"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."