJ- worse. Dover and Wellesley MA- better.
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You are right about the dumbing down of curricula, and probably about th eneed for AP courses, or similar such offerings. However, I think that very few teens will, on their own, be looking to take APs because they believe that none of their core classes are rigorous enough. Again, these are teens, and, unless they really really like a subject, they will not be looking to do extra work unless they have to.
Kids are not taking 15 or 20 APs because they think that regular classes won’t give them a good enough education. No kid is thinking “I really need to take APUSH, because that’s the level of history that I need for my pre-med degree”. Kids take lots of APs for one of two reasons - to increase their chances of being accepted to an “elite” college, and/or to possibly cut required courses in college.
A strong indications of this is that the number of AP classes that students have been taking has been increasing steadily and tracks applications numbers to “elite” colleges, rather than the drop in standards. I would also guess that the increase in college price tags is also part of this.
I should state that I do not think that pushing kids to do better and to take more rigorous courses is necessarily bad. Most teens do need pushing, because they’re teens. I actually think that pushing teens to take the most rigorous courses available because the parent believes that the kid should take advantage of the educational opportunities that are available is a good thing.
However, parents should als always be aware of the mental and emotional limits and needs of their kids. There unfortunately are many parents who will push their kids to breaking just so the parent will be able to say that their kid attends “an Ivy” (or something like that). However, there is little to say to such parents, because they essentially don’t care
However, most commonly parents push their kids because the parent believes that this is “the best thing for the kid”. Whether it is because they believe that an “elite” college will provide more opportunities, because they believe that “lesser” universities will not provide enough academic challenge or enough intellectual peers, or sometimes because they feel that their kid will enjoy having the prestige of attending an “elite” college. There are plenty of reasons that parents push their kids which are not selfish, or primarily not selfish. Selfishness creeps into most choices we make for our kids, because they’re our kids and we’re human.
This is OK, and pushing your kid for these reasons is not wrong, per se. These are teens, as I have mentioned, and, as I have mentioned, they usually have to be pushed to do things that are not their favorite things in the world.
These parents, who include many of us, should simply be very cognizant of their kids’ emotional and mental states, and to do their best to make sure that they are not putting th ewrong type of pressure on their kid. Parental expectations, even implicit ones, can put even more pressure on a kid than explicitly telling them “if you’re not accepted to Harvard, you’re a disappointment”. Telling a kid “we gave up X and Y, so that you could attend a high school which would increase your chances of attending a Good University” is likely one of the best ways to cause a kid to destroy their physical and mental health trying to be create the perfect profile for themselves. Even “you’re smart, we expect great things from you” while going on and on about how your neighbor’s kids were doing great at Yale or Stanford is another way.
So it’s more than not explicitly pushing your kids. It’s about explicitly making sure that you are not pressuring them beyond their emotional and academic limits, and that they are not imagining that you are doing so.
Again, these are teens, and everything is about them. So it’s pretty easy for them to interpret your casual comments about college as demands on them.
PS. Regarding “pushing teens”. My kid danced throughout high school, is part of a dance group in college, and is already looking for dance lessons and opportunities where she will be working next year. So her passion for dance is self-driven. Yet there were periods when she was younger during which we had to push her, because at that moment there were things which looked more attractive to her. Until pre-teens and teens are decent at delayed gratification, they need a certain amount of pushing.
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How dare you confuse the issue with data! 
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I must know a lot of kids who do not like to be bored in school. The kids I know happily signed up for AP classes so they would learn something during the mandatory 6 hours of school attendance per day. The kids I know enjoy learning; YMMV.
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I am not sure we should project.
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Perhaps a visit to your local middle school would provide a wealth of contrary data from teachers?
As they say, the plural of anecdote is not data.
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I overheard my son telling his younger sister that it is better to pick the AP classes because they are more interesting and move at a better pace, and that the non-AP classes are slow and boring. Apparently that’s what the kids say among themselves. Does that count as teens choosing APs because they don’t think the core courses are rigorous enough?
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That! …better pace, as in: not being slowed down by students who “have” to be in a class, vs. AP classes where everyone’s there because they want to, and they’ll come in each day prepared.
That in turn leads to a different instructor/class relationship, where students can be treated more maturely.
So, yes, that are “intangible” benefits that students have figured out, outside/before of becoming aware of something called “weighted GPA”.
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I am not sure this is a factor. We never calculated a GPA, weighted or otherwise.
Very few adults will say the younger generation is better than they are at the basics. “Everything” was “better” back then!
I enjoy listening to what kids who go to college come back and relate. In “my” day it was rare for undergrads to be actively engaged in research. Now it is common in many schools.
In the “old days” (including my day), so many who weren’t interested in higher education simply dropped out. In NY one could also get a non-Regents diploma pretty much saying a student “did their time.” Now we try to keep everyone in school through Grade 12 and want them to take Alg, etc, then complain or blame schools because not everyone does it.
It’s a combo of not everyone can do it and not everyone wants to do it. But now those folks seem to be the ones everyone focuses on when they say schools are bad.
Sure, some schools ARE bad (and have been), but in general, humans haven’t changed. There were incredibly academic capable kids back in ancient generations and they’re still around now.
How many in the “Good Old Days” signed their signature with an X because they couldn’t read? More than one.
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It is a lot more fun teaching kids who want to be there vs have to be there - in any class. This also goes for any level, but yeah, most who don’t want to be there get put into lower level classes even if they’re smart.
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Well - other than basic arithmetic (but being intuitive with number patterns might have just been my thing as a kid), I can state without reservation that my daughter while in HS by a huge margin exceeded in knowledge and competency anything I accomplished when I was a (high stats) student - in EVERY field, and in a drastically broader diversity of fields.
I pretty much started “listening” to her more than “telling”, by the time she was a HS Sophomore, because she tended to be well read, informed, reasoned, and was able to support her statements.
What I had going for myself was life experience and parallel parking - and of course that does count.
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Do not flame me but what standardized test is used for this assessment graph? Also what are the parameters being tested? Are all of the test formats the same from 1971-2020? What is original vs revised?
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