Does History “Rhyme” For Student Test Scores As It Does For Many Other Events

“Mark Twain has been credited with the above comment, but he never said it . I was thinking about the comment as I thought about reduced student test scores (see Yes, A Big Study Came Out Today Highlighting Plummeting Test Scores But, No, I Don’t Think It Tells The Whole Story ). So, I asked both Google Gemini and ChatGPT if there had been similar upticks and declines in student test scores in the past and, if so, what were their supposed causes. You can read both of their responses in PDFs here: Gemini ChatGPT I don’t necessarily think there are any magical answers there, but I do think educators would find them interesting. I did not check their references for accuracy. There do appear to be a myriad of reasons behind the falling scores (including ones not typically identified by education researchers – like growing economic disparities ). Of course, this also begs the question of if these test scores are really accurate indicators of student academic success ?

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