First you get to college via the wrong metrics, as previously discussed in #12. Then things get easier.. I’m still digging out from under everything that happened the four days I was gone.
Normal AI posting should resume tomorrow, likely with a report from the conference.. Is Our Children Learning. The declines in NAEP scores and other tests seem to be concentrated on the weakest students.
The bottom of the distribution is falling through the floor and the rest is mostly holding up. This does not match anecdotal reports coming out of schools, which suggest widespread declines, although those are presumably untrustworthy and it’s traditional to think children are in general getting dumber.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t but we need systematic evidence.. It’s Bad, But It’s Not That Bad. This really would be far worse than I think if it was true..
Tyler Cowen: It is worse than you think:. Of 360,000 children aged 15 in Zambia only five (not 5%, 5 total) could read at “globally proficient levels.”. The source is PISA..
I mean, in addition to this meaning essentially college-level reading skills, it’s very obviously not true. The statement makes absolutely no sense, and is based at best on an Obvious Nonsense theoretical distribution of scores.. Oli (top comment): There are two private schools in the capital, Lusaka, American International School of Lusaka and International School of Lusaka..
25% of ISL students get a score of 40+ in ‘international baccalaureate’ exam with an average of 35. Aisl gets an average of 34.. I know friendship groups who were in the same school year at these schools who can all read and write well..
Standardized Tests Help Disadvantaged Students. Your periodic reminder. See this study, also this one and this one.
SAT scores and other objective measures fight income inequality in college admissions.. Holistic admissions make it worse. But then everyone already knew that.
A paper from Raj Chetty, David Deming and John Friedman brings the math.. Gerry Tan: If you *only* used SAT to admit to elite colleges, share of admits from top 1% income falls 15.8% → 9.9% and representation from teachers are using AI to grade assignments. imagine getting “you’re absolutely right!” on the canvas rubric. >most AI tools are blocked but the entire student body has come together to think up ways to bypass it. vpn’s, sketch websites, jailbreaking their chromebooks. they’re putting in more effort to workaround AI bans to do their homework than they would just doing their homework. >reading levels + comprehension are at an all time low. his english teacher quit after teaching for 15 years because she crashed out about students being, quote, genuinely stupider.
Isaac King: Homework shouldn’t exist anyway. 6 hours a day is plenty for well-designed education, and kids already used their parents and the internet to cheat since well before AI was a thing. This doesn’t seem like as big a problem to me as people are making it out to be..
Most College Students Fake Wokeness. What does not stop upon admission is the preferences kayfabe.. It is rather obvious that on college campuses there is a lot of preference falsification going on, and a lot of lying about beliefs, and a lot of lying about your beliefs to other people who actually share your beliefs but are also lying the same way you are..
I still had no idea things were this extreme.. Steve Stewart-Williams: 88% of students report pretending to hold more progressive views than they really do.. Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman: Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan.
We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”. We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?
An astounding 88 percent said yes…. …. 78 percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors.
For many, this has become second nature — an instinct for academic and professional self-preservation.. To test the gap between expression and belief, we used gender discourse — a contentious topic both highly visible and ideologically loaded. In public, students echoed expected progressive narratives.
In private, however, their views were more complex. Eighty-seven percent identified as exclusively heterosexual and supported a binary model of gender. Nine percent expressed partial openness to gender fluidity.
Just seven percent embraced the idea of gender as a broad spectrum, and most of these belonged to activist circles.. Perhaps most telling: 77 percent said they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in such domains as sports, healthcare, or public data — but would never voice that disagreement aloud..
That is some Soviet-level, reign of terror level preference falsification. We have a question where a full 77% of students that:. Believe [~X]..
But will if asked in public will refuse to say [~X].. And will admit, to themselves and in a confidential survey, to both of these things.. That only leaves 23% total that either believe in [X], or are willing to say [~X]..
That doesn’t mean a preference cascade is coming to campus any time soon. There is no reason this situation cannot be a stable equilibrium. It also seems likely to profoundly screw up the kids involved to be constantly lying in these ways.
