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Reading scores on the SAT for the high school class of 2012 reached a four-decade low, putting a punctuation mark on a gradual decline in the ability of college-bound teens to read passages and answer questions about sentence structure, vocabulary and meaning on the college entrance exam.

Lower income people taking the test is a part of the "claimed" reson why.


My question is that kids now have more ways to gain information than ever before even on a lower income scale so why the drop off?

I blame TV.

Some of it may be declining abilities of high school graduates.

Much, much more of it is the broadening pool of people taking the SAT. There are huge chunks of the SAT taking population that probably wouldn't have graduated high school 40 years ago.

Im a college student, and i will admit, I know very little about sentence structure.
If your ask me, I think its because of how flipping bad English teachers are. They all seem like people who wanted to be writers but failed, so defaulted into teaching.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Im a college student, and i will admit, I know very little about sentence structure.
If your ask me, I think its because of how flipping bad English teachers are. They all seem like people who wanted to be writers but failed, so defaulted into teaching.

You're a college student? What is your major?

I blame texting, lazy students that don't want to improve their grammar, and parents that don't care about their children's education.

My major is sociology, I want to study how society interacts and how it forms our views and perceptions.
Also no need to correct me, I know my grammer is bad.

I blame incompetent teachers that can't get fired because of the teachers unions.

The increased usage of txt spk could be a contributing factor, or just an indicator.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
My major is sociology, I want to study how society interacts and how it forms our views and perceptions.
Also no need to correct me, I know my grammer is bad.

You're going to be writing technical reports, man. If you go into child services, you're going to be writing recommendations to the state (as an example).

I'm not correcting you to be an ass. (Well, at least that's not 100% of the motivation).

Polonius wrote:Some of it may be declining abilities of high school graduates.

Much, much more of it is the broadening pool of people taking the SAT. There are huge chunks of the SAT taking population that probably wouldn't have graduated high school 40 years ago.

This, so much more than this:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Im a college student, and i will admit, I know very little about sentence structure.
If your ask me, I think its because of how flipping bad English teachers are. They all seem like people who wanted to be writers but failed, so defaulted into teaching.

More students than ever before are going on to higher education, which is sort of a good thing. Our university president was on the radio a couple days ago and he said we should really shoot for the top 50% of HS graduates going to Community College, 20% to Universities and the top 10-12% going to research Universities. On the face I'm not sure Id agree but he has a point: not everyone NEEDS college, or is prepared for it. Hotsauce pretty much served himself up for this one, but as an example not a Judas. It takes a special kind of person to blame not just one bad teacher but a string of them from beginning to end of your public education. There's one common denominator in that equation. Don't worry I will rescue you you from the failed writers: http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/basicstructures.htm. You owe me one semester's tuition for a 3 credit hour class. I accept checks and first born children with a written guarantee they will become laywers or sports stars.

That is what spellcheck is for.

Of course it doesn't help with sentence structure.

It's texting and the Internet.

I aced the Reading SAT. Perfect score. Not one question wrong. Same for the optional Literature. Still pretty proud of that.

Don't want to talk about my Math score, though.

Grammar check can help with sentence structure.

There is even a readability index analysis tool in MS Word.

Of course having things done for you automatically does not teach you how to do them.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


Of course having things done for you automatically does not teach you how to do them.

Give a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.

Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

 kronk wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:


Of course having things done for you automatically does not teach you how to do them.

Give a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.

Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

That's not the right quote....

When parents don't place much emphasis on learning, children tend not to do so well in school. There is only so much any teacher can do if a child does not want to learn and their parents don't care about their child being educated.

Once a child makes it past a certain point in their schooling with that kind of attitude there is very little that can be accomplished to bring them up to the level expected of their age group, even if they suddenly decide they want to learn.

There's a HS student that my GF taught whose career goal is to marry a professional basketball player. She doesn't have a fallback plan. She's a senior this year. Her mother thinks her plan is solid and doesn't push her academically...

I have zero idea why she took Latin instead of Spanish or French, though...

 kronk wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
My major is sociology, I want to study how society interacts and how it forms our views and perceptions.
Also no need to correct me, I know my grammer is bad.

You're going to be writing technical reports, man. If you go into child services, you're going to be writing recommendations to the state (as an example).

I'm not correcting you to be an ass. (Well, at least that's not 100% of the motivation).

Ok, but TBH I have been seeing less and less correction of grammer in my papers for class.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
There's a HS student that my GF taught whose career goal is to marry a professional basketball player. She doesn't have a fallback plan. She's a senior this year. Her mother thinks her plan is solid and doesn't push her academically...

I have zero idea why she took Latin instead of Spanish or French, though...

I think my head just exploded from the stupidity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AustonT wrote:
*Snip*

Is it me, or are you out to get me? It seems that if i post something, you are there within minutes to criticize me.
And yes, I have had quite a bit of bad English teachers. Its a hard subject to teach. I had a teacher who went to Harvard and couldn't teach English for the life of it.
Also, Where do you want me to send your 3$? Because that's what i pay for classes.

I never took the SAT, all we needed was the ACT.

 d-usa wrote:
I never took the SAT, all we needed was the ACT.

Same here.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

And yes, I have had quite a bit of bad English teachers. Its a hard subject to teach. I had a teacher who went to Harvard and couldn't teach English for the life of it.

there are plenty of bad teachers out there. I'm a pretty smart guy, and I didn't realize until half way through high school that the point of paper, even a basic five paragraph essay, was to explain and make a point. The goal of any writing past summarization is to come up with an idea and sell it.

That said, it's not like grammar is the toughest thing. It's rules. In the modern era, if you want to learn anything acadmic, the informaiton is widely and freely available. You may have had bad teachers, but I'm sure you had a textbook at some point.

One area your teachers clearly failed is to instill in you any interest in actually learning to write better. And getting a student interested and excited in a topic is really the only important part of teaching, at least by the high school and college level.

If nothing else, they should remind kids every few months that there are three kinds of workers: those that work with their hands, those that work with numbers, and those that work with words.

Given that there's already a shortage of people who can write at a professional level, declining language skills can only mean my rate will continue to increase.

I also think that the need for language and communication skills gets lost in the societal hullabaloo over math and science skills. As if:

a) There's an infinite demand for engineers, scientists and techies.
b) Communication skills don't make a difference even in scientific and technical fields.
c) There aren't extremely well-paying professions that don't require any advanced math or science skills.


To be fair to hotsauceman, teaching English *correctly* is much more time-intensive than most other HS subjects, and I can believe some teachers don't want the extra work. My dad was a HS English teacher for 35 years. I used to watch him put a couple hours in every night reading and grading papers, journals, and other writing assignments. Not everyone would do that. I don't mean to paint all, most, or even many English teachers with the slacker brush. But I'm sure there are some out there who fit that description.

In college, my first journalism writing instructor was a hard-a$$...definitely a break-you-down-and-build-you-back-up type. But that's the right way to teach it. I remember comparing notes with someone at a peer university, and the instruction he received in a similar class was more wishy-washy, find-your-style B.S. that wasn't useful or practical.

Since teachers have been mentioned, I remember my Senior year of High School, my English Teacher had the class do a lot of grammar work.

He would also complain that most teachers stop teaching grammar after a certain point.

gorgon wrote:

In college, my first journalism writing instructor was a hard-a$$...definitely a break-you-down-and-build-you-back-up type. But that's the right way to teach it.

I remember in High School the teacher that taught remedial English was fairly hated because his English class was the hardest, and they were supposed to be the worst. The students who made it through though were better then all the others that were in standard, and quite a few of the AP English students when it was all said and done.

 kronk wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I never took the SAT, all we needed was the ACT.

Same here.

Unless you're applying to East Coast schools, or are in the running for national merit, I'm pretty sure the ACT is just as valid as the SAT. (and I'm not sayign that because I did better on the ACT, I swear)

 Seaward wrote:
It's texting and the Internet.

I aced the Reading SAT. Perfect score. Not one question wrong. Same for the optional Literature. Still pretty proud of that.

Don't want to talk about my Math score, though.

Blaming texting ignores the fact that this is a 40 year regression. Cell phones in the hands of children and teenagers is a phenomenon of the last 10 years and coincided with broadening access to the internet. It doesn't pass logical muster to assume that a greater level of interaction with reading and writing on a daily basis would reduce someones capability to do so. Twenty years ago bad students wouldn't be texting, they would be doing nothing reading related at all.

I agree with polonius, a broadening pool of students and modern media systems preventing children from reading or writing as a passtime.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Ok, but TBH I have been seeing less and less correction of grammer in my papers for class.

You should not view this as tacit approval unless you meant your grammar is improving, it could be that a TA with dodgy grammar is grading. There's an required class in the history curriculum devoted to correcting grammar and citation at the junior level of university. It's ridiculous how many people have difficulty and/or have to retake it THREE YEARS into a literary major.

 AustonT wrote:
*Snip*

Is it me, or are you out to get me? It seems that if i post something, you are there within minutes to criticize me.
And yes, I have had quite a bit of bad English teachers. Its a hard subject to teach. I had a teacher who went to Harvard and couldn't teach English for the life of it.
Also, Where do you want me to send your 3$? Because that's what i pay for classes.

It's just you. If I was out to get anyone it would be Kilkrazy. I find it hard, but not impossible, to believe you had a teacher that graduated from Harvard and can't teach English. Not just because it's one of the best education programs in the country.
How is it you pay $3 for college, or do you mean to say that is your out of pocket cost? I thought I made it clear first born child with a written guarantee.

 Ahtman wrote:

gorgon wrote:

In college, my first journalism writing instructor was a hard-a$$...definitely a break-you-down-and-build-you-back-up type. But that's the right way to teach it.

I remember in High School the teacher that taught remedial English was fairly hated because his English class was the hardest, and they were supposed to be the worst. The students who made it through though were better then all the others that were in standard, and quite a few of the AP English students when it was all said and done.

I breezed through every English or writing class I ever took in high school and college. I wasn't considered a great writer, I just didn't have to work that hard.

And then I got to law school, where they pay Legal Writing professors less than the rest of the profs simply to get them angry. I do legal writing for a living, and only got a C in that course.

 kronk wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I never took the SAT, all we needed was the ACT.

Same here.

I took both, I don't think either has made me a better person. I blame Obama.

 Polonius wrote:
And then I got to law school, where they pay Legal Writing professors less than the rest of the profs simply to get them angry.

This made me laugh more than it should have.


The ACT is for communists.

 Polonius wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

gorgon wrote:

In college, my first journalism writing instructor was a hard-a$$...definitely a break-you-down-and-build-you-back-up type. But that's the right way to teach it.

I remember in High School the teacher that taught remedial English was fairly hated because his English class was the hardest, and they were supposed to be the worst. The students who made it through though were better then all the others that were in standard, and quite a few of the AP English students when it was all said and done.

I breezed through every English or writing class I ever took in high school and college. I wasn't considered a great writer, I just didn't have to work that hard.

And then I got to law school, where they pay Legal Writing professors less than the rest of the profs simply to get them angry. I do legal writing for a living, and only got a C in that course.

Lets be honest, the highest paid legal writing prof hates his/her life.