"Americans are getting dumber," writes Chad Aldeman on The 74. Achievement peaked about a decade ago on "a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas." Since then, students -- and adults - are doing worse.
The pandemic made it worse, but the downward trend started years before lockdowns and zoom school.
Scores have fallen faster for lower-performing students, he notes. Achievement gaps, which were narrowing, are growing, points out Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute. In a new report, he writes that "external societal factors — not just school-related influences —are at play."
At the start of the decline, writes Aldeman, the Obama administration relaxed federal accountability rules. It would make sense to blame that -- except that U.S. adults are doing worse in literacy and numeracy on international tests, with lower achievers again losing the most.
"The rise of smartphones and social media, and the decline in reading for pleasure, could be contributing to these achievement declines," writes Aldeman. The timing is right.
But it doesn't make sense that the youngest students, who are less likely to be on social media, would lose the most or that the lowest achievers would show the largest declines. And the U.S. is doing worse than other countries, he writes. "Smartphones and social media are global phenomena, and yet scores in Australia, England, Italy, Japan and Sweden have all risen over the last decade," and no other country has "seen declines like we’ve had here in the States."
Could it the increasing number of immigrants? Common Core standards? There's no simple explanation, writes Aldeman. Maybe it's a bit of everything.
"It could be that the rise in technology is diminishing Americans’ attention spans and stealing their focus from books and other long-form written content," he writes. "Meanwhile, schools have been de-emphasizing basic skills, easing up on behavioral expectations and making it easier to pass courses. At the same time, policymakers in too many parts of the country have stopped holding schools accountable for the performance of all students."
Smartphones were owned by 60% of people in 2015, up from less than 5% in July 2007 before the iPhone in August 2007. By 2018 it was over 75%, and is 91% now. Age doesn't matter. How many toddlers have you seen in a waiting room or restaurant table with their mother's iPhone?
Mr Aldeman is wrong (as I attempted to show you, Joanne, via the recent PIAAC report for young adults) about "no other country has 'seen declines like we’ve had here in the States'"; many nations have fallen worse than the U.S. has, and the developed world as a whole declined in its performance in literacy and mathematics over the last ten years, so the hypothesis of anti-social dumbphones having replaced reading, including among children particularly damaged by the pandemic, in the midst of the ongoing demographic changes around the planet, appears the likeliest among those he poses.
Student Achievement was on the decline WELL before COVID-19 showed up and in general
many people simply find learning too boring to stick with it long term...a recent report in Nevada showed that while almost 82% of high school seniors were awarded diplomas, less than 50% were rated proficient in English (Language Arts) and less than 20% were proficient in math...
Additionally, Nevada has the lowest composite ACT score (2024) in the nation at 17.2 (Oklahoma was next to last at 17.6)...a college ready student typically has a composite ACT of 23, and many unprepared students will simply drop out after 6 to 12 months and never return.
What else would one expect at a time where a plurality of Americans would vote for someone who has never read a book and is a sociopathic BS'er. Modern America has shown that mastery of a subject has no value.