This predates the current flood of tech in the classroom. It is due to the low standards of the American education system.

There are loads of reason why US schools are a failure: funding, teachers pay, multiple choice testing, politically driven curriculum, home schooling, anti-science mentality, just to list the biggest problems.

it tanked during covid, because people were doing it from home. in college reviews , the people tht went through whole college online was very disasstified with thier education, they dint learn anything at all. so this caused a reduced enrollment in state unis all over the west. they got so desperate they were willing to accept hs students automatically if they complete certain courses instead of requiring the USUAL sat, and 3.0GPA, how long this bandaid will last is another thing.

some even said they transferred to a proper university to get a better opportunities for thier careers. not all universities are equal and then saw thier friends stayed in a state school and end up struggling to find a job after graduating. likely the more expensive school offered more volunteering, internship opportunities than a low-prestige schools which basically just pushes people as fast possible through the system, also giving bad advice through thier advisers.

It’s everywhere.

Stopped reading here. TL;DR

the distinction between opinion pieces and news.

In fairness, media consolidation, rampant native advertising, and deluges of "infotainment" have made this distinction increasingly blurry.

I don’t know what to do about it, either, as people have shown they will always vote for the instant gratification of it

A lot of the information is pure junk, consumed entirely for recreation. What's to be done with people who watch the equivalent of telanovellas labeled as Breaking News?

Even when information is ostensibly useful, there's the endless debate of what to do with it.

I see this Shepherd's Tone coverage of education and intelligence, as though highly educated and deeply curious people had some sort of profound influence over the world twenty years ago that we've lost today.

If anything, the endless "everyone is getting stupider (except you, sweet beautiful reader)" seems to play directly into the narrative that democracy doesn't work and submission to authority is the logical choice.

Clod pls sumarize coment, I canot reed that much. No fluff and make no mistakes.

BTW, there's also PISA:

https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/pisa-education-and-skills/performance-trends.html

Interesting how the “age gap” in the US for numeracy and literacy is conspicuously small. But relatively large for problem solving.

In others, you can see recent history in really humongous gaps.

Also, I can’t help but wonder how much of that is a “normal” trend? I was stupider, and would have tested worse, at 16. Maybe at 20.

What kind of critical thinking skills do you really need to understand the phrase, "The President of the United States is a pedophile?" You don't even need to read it, either, you can just hear someone say it.

Also,

The survey, first spotted by the Economist

sus

That’s why I measure the quality of my end of life care in millimeters. Specifically 9 of them.

There's also a major issue: we have a lot of low selectivity colleges, which includes scam diploma mills. Other countries have some low selectivity institutions, but I bet the leaders in this survey have a higher proportion of them. That means there's inherent selection bias.

Should make sense; entry exams obviously filter out students with poor reading and math skills.

Teacher: (looking at term paper which consists entirely of em dashes and explanations why it is a large language model) "Well, this student hasn't paid any attention in class all year, has managed not to be automatically failed through skipping classes, but only just, shows no sign of actually wanting to learn anything, swears at me when I say they should be doing schoolwork in the classroom, lies to their parents that I'm failing them because I'm racist, and is supported in those lies by their friends and family. I could fail them, which will bring them back to this school, and probably my classroom, and probably with a grudge against me, and the admin will say I failed as a teacher by not getting them to learn enough to pass... or I could give them just enough credit to get a D-- and make them some other teacher's problem so I can concentrate on the students I really feel like I can help next year.
...
Have fun in college, shithead."

In the United States, No Child Left Behind tied school funding to standardized test results, while also increasing the required number of standardized tests. These are already biased to favor white, middle and upper class boys, anyway. Teachers taught rote, that's basically it, to improve test scores, not learning. Before that, you can look for Lee Atwater's full interview about the Southern Strategy he did with The Nation. But in introduction to sociology, in college, it discusses how schools were designed to teach kids enough to understand and follow orders, not enough to question those orders. That makes for a hella compliant work force, military, police, FBI/NSA force. Other Western states followed suit, some got the privilege to pay for it, others the privilege of having it deducted from pay, through taxes, which is fine if it were to actually...educate.

I think graded levels are a terrible idea and that all schools should follow the Montessori model.

its simple, participation grades. they were already doing this int he early 2000s, it began with if you made slightly under a D- , or an F thats close to a D, or C you get a C. nowadays you have to pass people no matter what, because the schools dont get funding. the SIMPSON episode where lisa cheated on a test, and the principal begged her not to report it because it funds the school, since shes pratically the genius students that is raising her schools statistics up, they cant afford a fail/expel.

plus in HS they have all these useless class for struggling students that they shunt them to be babysat so the school doesnt lose funding if they fail the core classes.

when i was in CC, my math prof(terribl prof) said people were graduating HS with only 9th grade math, and this pretty generous to be honest, so many people were in arithemetic classes when i was in CC. and english only 10th grade comprehension, this includes writing.

That's why paid tuition is such a scam. You WANT people to study things that interest them regardless what it is.

It teaches you how to think, it teaches you diligence and critical thinking and grows you as a person.

I don't want to live in a society with a bunch of dumbfucks just because their parents couldn't afford to put their children through college.

There is so much more to education and learning than potential future profit, it's about creating a healthy, liveable society.

No wonder you get trump voters and vote abstainers when they never were taught how to use their brains and why that is important.

Is it all just money?

Yes.

I'm here to tell you the U.S. does not care about literally anything else.

There’s religion based homeschooling in both countries, which might have something to do with it