There's a whopper in the middle of the article declaring an outcome "high test scores" is a cause, not a result, of a lack of a wide variety of social ills. The cause and effect ratio is obviously reversed. Its like claiming that playing the violin leads to wealth via some magical process, whereas the reality is only wealthy parents can afford to hire a classical violin tutor for their kid, so sure, the wealthiest neighborhoods have the kids who are the best violin players but it would be pretty clueless to describe violin playing as a vocational skill. Its a luxury skill for people who've already made it, like math is for about 99.9% of the population.

Talking to my kid's friends indirectly and casually, as per above the deck is stacked against them resulting in lower scores in stuff that won't result in a job anyway, no amount of study will improve your DEI scores which are all that matter for hiring anyway, and the jobs you can get with high scores are the ones targeted for elimination via AI.

Despite being pretty young they understand the scam that it doesn't matter if it works or not, the powers that be will ruin your career trying to replace you with AI. Much like outsourcing in their parents and grandparents generation, it literally doesn't matter if it works or not, you're still sitting in the same unemployment line if they make a profit or lose their shirts. They lost their shirts and will lose them again for AI, but that provides little sympathy for those sitting in the unemployment lines.

"Line must go up" meme applies. There exist tests you can make kids take to determine their suitability for labor in the garment industry, fine motor skills, some visuospatial skills, etc. That number is useless because there are few jobs, negative industry growth, and we have a severe supply/demand mismatch already. Increasing "garment industry skill test results" led directly to happy outcomes around the 1850s industrial revolution and flat to negative outcomes in the modern era. So it is with math today. Worship of "line must go up" never made anyone happy or wealthy.

The article somehow avoids all documentation and authorities and instead relies on popular memes and biased "common sense". Its not marked as an editorial, which seems odd.