Because of the pandemic math scores declined across all social economic levels. I believe there is not a district in the country which was not affected to some degree. I do think the higher income strata has rebounded more so, but I doubt it is back to where it should be. There was a good article the other day about how far behind students are in math around the country.
I noticed the other day in my S24’s Calc BC class that typically there are 5-6 juniors in BC who were on a fast track in middle school and would have taken Alg 1, Alg 2 and Geometry before high school. Instead, this year there are no juniors in the BC class - it is all seniors.
So the current high school juniors were 7th graders when schools shut down, were hybrid or completely remote for 8th grade, so likely never given the opportunity to move ahead.
In my state, standardized tests are renormed periodically to reflect a higher set of standards. In those years, iirc, it looks like standardized test scores plummet and that kids are “failing,” but all that’s really happened is we expect more from the students (though, of course, our lawmakers arent aren’t providing the resources to back up those increased expectations).
Regarding the specific HS mentioned at the start of the article (Springfield), the 4-year graduation rates by year are below. Grad rate increased from 36% to 94% over a 11 year period. Assessment scores (during period before new test introduced) and demographics had relatively minor changes during this period, so they would not explain this degree of graduation rate increase.
- 2011 – 36% graduated (36% dropped out, 19% in school, 6% non-grad completer, 3% GED)
- 2012 – 40% graduated
- 2013 – 45% graduated
- 2014 – 50% graduated
- 2015 – 63% graduated
- 2016 – 59% graduated
- 2017 – 77% graduated
- 2018 – 80% graduated
- 2019 – 86% graduated
- 2020 – 85% graduated
- 2021 – 91% graduated
- 2022 – 94% graduated (6% dropped out, 0% in school, 0% non-grad completer, 0% GED)
It’s unclear what were the primary reasons for the large and rapid increase increase in graduation rate at Springfield. I doubt that it can be explained by a single simple cause, such as grade inflation. I expect it involves both political and administrative pressure to improve graduation rate and taking steps to accomplish this from a variety of different fronts.
I doubt that it’s a coincidence that the graduation rates started to shoot up in the year that Warwick began as superintendent (2012). Warwick has stated beginning “graduation coaches, a ninth-grade transition course at every high school, expanded summer school, free classes at night and on-line credit recovery courses.” Warwick, ,the Springfield major, and numerous others have received a lot of praise about the increasing graduation rate. There are strong motivations to increase graduation rate as high as possible, and little motivation to keep the school’s graduation rate at 36%.
As I stated in the other thread, I attended a basic, public HS in NYS. It was basic in many ways, but one area that separated it from other HSs was having a graduation rate far above state averages – >90% throughout the date range listed above. NYS offers a variety of different HS diplomas including regents and local. The latter does not require passing standardized state regents exams. However, that was not what separated my HS from others in the state. The % passing regents also was fairly high, after they changed curriculum to teach to the test in math (most students failed prior to this change).
Instead I think the relatively high graduation rate had more to do with administration trying to graduate every student and taking various measures to pursue that goal. This includes things like identifying kids who were at risk of not graduating and putting them in a special program with smaller classes that had different focuses, such as placing extra emphasis on completing homework. Additional measures were added for certain particular students, including things like having a teacher aid follow students around to insure they attended classes. They also had vocational programs to support work plans/transitions for students who did not expect to pursue a college degree.
My personal experience were the few students who didn’t graduate in this environment often didn’t feel like they needed the degree and/or were following the path of other persons they knew.
Covid has a big effect but it’s not the cause of all problems. The academic bar has been going down for quite some years before covid.
From 2012 to 2018 I taught as adjunct in a local university. My students were pre-service teachers (undergrad students in training to become K-12 teachers). I taught a capstone course where I guided the students in conducting a research project, something like “what are the effects of a certain incentive to encourage 3rd graders in reading?”. The majority of those students were also doing student teaching, where they shadow (and assist if capable) a real teacher for one semester. The entire course was structured for the project with timeline, weekly check-in, peer discussion, online and in-person reflections, etc. Anyone with average executive skills should be able to follow the steps (ask school admin for permission, ask main teacher for corporation and collaboration, recruit students, collect data, analyze data, compose report, etc.). By the time for data collection half of the class were behind schedule. The week before the project was due half of the students would email me asking for extension or modified grading rubric (basically less work for higher grade). The most frequent “reason” I received was “I’m doing my best”. Apparently they believed that since they did their best, they deserved an A. They are teaching in K-12 schools now.
LOL, and they are hollering at their students for not doing/turning in work on time and that trying your best, while a valuable quality, does not show mastery of content.
My son said he observed a college student asking a GSI (a teaching assistant) to regrade some work because “I tried to answer the question, see how much I wrote?”
Note this is a physics class.
“Surely there’s some partial credit in there somewhere!”
He said the student had already received partial credit, but was arguing for more based on the volume of what they wrote and that they had “tried.”
He mentioned it to me because he thought it was a crazy reason to ask for more credit! The student was not arguing that their work was good… just that they had put effort into it.
Interesting approach…I guess it the real reasoning may be there’s nothing to lose by asking, and the potential to gain (however small the chance).
In the case of the high schools that are practicing real grade deflation, is this known to AOs, what happens when those kids find themselves at a soft disadvantage against all the 5.0s?
Some schools pay attention to the grade deflation and adjust their gpa expectations- but some schools clearly do not.
Grade deflation (relative to other schools with grade inflation) could probably hurt kids applying to colleges that have completely non-holistic admission, or semi-holistic admission where applicants are only considered if they are above a GPA cutoff.
For holistic admission colleges, I expect the AOs can figure it out … at least for HS that send many applicants to selective colleges (such as large competitive public HS, or strong private HS).
For smaller or less known HS, I don’t know. But perhaps this can be explained in a good school profile.
This gets at how school work and grades have become transactional. Student works, teacher gives grade. I know we’ve talked about this in other threads, it’s quite interesting.
Our HS (large public, competitive, highly ranked) teachers and admin recognize a shift to this transactional nature and talk about it quite a bit…but not sure there is really anything they can do about it.
My sister teaches 5th grade in Denver Public schools. She can recommend a student be retained, the principal can support that recommendation, but it is up to the parent to decide. Most often the parents decide to advance the student and change schools for the kids for the next year.
This is very true. We have a child in sixth grade in a strong private school but plan on sending him to public high school so he has access to AP courses and we can save the difference for college. He is in the highest math group at his school and takes a supplement course through JHU’s CTY program online. I’m glad we can do this for him, but I do feel badly for all of the students who don’t have access to resources like this or who need still need remediation from the time when schools were closed.
And very few people (in the news, in policy circles) are talking about another piece of the Covid experience- the middle school and HS kids who COULD have been learning effectively on Zoom or online (these kids had plenty of digital exposure by the time their schools moved online) but were needed at home to take care of younger siblings while the parents worked (either essential workers or WFH). Apparently the “absenteeism rate” for older students was very high- even in affluent districts where everyone had laptops, internet access, a room with a door you could close. The 5 and 6 year olds who really couldn’t handle online learning were being supervised by their older siblings for all or part of the day. So what’s a parent to do- worry about the 5 year old running outside unsupervised into traffic… or worry about the 14 year old who won’t be on track for trigonometry? Trig lost.
Very true. My own DS24 did very well in online school and actually stayed with it throughout high school because he thought the disruption of hybrid would be more of a deterrent to his education than staying in OHS. I was fortunate enough to be able to stop working during the school shutdowns so that I could keep them both on task and supported myself. It’s been very frustrating to hear skepticism from some (not all) AOs who are suspicious of students who actually were successful in online school, but not surprising.