The drop from 2018 to 2022 is as big as the one from 2022 to 2026, so it's not obvious whether AI had a role at all, although it's highly plausible.

I suspect the bigger culprit is the optimized monetization of human attention, because pre-algorithmic social media doesn't seem to be as destructive. The fact that science wasn't as affected as math and reading (both of which rely more on attention/practice than rote memorization) somewhat supports this.

Plunging physical fitness test scores are even worse.[1] "Fat people don't make good soldiers … they get themselves or others hurt or killed." The US military says 31% of US youth are too fat to serve. 77% are not qualified for one or more reasons.[2]

Only 12% of American male youth who are qualified for the military are not in college.

Think about that. About 2/3 of American male youth are not good enough for either college or the military. That's a high reject rate.

[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/10/one-third-you...

[2] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-...

Where I live in the US there is a movement to A) Prohibit phones from being used in schools B) use textbooks again instead of digital texts C) use handwriting and notebooks instead of Chromebooks for in-class note taking.

While this might help, and I agree with all these steps, I'm concerned that the root of the problem is simply that the online experience has rewired our kids. Not screens per se, but the feeling of a constantly moving social space which demands their attention.

Naturally, The Economist chooses the political stance of "blame lefty teachers and hooray for Baron Gove".

The regional coverage remains excellent, but this kind of editorializing is the precise reason I stopped subscribing.

If you take the 1998 NAEP 8th grade reading scores by race, re-weight them by the new 2024 demographic makeup of American 8th graders, you will find a predicted point decline of 4.6, rather close to the actual 4 point fall over the period.

Over the same period, reading scores actually improved somewhat for each of the 1998 poorly scoring groups (and quite a bit for Asians), but the poorly scoring groups simply make up so much more of the population now that it drags everything else down.

| Group | 1998 NAEP | 2024 NAEP | Change |

|---|---:|---:|---:|

| White | *268* | *266* | −2 |

| Black | *242* | *243* | +1 |

| Hispanic | *241* | *245* | +4 |

| Asian/Pacific Islander | *261* | *280* | +19 |

| All public-school students | *261* | *257* | −4 |

| Race/ethnicity | 1999 Grade 8 | 2023 Grade 8 | Change |

|---|---:|---:|---:|

| White | *64.5%* | *44.0%* | −20.5 pp |

| Black | 16.1% | 14.9% | −1.2 pp |

| Hispanic | *14.3%* | *29.4%* | +15.1 pp |

| Asian/Pacific Islander* | 3.9% | 5.9% | +2.0 pp |

| American Indian/Alaska Native | 1.2% | 0.9% | −0.3 pp |

| Two or more races | not separately reported | 4.8% | — |

It seems there is no working around learning to write and read properly. We've drifted away from this idea, which might lead to a "soft" dark age.

Is there a good science fiction story where humanity discovers it’s unalterably getting dumber? As in within a fixed number of generations tool use will cease?

Archive link: https://archive.ph/n8Akh

I agree it's worth looking into, potentially very emphatically. But that means doing some hard science.

That means don't just look at test scores by county, it means looking at DELTAs in test scores across time by numerous dimensions (income, poverty, did the kids get breakfast, school, etc) and an open mind to every possibility. Perhaps comparing against the parents' test scores might help elucidate.

Given the rise of so many unexplained mental health phenomena, I personally suspect there are environmental factors, but again, we need hard science and a lot of it.

Are the PISA exams really the ultimate end all, the best goal we have for education?

I like the idea of a standard to measure against, but in my experience, standardized tests are terrible measures of education.

Gee, schools got rid of text books and ask only multiple choice questions on Math tests… They now also use AI to grade short essays.

I’d have been more surprised if there wasn’t any impact on learning.

So many places to point our fingers:

-Everyone has screens.

-Education system broken.

-Covid disruptions

-Biological effects of Covid infections

I find this article to be more interesting: https://www.economist.com/international/2026/09/08/are-teena...

Especially the part where it states that part of the issue is in 2000 when Finland had higher test scores then everyone it was attributed to play based learning and less testing. Everyone immediately jumped on this, because if you can have more fun and learn more, of course that is the way to go. This opinion still permeates both teachers and parents. I was of this opinion for a long time, as I went to a rigorous school, and would have enjoyed "play based learning".

It turns out this may have been way off and difficult schools such as those in China and Singapore have the best results. In the Finland example they had only recently switched from more rigorous to more play based, so the rigorous schooling was still being shown in testing. I think we were all a bit bamboozled by this. Maybe it seemed too good to be true and we should have been more critical of the findings. But the play based learning opinion is still strong and we as a society need to move back to more rigor will make stronger students.

The whole system is built on the idea that kids will learn because we force them to for their own good. But I don't think you can get real understanding from that, you need internal motivation that comes from a true desire to know more.

I'm not saying lower test scores are good but they might be a sign that we need to move from "push based" forced complete education in childhood to a more "pull based" system. That would mean the only mandatory part is basic skills as opposed to knowledge, things like reading and arithmetic but also critical thinking, social skills, task organization and manual/mechanical work.

Everything else should be optional, fully up to the student (and their parents until they're 18) and available for their whole lifetime. That's the most important part.

If you go to an accounting school and decide to become a plumber after you graduate, then switch to programming at 30 and electrician at 45, you should be able to do that. Low cost, free if you're poor and always without social stigma, the exact same quality and credentials as if you did it in high school.

Sometimes you need to wait and experience life a bit before you understand how important your education is. We should support that instead of making it so you only have one real shot.

The period after leaded gasoline was eliminated and before modern tech may go down as the peak of human intellect.

More specifically I wonder if the birth of social media in the form of short videos is the real culprit. Most other single causes don't line up even if I can believe they are a factor.

It seems like we should be able to adapt, but the dopamine hit of short videos may prove as difficult to manage as healthy eating and exercise in terms of self-discipline.

Whole word reading has been a disaster.

One thing that tends to get lost when we talk about the education system we have is how it was invented and what it was designed for. I mention this, because if you want to educate kids better, it's useful to consider what they system was designed for so we can design a better one. Unfortunately, the history here is somewhat more cynical and bleak than you might expect. There's an excellent book called "The Underground History Of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling"

Anyway, modern schooling was essentially designed to create excellent workers -- it was never about creating excellent individuals. At the time, the robber barons who helped invent this system along with a series of pseudo religious ideologues essentially wanted: standardized, predictable, obedient individuals without a lot of creativity. Credentials became important. Basically they wanted good consumers who don't question their station in life. (It shouldn't shock anyone that this is essentially what our current robber barons also want, although to a more extreme degree. It also shouldn't shock anyone that this is largely what we get out of the system.)

The current system was still helpful, despite it's design, I would argue mostly because of the excellent teachers that really do have kids best interests in heart. However, I really think technology has just completely broken this. I'm not sure it's a system that can be repaired, I think it's going to end up being a new system. My guess (I think it's basically already happening) is the rich will send their children to more experimental schools because they have the money, and the poor... well who cares about the poor anyway? (Sarcasm, but, I think that more or less describes the unspoken attitudes of the elites)

It's a cycle. Affluence of food, goods and tech removes natural survival instincts due to lack of struggle and need. That would cause the affluence to go away, rekindling the survival instincts through struggle. The cycle repeats. Different geographies have different phase delays in this cycle. Sometimes the cycle is affected by artificial forces such as dominance of a nation and it's control over the global matters. But the cycle just pushes forward.

Apparently test scores are rising in England....

Isn't education the best antidote we have against misinformation, against ignorance, against hateful ideologies, against our least civilized impulses?

Is it possible to have a civilization that works well, with institutions that work well, if the population is poorly educated?

Sigh.

America's future is delivery drivers

one out of every three people is going to be doing last mile delivery of some kind

they don't even need to be able to read english because they all ignore delivery notes, if GPS takes them off a cliff or to the wrong town they will happily follow it because they never learned to read a map

all b&m stores will go "dark warehouse"

how anyone is going to afford delivery I am not sure

but since you won't be able to afford health care or owning a home or even a car at some point, "spare cash" until you die young?

Doesn't this just shift the average and calibrate a new set of expectations for the coming youth to placate themselves in an age of all or nothing AI?

Been saying this for a while. AI is melting away people's mental and cognitive abilities.

Nobody wants to admit it though due to capitalism and VC drunkenness.

This will reach critical mass in a few years.

do we really need to blame AI ? 14+ years of reducing standards in schools, reducing discipline, allowing underperforming students to proceed and graduate, plus 30 years of changing demographics. AI isn't the primary driver here.

There's a whopper in the middle of the article declaring an outcome "high test scores" is a cause, not a result, of a lack of a wide variety of social ills. The cause and effect ratio is obviously reversed. Its like claiming that playing the violin leads to wealth via some magical process, whereas the reality is only wealthy parents can afford to hire a classical violin tutor for their kid, so sure, the wealthiest neighborhoods have the kids who are the best violin players but it would be pretty clueless to describe violin playing as a vocational skill. Its a luxury skill for people who've already made it, like math is for about 99.9% of the population.

Talking to my kid's friends indirectly and casually, as per above the deck is stacked against them resulting in lower scores in stuff that won't result in a job anyway, no amount of study will improve your DEI scores which are all that matter for hiring anyway, and the jobs you can get with high scores are the ones targeted for elimination via AI.

Despite being pretty young they understand the scam that it doesn't matter if it works or not, the powers that be will ruin your career trying to replace you with AI. Much like outsourcing in their parents and grandparents generation, it literally doesn't matter if it works or not, you're still sitting in the same unemployment line if they make a profit or lose their shirts. They lost their shirts and will lose them again for AI, but that provides little sympathy for those sitting in the unemployment lines.

"Line must go up" meme applies. There exist tests you can make kids take to determine their suitability for labor in the garment industry, fine motor skills, some visuospatial skills, etc. That number is useless because there are few jobs, negative industry growth, and we have a severe supply/demand mismatch already. Increasing "garment industry skill test results" led directly to happy outcomes around the 1850s industrial revolution and flat to negative outcomes in the modern era. So it is with math today. Worship of "line must go up" never made anyone happy or wealthy.

The article somehow avoids all documentation and authorities and instead relies on popular memes and biased "common sense". Its not marked as an editorial, which seems odd.

My electromagnetics professor started our class with a massive ambition that we would truly understand maxwells equations at a fundamental level by end of semester. Well our class started failing all his exams leading up to this pinnacle and he told us we were all a bunch of morons, basically the dumbest class he’s ever taught. I raised my hand and asked if we were still going to get to maxwells equations by end of semester and he stared back with eyes of pure distain. This was the year 2000.

It's just basic political math: regulations protect grift and lead to lower scores

Deregulation enables competition to naturally drive up scores

Everything's over-regulated, leading to falling scores

Simple as, all else equal

My kid's math curriculum has been a disaster the last couple of years. Teachers started using lesson plans from Desmos (the tech company, which I haven't figured out how exactly they're pumping out curriculum material).

Back in my day, in basic math, you'd learn a couple of concepts a day and then did 20+ problems of homework, with variations of the main themes. But the new homework style is you do 1 or 2 problems for each new concept, and then you "expand your thinking" → trick questions, gotchas, problems that combine (non-obviously) today's lesson with one from last week, things you can't answer without peeking ahead to next lesson, and so on. This style is --I imagine-- good for kids who are already very good at math. I may have enjoyed it myself. But it's shit for most students, if you never spend hardly any time ensuring that the fundamental learning sinks in before moving on.

A very long time ago, in the 90s, we really thought that computers would make people smarter. We thought computers would sharpen people's analytical skills with logic and math, would provide them better tools to write and design things, would provide them information to help them get better answers.

Back then, there was a famous snake-oil salesman that coined the expression "computers are bicycles for the mind". He proposed an analogy: when you compare the effort humans put into personal locomotion on foot with other animals you'll notice that they spend a lot of effort to yield very little movement. But then you put them in a bicycle and things change: humans can move a lot with very little effort. Computers would do the same: increase the mind's "productivity".

Fast forward for today and we live in a world where everybody has a computer in their pockets. Ironically this change was pioneered by that very same snake-oil seller.

And when I see the consequences of it, I say to myself: "boy, we were soooo wrong!".

Law of unintended consequences? Or it is the fact that everyone is lazy and do want to remain dumb?

Meh, the writing has been on the wall for a decade at least.

All that stupid ideas on giving passing grades to everybody in the name of equality (lol) removing admission tests to fight racism (double-lol), attention-stealing practices by social media (not lol) are now compounding with AI as a cheap service to offload thinking to.

The writing has been on the wall for years, a lot of people called that out and have been silenced.

Unironically, I would not be surprised if the kids with the best scores turned out to be the homeschooled ones.

My wild (and uneducate, don't get me wrong) guess is that in some years we'll see two groups of people succeeding: homeschooled kids (their parents kept them away from the BS) and the rich people's kids (their parent could afford a no-BS schooling).

> Falling scores will not be fixed in a jiffy

If it will be fixed at all. Chances are, the generation currently in school is to be thrown away, in the sense that given how the US works, nobody's going to seriously help them.

Seems highly plausible AI/robotics will lead a significant decline in public schooling in the near future. Kids honestly might learn better doing a few hours a day one-on-one with 2026 frontier AI than sitting in a classroom of 30 with a teacher. 2027, 2028, 2029?

Modern public education itself is industrial revolution technology. Why would it be left as-is after the intelligence revolution?

There is a very high correlation between national IQ and PISA scores. We know that IQ is declining across the world, and it is declining because fertility and IQ are negatively associated. It's likely that declining IQ is a nontrivial factor for why PISA scores are declining. It is unfortunately still taboo to talk about this. Which is bad, because we can't hope to do anything about it if we don't face the truth.

I M M I G R A T I O N A N D G E N E T I C S

While kids practice the skills of the 21st century, testing got stuck in the 19 hundreds.

I see kids train edge AI models, built things using coding assistants and discuss post-modern philosophy.

I see the same kids struggle to write structured interpretations of 1950s texts they have no emotional connection to.

Kids are worse in orthography, handwriting, and reading stuffy texts from front to end, but they are so much better in a plethora of skills that did not exist 20 years ago.

Remember that in some liberal schools some of these people will graduate to be your doctors or policy makers, especially if DEI or with a degree studying some perceived social grievance.

This very much echoes the region of critical slowing down present in a dynamical system after its equilibrium states have disappeared due to a change in the system (a bifurcation).