Posted on 12/15/2023 5:38:06 AM PST by karpov
A columnist covering K-12 education, I come to you, dear reader, with a warning: There’s a coming wave of college-freshman failure that will stress the institutions and systems of our universities. Grade schools haven’t and likely won’t recover from pandemic-era learning losses, and so, ready or not, a poorly educated generation is soon to flood your campuses.
We’ve all read the statistics. Students lost out on months’ worth of education, obliterating two decades’ worth of academic improvements. What’s more, we’re experiencing something of a “long Covid” in education. According to the testing company NWEA, students aren’t just not catching up. Rather, due to chronic absenteeism, behavior challenges, staffing shortages, and a general ennui in K-12 schooling, they are actually backsliding.
This alone would pose a substantial problem for higher ed, but the obfuscation of admissions standards at colleges and universities only compounds the difficulty.
Consider GPAs. While a persistent problem for years, grade inflation has made even more headlines recently. In Los Angeles, where 73 percent of eleventh graders received an A, B, or C in math, only 19 percent actually met grade-level standards. According to the Los Angeles Times, the same disparity plays out across ages and subjects:
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Thanks Fauci and government.
I did two years of community college then transferred. The first term I got stuck in a Freshman dorm. I don’t believe any of my three suitemates made it beyond the second term.
That’s the part of the student loan crisis that’s never mentioned. Students who drop out still owe tens of thousands of dollars.
I suspect with the loss of learning due to St. Fauci (blessed be his name) and the other totalitarian covidiots is going to have multi-generational effects.
Grade inflation has actually been a problem for a while now.
I recall at least 20 years ago a former Valedictorian of a Kentucky County HS went to college and flunked out. She sued her school for not preparing her. Probably with some truth.
I do remember she specifically complained about extra credit, which was commonly awarded at her school. She wasn’t terribly bright but put forth the work to get that inflating her grades.
Colleges and universities of today are exactly like the high schools of years gone by.
But, they aren’t even that good....................
Everyone knows it’s racist to study and get good grades.
Colleges will just dumb down the courses eventually getting rid of those racist grades...
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This has been a problem for decades. It's not a new thing.
80% of undergraduate grades at Yale are ‘A’s.
Hell I believe universities have been engaged in dumbing down of students in order to educate students in DEI principles and racism as evident in pro-Palestinian protests and the quality of university officials as seen recently .
Retired urban public high school teacher here. Most teachers I worked with had high standards when it came to grading. Yes, there were exceptions, but most of us wanted our grades to mean something.
However, the pressure to inflate grades was enormous. It really accelerated around the year 2000. This pressure usually came from not from the students or the parents, but from the administration. Administrators get lots of good stuff when scores are high.
High scores + few failures = bonuses and promotions for administrators
The most common pressure was shaming. You’d be called into the principal’s office. “Mr. Jones, I noticed that only 10% of your algebra class received an ‘A’ grade. That’s really not acceptable. What can you do to improve this?”
Older teachers like me heard it all before. We kept on doing what we thought was right. Younger ones would be intimidated.
It made me buckle down and do my work. I graduated in 4 years with a BBA in accounting.
That horse has already left the barn a long time ago. Our public schools have been producing proud morons for 30 years now. In Los Angeles they haven’t produced a Graduating High School class with greater than 25% proficiency in almost 30 years.
We are living in the “Age of Incompetence”, at ALL levels of society.
I’m still teaching. 23 years in....7 more to go. I’m in a Metro-Atlanta school. Pretty much everything you said is correct.
“ Hell I believe universities have been engaged in dumbing down of students in order to educate students in DEI principles and racism as evident in pro-Palestinian protests and the quality of university officials as seen recently .”
There are some that furiously resist being lifted up. As a result, others must be brought down, but by DEI they will all be the same, one way or another. No one will be allowed to be smarter than the dumbest on campus.
I have no idea what the schools try to teach kids these days — aside from anal sex and hatred of white people.
I really feel bad for the young people. They have not been given a fair deal — poor parenting, poor schooling, COVID, social media — it’s a stacked deck against them and I don’t think that generation will ever recover. It’s a Lost Generation and that is going to have big ramifications for everyone of any age.
They also get transferred out and usually "busted down" when test scores and/or grades are too low - high school down to middle school, etc., or transferred to a "troubled" school.
Saw it all the time.
If you give too many low grades, you are called onto the carpet in the principal office - and YOU are held responsible for "not teaching to the kids' learning needs," etc.
Never mind the massive rate of absenteeism, parent non involvement, kids never, ever held accountable for not doing homework, studying or even showing up - I always loved the classic administrative question: "Did you call home?" Hell, I called home to the point where the parents complained about ME to the district office.
Thirty-three years of experience in public schools, here - glad I got out when I did, it's FAR worse than when I started.
> They also get transferred out and usually “busted down” when test scores and/or grades are too low… <
Yep. Here’s a “busted down” story for you. In one of our schools, a student smuggled a knife into class. A vice principal tried to disarm the kid, and got cut for his troubles.
The vice principal got to a phone, and dialed 911. The next year he got transferred to one of the worst schools in the city.
Why? You’re supposed to call the (unarmed) school police, and never the city police. And that’s because central administration can bury school police reports but not city police reports.
Yep. I had a large knife fall out of a kid’s pants one day right onto the classroom floor - sent for school police (as I was supposed to do) - principal arrived immediately, “counseled” the student outside my classroom - he was sent straight back to class (don’t know if he still had the knife). And that was the end of it.
My husband said a kid came into his office (admin) and said- he knew of a kid that had a gun on him and was going to use it - husband said he had no question the kid was going to use the gun - he found th kid and the gun, disarmed the kid and handed it all over to school police to handle. Said that was the last he heard of it. He was near retirement and well knew what would happen if he made a big deal about it.
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