Good day, CharterFolk.
Tim Daly shared his latest thoughts on Substack about the education depression we’re living through—confirmed yet again by last week’s NAEP results.
As ever, Tim’s observations are well worth reading.
I especially liked how he dismantled Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s premature celebration of dubious positive scores two years ago.
This year, reality caught up.
Two years ago, when the numbers looked good, Carvalho insisted NAEP was statistically precise and lauded the “important tactics” the district used to address learning loss. Now that they’re bad, suddenly the statistics are suspect.
The collapse of eighth-grade reading scores was a puzzler for L.A. Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who, two years ago, celebrated a large rise in that grade level …. He noted that sampling methods can lead to anomalies despite the best efforts of the National Center for Education Statistics, on whose governing board he served as a longtime member.
Puzzler indeed.
NAEP seems to be on a trajectory toward self-correction: a future where math scores drop so low that no one can understand math scores.
Apparently, Carvalho thinks we’re already there.
Student Debt Resumes Its Growth
Last fall, I wrote about student loan debt finally declining for the first time in a generation.
I spoke too soon.
It’s climbing again.
Not because of anything in particular that Biden did or didn’t do. But because, as the “chart of the century shows …
… government policy has fueled relentless inflation in higher education—driving costs higher than in any sector except hospital care.
Many economists trace this spike to guaranteed student loans.
Another way to describe them?
Universal student loans—a system where the government hands out money to everyone, whether they need it or not, distorting the entire industry and unleashing runaway inflation.
Now, the same inflationary forces are creeping into K-12.
What’s the solution?
Why, guaranteed student loans for K-12, of course!
The Need for Citizen Math
None of this is political.
It’s just math.
Last week, Andy and I released a podcast with Citizen Math Founder Karim Ani.
His core idea?
We should teach math by helping students analyze the numbers behind real-world societal problems.
But we don’t just need Citizen Math in our schools.
We need it applied to the economic realities and the learning losses that are shaping our schools.