Are educational standards declining?
According to research, millennials (Gen Y) are the most educated generation in American history. Approximately 38 percent of millennials have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 32 percent of Generation X and 15 percent of baby boomers when they were the same age.
Tahyira Savanna, an educator and founder of an education nonprofit, has been outspoken about what she sees in the classroom. “Cellphones need to be removed from K-8 grades. There’s no reason why ELA students in 8th grade respond to an educator as “imma jus tryna get money.” Oh honey, they gonna put you in the 7M cult – it’s the influencer fake life hurting education. In full transparency – telling this generation is not enough; we have to show them reality. As a millennial, we hold the educational tools to be a resource. You only recognize a free resource if you’re focused and alert The cellphone addiction is hurting their ALERTNESS.” She shares across her X profile.
Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2010, accounts for a third of the world’s population. Referred to as “digital natives”, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are forecast to be the most well-educated.
A Pew Research study revealed that in 2021, the most recent year with available data, 39% of 21-year-olds were working full-time, compared with 64% in 1980. And only a quarter of people this age in 2021 were financially independent of their parents – meaning that their income was at least 150% of the poverty line – compared with 42% in 1980.
Savanna continued via tweets, “Uneducated Americans earn more, because since the Great Recession the value of degrees, education, and access has changed. It went from nothing to zero. Then you ask, well what’s happened to the United States? The answer is: #IGNORANCE No one cares about being “intelligent” or “aptitude” anymore when marketing for businesses and politics is propaganda-biased.
She raises important issues. How do we save democracy when we cannot educationally inspire the American public on the importance of it? During the pandemic, many researchers and medical advocates explained the crisis they faced by disseminating safety materials like signage relating to the novel COVID-19 virus because Americans, on average, read at the 6th-grade middle school level. The medical advice had to be dumbed down for the everyday person, tuning into the news, could understand the health risks they were living in.
What specific strategies or interventions can be implemented to address the decline in academic progress and the increase in youth mental health issues?
A 2015 RAND Corporation study of 62 public schools found that personalized learning approaches improved academic progress. But research also suggests that teachers in schools that already perform well on standardized tests do a better job of implementing personalized learning than those in lower-performing schools (Lee, D., et al., Education Technology Research and Development, Vol. 69, No. 2, 2021). Psychological science is helping educators better parse those findings, Barnes said, by accounting for the way school context interacts with student outcomes.
Ninety-four percent of students enrolled in CTE (Career and Technical Education) programs graduate, compared with just 85% of students at traditional high schools.
Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities peaked in 2010 and has been on a steady decline since and more than a quarter of students in K-12 schools are now chronically absent. Certainly, many factors are at play here, ranging from mental health issues and a pandemic hangover to technological disruption and a series of education policy debacles. But the ultimate culprit of our discontent may be the hardest of all to acknowledge and address. The brutal reality is that education isn’t exciting, engaging or relevant for far too many students.
Academic progress has been hindered by the pandemic and has not yet made a full recovery. However, the significant declines in test scores and widening achievement gaps are just a portion of the issue. Academic progress stalled during the pandemic and has yet to recover. However, historic declines in test scores and growing achievement gaps are just part of the problem. Youth mental health issues surged; behavioral problems increased; and more teachers left the profession—creating a situation many are calling alarming.
Read more articles by Tahyira.