Kids Today:
Dumb and Dumber?
By Tamim
Ansary
© Encarta.com
Are America's students getting dumber?
Well, duh! Read the papers, dude!
Talk to teachers. Pick up what people are saying:
- Test scores are dropping like
stones in a well.
- Illiteracy is rising like a hot-air
balloon.
- Textbooks are being dumbed down.
- Tests are being dumbed down.
- Everything's being dumbed down.
Ah, but what's the other thing you
hear from stodgy old codgers like me? "I can't set
my digital watch." "I don't know how to
program my VCR." "I need a fourth-grader to
help me."
Maybe adults are getting dumber
even faster than kids are?
I decided to look into it. Let me
confess: I thought I knew the answer before I started.
Human beings don't get dumber, they get smarter--we've
been doing it for millions of years. Consider how
experts gauge the intelligence of our evolutionary
forebears: by their "toolkits." Well, look at
our "toolkit," even compared to 20 years ago.
Instant-replay live TV! Aspirin-sized surveillance
cameras! How dumb could we be? Someone's making this
stuff.
What's the score?
"But not them kids," you
might say. However, let me note ...
The warning bells about kids getting
dumber started ringing in the 1960s. That's when SAT
(Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores really took a dive.
The SAT is taken by more than a million college-bound
kids every year. Average scores in both the math and
verbal portions of this test peaked in 1963. They slid
after that, steeply and then slowly, until they bottomed
out in the early 1980s. Math scores then began to rise,
but verbal scores remained stagnant. Those low-scoring
kids of 1970 are almost 50 now. They are the ones
designing aspirin-sized spy cameras.
And today? Well, here are the average
scores for five recent years, as reported by the college
board.
They don't look too bad, really. To me
these scores say we are holding steady. And the latest
math scores are about the same as in glorious 1963. That
should settle it, right? Numbers have no place to hide.
If the numbers are the same, it means nothing has
changed, right?
Not that simple
Oh, but wait. Sometime from 1963 to
1987, the college board "recentered" the
scores, which means the whole scale shifted south.
Someone who scored 507 in 1987 would have scored about
494 in 1963. If the numbers are unchanged, that actually
means kids are doing worse!
Got that? "Same" means
"worse."
So kids are dumber? Not that simple
...
A college education was once the
domain of the wealthy and privileged. But beginning in
the 1960s, this opportunity was extended to other, less
privileged groups. Census Bureau figures show that
college enrollment more than doubled between 1960 and
1970, and tripled between 1960 and the late 1990s.
More enrollees meant more test takers,
many of whom came from middle- or lower-class areas,
where schools and the quality of education typically
received less funding and less community support. In
other words, many of these students had attended
lower-quality elementary and secondary schools, and this
affected their test scores. While experts caution that
this phenomenon is only one of many factors affecting
test scores, they agree that it has contributed to a
lower nationwide average. So if scores haven't changed,
it must mean kids are smarter now.
Got that? "Same" actually
means "smarter."
Oh, but wait. Since 1963, a booming
test-prep industry has emerged. Many kids now train for
the SAT in classes that promise to raise their scores by
as much as 100 points. So, wow, if scores are unchanged
since 1963, it must mean students are dumber now.
Got that? "Same" means
"dumber."
I could give you four more
oh-but-waits just on the SAT, but you get the point. The
soil under every statistic is crawling with worms.
One more example--I can't resist:
A massive study done in 1970 showed
that 25 million adult Americans were illiterate. A
similar study released in 1992 put the number closer to
85 million. Now can we panic?
No, not yet. Look closer.
From 1970 to 1992 the definition of
"illiterate" changed. In 1975, if you could
sound out the words "bus schedule," you were
literate. Today, if you can read every word in the bus
schedule but can't use it to catch a particular bus,
you're illiterate. I'm not saying the new definition is
wrong. I'm just saying you can't tell--from these
numbers--if illiteracy has gone up or down.
Let's consult some experts
I called Tom Williamson, a former
president of the Psychological Corporation (one of the
big three of American test publishing). "Do you
think kids are getting dumber?"
"No." His answer was so
emphatic and immediate--it almost preceded my question.
"We always tend to complain about the achievements
of the current generation and exaggerate the
accomplishments of our own."
True of me, certainly. Why, when I was
a kid ...
"I think both schools and kids
are doing a better job than they ever have,"
Williamson said. "You have to take into account
that classrooms are much more diverse now. With
mainstreaming, you've got kids with physical and
emotional problems in regular classrooms. Students who
used to be excused from taking standardized achievement
tests are no longer excused. If you test a broader range
of kids you're going to get a slightly lower
score."
Williamson then brought up the
"mystique of testing" question, which is: Do
standardized tests really show whether kids are getting
dumber?
"We test what's easy to measure,
not necessarily what's important," said Williamson.
He'd get no argument from the
Educational Testing Service, the people who create the
SAT. I talked to Tom Ewing, communications director of
ETS. What I got from him was a carefully crafted
statement that sounded like boilerplate created to beat
back the millions of reporters who call in every day to
ask, "Are American kids getting dumber?"
His bottom line: The SAT scores can't
tell you.
"Why not?"
"Because," he said,
"the sample is self-selected."
In other words, students themselves
decide who among them will take the SAT. There are no
controls. Here's an example to illustrate the point.
Suppose you go to a mall and weigh everyone who lets
you. Then a month later you go back to the same mall and
weigh everyone who lets you. If the numbers are higher
the second time, you can't conclude that people are
getting fatter. All you can conclude is that more heavy
people participated the second time around.
Ewing told me the best and most
reliable statistics to look at on this question are put
out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
(Without getting into details, that would be the
government.)
What's so great about their numbers?
First, their mission is to get a
snapshot of how we're doing. Second, to get the best
picture, they get a representative sample of all
students--all walks of life, all parts of the country,
all grade point averages, every ethnic group--the works.
They test every two years at 4th, 8th,
and 11th grades, and they've been doing it since the
1960s. What they forge out of all this is something they
call ...
The nation's report card
So I looked up their numbers. For
reading, which is the subject many people are hollering
about these days, the scores look like this:
To me, we're back where we started.
These numbers say we are holding steady.
So is that my conclusion? Kids are the
same as ever? Actually, no. You could probably rip the
lid off these report card numbers too and use them to
prove that kids are getting dumber or smarter. I am,
however, prepared to set forth one conclusion without
qualms:
I don't know if kids are getting
dumber
You may not think that's much of a
conclusion. But I beg to differ. Not too many people are
publicly drawing this conclusion. Take a look at this
opening sentence from an article written by Wayne
Williams, a professor at George Mason University, in
Headway magazine:
For decades now, we've known about
the scandalous, broad-based decline in the academic
preparation of our high school students.
We have?
In the face of such certainty, I
believe I'm taking a real position when I say, loud and
proud, "Beats me."
In other words, before we mount our
steeds, draw our swords, and yell "Charge!"
let's be sure we have an enemy. Otherwise we might
thunder off in all directions, swinging at windmills and
jousting with cows like Don Quixote.
And I'm too old for that. Let the kids
do it.
Related Links:
Want more
information about SAT scores?
The National
Center for Education Statistics has data on
all kinds of subjects.
The American School Board Journal
offers an interesting
article on student performance statistics.
Encarta
Encyclopedia
SAT
score information from the College Board
National
Center for Education Statistics
American
School Board Journal article on student performance
statistics
