I don't know anything about common core or educational standards in the US because I didn't grow up here. But googling tells me that there are states, including Virginia and Texas which don't follow common core, and there are other states which opted out of common core later. Are the kids in these non-common-core states less stressed out…
I don't know anything about common core or educational standards in the US because I didn't grow up here. But googling tells me that there are states, including Virginia and Texas which don't follow common core, and there are other states which opted out of common core later. Are the kids in these non-common-core states less stressed out? If they are, that's clinching evidence against common core, right?
Good question, Lila. However, to get federal money all states had to present some sort of program that would provide proof of focus on the subject areas outlined by NCLB and proof that students were scoring higher in tests on those subjects. Most states adopted Common Core as the route for dong this, but a few states chose different routes. It is not clear that those other routes would be less stress-inducing.
Here's some things I'd like you to address in later posts on this topic, going by the comments and your responses - It seems like there's no real control group now for non-stressed kids. Kids are either in common core, or some equivalent program in a non-common core state, or they are in a stressful private school. So overall academics are stressful.
However the evidence presented by the smartphone-bad cabal (jon haidt et al) seems to point to kids being highly stressed internationally, and canada and australia don't have common core.
Would it then help to come up with a different metric than just "common core", to indicate academic stress levels and see if kids' stress levels correlate? The issue for me here is everyone keeps finding evidence of things that stress kids out and not enough of sustainable lifestyles that reduce kids' stress levels.
If high achievement pressure is what contributes to bad mental health, are kids in low-achieving school districts happier? We've got to be able to have data about that right?
Being in an upwardly mobile socioeconomic setting, every parent around me says they don't want their kids pressured to achieve, but at the same time wouldn't send them to a lesser school. Why? Because the kids there get up to no good and have worse outcomes. That's the choice parents face - put kids in an achievement oriented track, or kids get up to no good with all the free time and ruin their lives. So there really doesn't seem any kind of off-ramp here.
From what I'm seeing here, it feels like academic pressure, homework, cellphones, diet, lack of outdoor play.... all of these are just proxies to how much time kids spend with their parents just cherishing them and having fun with no ulterior objective like self-improvement or giving them a treat for success or achievement. I'm pretty convinced that's what it is.
Yes, kids in "low achievement schools" are doing much better psychologically than in those where academic pressure is high. I presented that research in Letter #43. The reasons I emphasize Common Core as cause of the sudden rise in suicides, depression, and anxiety in US teens since about 2010 is because that bumped so many public schools into the high achievement pressure category. In Canada, UK, and Australia there may have been other sources of increased school pressure, as they often follow the US on these things. Or, the cause could be something else there.
Having grown up in Virginia, I can tell you that while Virginia doesn't adhere to the Common Core, it does have its own Standards of Learning and "high stakes testing" has been a part of public schooling since my time in schools (mid 90's through early 00's).
I have to wonder what the states who adopted the common core were doing before. Was it a sudden switch to standardized testing for those students, or did they simply transition from state or county derived standards to the common core eatablished ones.
I can certainly hypothesize that a sudden switch to standardized testing would be stressful for students within the system; but I can also hypothesize that transitioning from one set of standards to another isn't significantly stressful for students, because they are already used to the testing and don't pay attention to the individual standards anyway.
All and all, I don't doubt a correlation between common core adoption and increased youth suicides, but I'm really skeptical that there is a causal link. Unfortunately I can think of so many things that happened in the mid 2010's that could have contributed to causing increased youth suicides; and I suspect it is indeed a combination of many things rather than one identifiable one.
I don't know anything about common core or educational standards in the US because I didn't grow up here. But googling tells me that there are states, including Virginia and Texas which don't follow common core, and there are other states which opted out of common core later. Are the kids in these non-common-core states less stressed out? If they are, that's clinching evidence against common core, right?
Good question, Lila. However, to get federal money all states had to present some sort of program that would provide proof of focus on the subject areas outlined by NCLB and proof that students were scoring higher in tests on those subjects. Most states adopted Common Core as the route for dong this, but a few states chose different routes. It is not clear that those other routes would be less stress-inducing.
Here's some things I'd like you to address in later posts on this topic, going by the comments and your responses - It seems like there's no real control group now for non-stressed kids. Kids are either in common core, or some equivalent program in a non-common core state, or they are in a stressful private school. So overall academics are stressful.
However the evidence presented by the smartphone-bad cabal (jon haidt et al) seems to point to kids being highly stressed internationally, and canada and australia don't have common core.
Would it then help to come up with a different metric than just "common core", to indicate academic stress levels and see if kids' stress levels correlate? The issue for me here is everyone keeps finding evidence of things that stress kids out and not enough of sustainable lifestyles that reduce kids' stress levels.
If high achievement pressure is what contributes to bad mental health, are kids in low-achieving school districts happier? We've got to be able to have data about that right?
Being in an upwardly mobile socioeconomic setting, every parent around me says they don't want their kids pressured to achieve, but at the same time wouldn't send them to a lesser school. Why? Because the kids there get up to no good and have worse outcomes. That's the choice parents face - put kids in an achievement oriented track, or kids get up to no good with all the free time and ruin their lives. So there really doesn't seem any kind of off-ramp here.
From what I'm seeing here, it feels like academic pressure, homework, cellphones, diet, lack of outdoor play.... all of these are just proxies to how much time kids spend with their parents just cherishing them and having fun with no ulterior objective like self-improvement or giving them a treat for success or achievement. I'm pretty convinced that's what it is.
What do you think?
Yes, kids in "low achievement schools" are doing much better psychologically than in those where academic pressure is high. I presented that research in Letter #43. The reasons I emphasize Common Core as cause of the sudden rise in suicides, depression, and anxiety in US teens since about 2010 is because that bumped so many public schools into the high achievement pressure category. In Canada, UK, and Australia there may have been other sources of increased school pressure, as they often follow the US on these things. Or, the cause could be something else there.
Having grown up in Virginia, I can tell you that while Virginia doesn't adhere to the Common Core, it does have its own Standards of Learning and "high stakes testing" has been a part of public schooling since my time in schools (mid 90's through early 00's).
I have to wonder what the states who adopted the common core were doing before. Was it a sudden switch to standardized testing for those students, or did they simply transition from state or county derived standards to the common core eatablished ones.
I can certainly hypothesize that a sudden switch to standardized testing would be stressful for students within the system; but I can also hypothesize that transitioning from one set of standards to another isn't significantly stressful for students, because they are already used to the testing and don't pay attention to the individual standards anyway.
All and all, I don't doubt a correlation between common core adoption and increased youth suicides, but I'm really skeptical that there is a causal link. Unfortunately I can think of so many things that happened in the mid 2010's that could have contributed to causing increased youth suicides; and I suspect it is indeed a combination of many things rather than one identifiable one.