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kbelderyesterday at 10:13 PM2 repliesview on HN

Oregon is mentioned as an example of the general decline through the US. The article isn't really about Oregon specifically:

    Consider Oregon. Had it merely kept pace with inflation, it would have
    increased school spending by about 35 percent from 2013 to 2023. In
    actuality, it raised spending by 80 percent. Over the same period, math
    and reading performance tanked, with math posting a remarkable 16-point
    decline—the equivalent of 1.5 grade levels. Oregon is spending much more
    and achieving much less.
I think that Oregon teacher salaries have gone up quite a bit more than the national average in the last 10 years, less so in the last couple.

My youngest child is just starting high school at the moment, and for the last several years much of math education seems to have been farmed out to really crappy software and short video clips running on chromebooks. She'd really be suffering without parental intervention.


Replies

wffurryesterday at 10:37 PM

>> much of math education seems to have been farmed out to really crappy software and short video clips running on chromebooks

Our local school committee is debating this currently. There was a book mentioned "Ditch That Textbook" about using EdTech to reimagine curriculums. I have a hard time imagining actual high quality math education not using a textbook, and I don't really see how crappy software (and I do not for a second doubt that most ed tech is crappy - almost all software is crappy really, it's a total tragedy and a separate discussion) can possibly do better.

Personally I'd like to see fewer Chromebooks and iPads and such in classrooms and more textbooks and notebooks. I'm open to being convinced I'm just a curmudgeon, but it'll take real results in schools to do so.

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grantpittyesterday at 10:16 PM

Yeah, the article links the source where every state can be viewed: https://edunomicslab.org/roi-over-time/