Comment by AnimalMuppet
5 hours ago
Hmm. If someone knew the number of graduates from 2017 to 2026, they could estimate what fraction of them could paraphrase and make inferences.
My stab at it: Looks like about 36 million high school graduates from 2017 to 2026. The US population is about 350 million.
20% of 350 million is 70 million, so 70 million people couldn't paraphrase in 2017. 30% is 105 million, so 105 million people couldn't in 2026. That means that of the 36 million high school graduates from 2017 to 2026, only one million of them could paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text?
I know the US educational system is a mess, but I find it hard to believe that it's quite that much of a mess. Can anyone point out flaws in the math?
You're making the assumption that the change in absolute terms is entirely driven by deficient additions to the population. It's just as possible that some portion of the population lost their skill by allowing it to atrophy from underuse.
That assumes the shift was entirely due to high school students becoming adults. There are also people who haven't read much over those years and have had their skills declined to the point of failure. Or, also likely, sample size issues.