> ...it is not even the case that kids today were less educated either.
This claim could be supported or contradicted by evidence. Do you have any?
My experience is not K-12 education, but at the college level, standardized measures such as the GRE show declining levels of ability over the decades. A given score today doesn't mean the same as 40 years ago, because the test has needed to be recalibrated for a lower average performance.
High school drop out rates were 27.2% in 1960. This is one third of students not even finishing high school. Meanwhile college enrolment rates were miniscule compared to today. Yet also, getting into top university requires way more effort then it used to in 1950-1960.
> standardized measures such as the GRE show declining levels of ability over the decades. A given score today doesn't mean the same as 40 years ago, because the test has needed to be recalibrated for a lower average performance.
Are they incomparable or they show regress?
The data dont show consistend decline in years where it did not changes, but there are massive drops in scores when the test was recalibrated. It also shows multiple whole new topics being tested against 1960:
I agree with your points about high school completion and college enrollment, however I think the reason for the increased difficulty of getting into a school is due to increased competition rather than an increase in absolute standards. A way to test this would be to look at the history of schools that use admissions tests. (I'm thinking of elaborate tests such as at Cal-Tech.)
> The data dont show consistend decline in years where it did not changes, but there are massive drops in scores when the test was recalibrated.
I'm a bit confused about what you are referring to, but I think that by "recalibrated" you are referring to 2011 when they introduced the revised scale. I think I can clear this up by explaining about standardized testing.
The purpose of the GRE, SAT, and some other tests created by the Educational Testing Service is not to measure absolute performance of individuals but relative performance of populations. The goal of test design is to adjust the difficulty of the test to provide maximal discrimination in the tails. So when the average performance of a population changes, they have to adjust the difficulty of the test to keep the results curve in a nice shape. This is what I meant by "recalibration". If they achieve their goals in this, average scores shouldn't change much over the years.
You are correct. It is generally believed that the large increase in percentage of students going to college is a major contributing factor in the decline of average performance. I have read reports claiming that secondary education at the very high end has retained its quality, but I haven't looked into that myself. So, it may be plausible to claim that while the average level of performance has declined, there is still the same population of high achievers in absolute numbers. I would be interested if somebody knows a good reference on that.
This claim could be supported or contradicted by evidence. Do you have any?
My experience is not K-12 education, but at the college level, standardized measures such as the GRE show declining levels of ability over the decades. A given score today doesn't mean the same as 40 years ago, because the test has needed to be recalibrated for a lower average performance.