It exists. It’s pretty bad, but I don’t think people outside of education can understand what that really means.
I don’t think we are doomed, but I also don’t think we can/should deny it’s getting worse.
We have to turn and fix it and acknowledge it’s impacted by a ton of huge factors:
- COVID missed learning (Edit to add that I don’t mean two months of school missed, I mean two years of excusing every absence and missed assessment and not holding kids or schools accountable to learning requirements, then turning around and demanding only grade level content be taught now, knowing that the kids missed two years of foundation needed for it. People outside of education don’t know what was forgiven and excused those two years and how the result is and will continue to linger.)
- grade inflation
- poor teaching practices met with wild overcorrecting (this applies to how we teach reading, ESE inclusion approaches, mental health practices in education,… )
- not paying teachers enough nor treating them well enough (read: not being able to recruit and retain the highest tier educators possible)
- rising cost of living leading to less parental involvement because they have to work 3 jobs and thus aren’t home to read to their kid or feed them real food and insist they go to bed
- the rise of and push for the use of technology from how it’s incorporated in teaching to how fast cell phones have developed with not enough research on the impact.
I don’t think we are doomed, but I also don’t think we can/should deny it’s getting worse.
We have to turn and fix it and acknowledge it’s impacted by a ton of huge factors:
- COVID missed learning (Edit to add that I don’t mean two months of school missed, I mean two years of excusing every absence and missed assessment and not holding kids or schools accountable to learning requirements, then turning around and demanding only grade level content be taught now, knowing that the kids missed two years of foundation needed for it. People outside of education don’t know what was forgiven and excused those two years and how the result is and will continue to linger.)
- grade inflation
- poor teaching practices met with wild overcorrecting (this applies to how we teach reading, ESE inclusion approaches, mental health practices in education,… )
- not paying teachers enough nor treating them well enough (read: not being able to recruit and retain the highest tier educators possible)
- rising cost of living leading to less parental involvement because they have to work 3 jobs and thus aren’t home to read to their kid or feed them real food and insist they go to bed
- the rise of and push for the use of technology from how it’s incorporated in teaching to how fast cell phones have developed with not enough research on the impact.