ACT test scores for U.S. students drop to a 30-year low

Do you have literally any proof of this?

The non-standardized parts of the application process are becoming much easier to game, and parents/students are getting much better at it. I've even seen students set up "charitable foundations" or their own "startups" that were little more than shells set up by their parents with a quick website. "Looks good on an application!" was the refrain.

Most public school teachers are great people and do their best to educate every student. But a small minority of teachers, and a larger number of the administrators and union leaders whom they answer to, increasingly see schools as a channel to indoctrinate students on controversial social and political issues. It only takes one encounter with a situation like that to turn a parent off of public schooling entirely and move their child to a private school that better aligns with their values.

California has also banned suspending students for willful defiance. While those suspensions were over used in some schools, they did at least serve to get disruptive students out of the way so that others could learn. So, the situation here is likely to deteriorate further.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-law-wil...

In 35 years, we've gone from kids having to do and show their own work to looking up answers online for everything and shortcutting their way through their educations because their parents aren't participating.

I hope they don't make the ACT easier as compensation. I feel that the ACT is almost "too easy" already. For example, I would not consider myself academically talented (graduated mid tier public university with 3.5 GPA in electrical engineering), but I was able to get a 34 ACT after doing 6 practice tests. Also keep in mind that you can retake the ACT or SAT as many times as you desire. Thus, I feel like it looses its predictive qualities due to being so easy to score highly (if you prepare for it).

Baltimore City Schools received 29 federal Covid grants totaling $799M to fight learning loss. Yet, in 2023, just 9.1% of all 3rd-8th graders tested proficient in math. MEANING, taxpayers gave an additional $799M and 91% of Baltimore students are NOT math proficient.

New test scores, known as MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program), obtained by Project Baltimore, revealed that 23 schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools, had not one student that could do math at grade level.

Calverton school (https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school...)

  A Calverton educator, who reached out to Fox45, claims to have received that text. “[It instructed me to] go into my grade book, make sure no students are failing, and essentially change the grade if they are failing so they will pass with a 60 percent,” said the teacher, whose identity we are concealing upon request.

  “I was frustrated as a teacher. We’re public servants. And when we see things like grade changing, that’s self-serving. That’s not helping the kids.”

  After watching Fox45’s recent investigations into allegations of grade changing at Calverton, the City Schools employee contacted Project Baltimore to say a couple things. First, according to the teacher, grade changing at Calverton is “very common.”

  Second, the educator told Fox45, changing grades is the easiest and fastest way to pass more students, which makes the school and its administrators look better. But, it does a huge disservice to not just the kids, but our entire community.

  “Teaching a whole generation of kids that they don’t have to be accountable for their actions, or that hard work isn’t valued or valuable when they are in school, is so discouraging and damaging.”

But this teacher says grade changing at Calverton goes much further than just taking a failing grade and making it a 60. Some students who pass, according to this educator, don’t even have grades because they’ve never showed up to class.

  “There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.”

  “I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”

He will never be able to match a teachers pension with 401k though...he might regret it when he is still working and his teacher friends have retired

With expected lifespan, a teacher pension can be worth over a million dollars...zero chance a 401k will deliver half that for most salaries

No it isn't. Being able to impregnate a woman or give birth does NOT magically make you a great teacher! My mother has an innate gift for teaching, and she STILL benefited from 4-6 years of college courses and continual training and improvement over the 30 years she taught and is still teaching.

Meanwhile, the entire time she has taught, parents have done everything they can to shift blame from bad home life and kids that don't value education to "you aren't doing enough" even as she literally buys her students winter coats, from her own pocketbook, as the school doesn't even buy her new markers for her whiteboard or new material so she can stop using 25 year old VHS tapes that are literally losing their contents from normal wear, even as she is one of the favorite teachers in the entire school system because of her immense empathy, even as "bad kids" do very well in her class because of how sincere she is, how much she cares, and how good she is at her job.

People say "We've increased so much what money we give to schools" completely ignoring that the money has NOT been distributed in any sort of even way, and even in my state which has largely good outcomes for education, the vast majority of the funding goes to a couple prestige schools in the south that were already rich because they are in rich towns, and the little money that trickles to the impoverished schools in the rest of the state largely goes to paying administrators led by superintendents that are just whoever the "Good old boys" were twenty years ago. Actual teacher pay has not kept up with inflation.

I'm so sick of all this teacher blaming bullshit around education. Actually trained teachers have been shouting about what they need to improve things for decades, and none of the managerial class has given them even a shred of what they actually need, while everyone continues to blame them, and have even claimed public education is just indoctrination. It's infuriating.

Education is a skill, a professional and knowledge based skill. Teachers aren't baby sitters, and if you decide you only need a high school degree to teach, don't be surprised when it goes poorly.