It is striking just how often pundits make sweeping/false claims supporting their chosen agenda when they could have made a very rational and reasonable argument instead.
It’s almost as if emotion matters more than reason…but I digress.
As youpoints out, there are good reasons to reform education, or even possible to abolish the DOE. As he correctly illustrates, we are pouring more and more money into education with no real-world benefit.
As I noted also on this topic:
"The New York Federal Reserve Bank estimates that 34 percent of college graduates are “underemployed,” meaning they are “overqualified” for their jobs. This indicates that a diploma is often, though not always, a resume-screening device for employers, not necessarily a metric of merit.
The mean IQ of a graduate student in the 1960s was 114, but by the 2000s it was just 105.8. For undergraduates, the mean IQ dropped from 111.3 to 100.4 by the 2010s. An IQ of 100 is average, therefore a college degree now merely signals average intelligence to potential employers. A college-educated person today scores barely a point higher than a high school-educated person did in the 1960s. Indeed, another study found that since the 1970s, the “vocabulary attainment” of Americans declined across all levels of education, with the largest declines found in undergraduate and graduate students."
The return on investment here is terrible. Reform is needed.
Thanks for pointing out this misuse of data. Another issue to consider, in agreement with the second comment above, is that mental health issues in children and youth are much more prevalent and severe than, say, 40 years ago.
I just have to say that mathematically these numbers don't mean much as averages of groups by educational attainment unless the group change over time is taken into account.
Suppose you have say 2 groups of people, one that can read at level 1 and one that can read at level 2 on average. Then you take a person who can read say at 1.3 from the first, teach him to level 1.6 and move him to group2. Both averages drop since the first group lost an above average member and the second gained a below average but the population improved as a whole.
I think a similar phenomenon could plausible be playing out to explain these changes. More schools in a poor area to cover would be dropouts decreasing highschool graduates and dropouts scores, more easy university programs outside stem etc
A couple of possible explanations for lower prose scores are:
Increased foreign born student population.
A large increase in technical programs, for example engineering, where writing ability is seen as less important than math and other technical skills. I can verify that engineers are typically not great writers.
I believe there has been a shift away from the general liberal arts education toward what is perceived as more vocationally useful skills.
I was primarily making an argument about college prose scores, although English as a second language students likely affect the high school prose scores as well.
Great piece Maxwell
It is striking just how often pundits make sweeping/false claims supporting their chosen agenda when they could have made a very rational and reasonable argument instead.
It’s almost as if emotion matters more than reason…but I digress.
As youpoints out, there are good reasons to reform education, or even possible to abolish the DOE. As he correctly illustrates, we are pouring more and more money into education with no real-world benefit.
As I noted also on this topic:
"The New York Federal Reserve Bank estimates that 34 percent of college graduates are “underemployed,” meaning they are “overqualified” for their jobs. This indicates that a diploma is often, though not always, a resume-screening device for employers, not necessarily a metric of merit.
The mean IQ of a graduate student in the 1960s was 114, but by the 2000s it was just 105.8. For undergraduates, the mean IQ dropped from 111.3 to 100.4 by the 2010s. An IQ of 100 is average, therefore a college degree now merely signals average intelligence to potential employers. A college-educated person today scores barely a point higher than a high school-educated person did in the 1960s. Indeed, another study found that since the 1970s, the “vocabulary attainment” of Americans declined across all levels of education, with the largest declines found in undergraduate and graduate students."
The return on investment here is terrible. Reform is needed.
DOE may well need reform, but it’s hard to imagine that a co-founder of WWE is the right person for that job.
It seems her chief qualification is that she has donated $11m dollars to Trump’s campaign, this year alone.
Thank you! Concise, informative and fearless. This is the ideal that writers on Substack should aspire to.
Do you agree with what is currently happening to the DOE?
Thanks for pointing out this misuse of data. Another issue to consider, in agreement with the second comment above, is that mental health issues in children and youth are much more prevalent and severe than, say, 40 years ago.
I love the graphic. Inflation-adjusted spending per pupil has tripled since 1967 with no apparent results. That numbs the brain…
I just have to say that mathematically these numbers don't mean much as averages of groups by educational attainment unless the group change over time is taken into account.
Suppose you have say 2 groups of people, one that can read at level 1 and one that can read at level 2 on average. Then you take a person who can read say at 1.3 from the first, teach him to level 1.6 and move him to group2. Both averages drop since the first group lost an above average member and the second gained a below average but the population improved as a whole.
I think a similar phenomenon could plausible be playing out to explain these changes. More schools in a poor area to cover would be dropouts decreasing highschool graduates and dropouts scores, more easy university programs outside stem etc
A couple of possible explanations for lower prose scores are:
Increased foreign born student population.
A large increase in technical programs, for example engineering, where writing ability is seen as less important than math and other technical skills. I can verify that engineers are typically not great writers.
I believe there has been a shift away from the general liberal arts education toward what is perceived as more vocationally useful skills.
I was primarily making an argument about college prose scores, although English as a second language students likely affect the high school prose scores as well.