• Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/quality-child-care-science-math

    The study looked at “Children who receive high-quality child care as babies, toddlers and preschoolers…”

    So, is the drop in reading and math a direct result of kids not getting high-quality childcare as babies and toddlers? Because I don’t even think thay the majority of American parents ever had the means to make that happen outside of the home.

    That might be something that only high income families could afford, but I’m not sure if the article reports on whether children from high income families also experienced a drop in reading and math scores.

    WFH does seem to indicate that people work longer hours in total.

    Without a daily commute or prep time getting ready for the office, and especially during lockdowns when people simply didn’t leave their homes, there was significantly more time for non-work related activities.

    This is why so many people actually enjoyed the pandemic. They had significant amounts of free time for hobbies, exercise, etc. Bikes even sold out for like a year, because the demand for recreation cycling during the pandemic was at such a high level.

    But time with your kids, even for 20 minutes of reading, offers a huge advantage to their development. This can easily be incorporated during bedtime.

    In any case, I do still believe that a lack or reduction in reading at home has an impact on these scores, and I do appreciate the thoughtful discussion 🤝

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      10 months ago

      You keep trying to point to your theory, but you should be able to do a literary search to find if there is some evidence to back up your claim.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Well, at least as of 2020 parents spent more time with their kids during covid. .

        They also did read more to their kids in 2020 vs pre-covid. However, I can’t find data suggesting that they continued reading at that rate through 2021 and 2022.

        Another stat did suggest that low income kids had a harder time keeping up during covid. Factors included family members who did not know English, fewer books in the home, and low literacy rates among parents (making it hard for them to read to their kids), and more media consumption (a major factor in poor development among very young children).

        So, if we put everything together, we could assume that kids in low and probably middle income families were at a disadvantage compared to kids in high income families. Since they make up the bulk of the student demographic, they were likely responsible for the drop.

        If the situation at home remains bad, I’d expect these scores to continue to drop compared to previous years and other countries.

        I’d say that for those families, the pandemic didn’t help, but those problems were there well before covid.