[lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?

[Joshua Morey]

Unfortunately each state (& county) does this differently, but if you can,
look up the Youth Risk Behavior Survey results for your state, ignore the
handwringing issues such as AODA, tobacco, sex, TV, video games, etc, and,
if your state asked such questions, find stats related to food security,
hours worked per week, hours of sleep per night, etc and organize the
results according to student achievement. For my own region the results slap
you in the face; here's a brief taste:

In response to being asked how often respondents went hungry because of lack
of food during the past 30 days (n>1000)...

Students who received mostly A's - 76% never went hungry

mostly B's - 62% never

C's - 57% never

D's - 44% never

F's - 38% never

on the other hand, among students who received mostly A's - 2% always went
hungry,

mostly B's - 1.5%

C's - 3%

D's - 4.5%

F's - 23%

Or, to look at it another way, among students who get mostly A's, 76% never
went hungry, 12.5% rarely went hungry, 6.5% sometimes went hungry, 2.5% went
hungry most of the time, and 2% always went hungry; meanwhile, among
students who received mostly F's, 38% never went hungry, 31% rarely went
hungry, 0% sometimes went hungry, 8% went hungry most of the time, and 23%
always went hungry.

As for sufficient time for rigorous study (among high school students at
least):

"During an average week when you are in school, how many hours do you work
at a paying job outside your home?"

Among students who received mostly A's, 61% worked 0 hrs/wk

mostly B's - 57%

C's - 55%

D's - 56%

F's - 38%

On the other hand, among students who received mostly A's, 4% worked 13-20
hours/wk

mostly B's - 7%

C's - 5%

D's - 9%

F's - 16%

and among those who received mostly A's, 4% worked 21+ hrs/week

mostly B's - 3%

C's - 6%

D's - 2%

F's - 23% - nearly a quarter of the students who reported receiving mostly
F's also reported working at least 21 hours per week.

similar patterns for breakfast, sleep per night, asthma, mental health, etc.

food for thought, particularly for teachers unions who are being threatened
with "performance-based" evaluations and "commensurate" salaries

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:26 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> Actually the bit about K-12 scoring miserably is not quite true. I think
> the upper quintile are entirely at the level of the top students in the
> world. But the great magnitude of poverty and sub-par inner-city schools
> drag the averages down.
>
> As for what people are getting out colleges....at the point where a concern
> for justice was entirely replaced by a concern for power (early eighties),
> there wasn't much left for colleges to teach.
>
> Joanna