Article includes the following, "...This is the fifth consecutive year of declining average scores..."
So you still wanna blame Covid?
Look, I don't want to argue here about something so totally unrelated to Tech FB...but while kids may be bigger-faster-stronger and better looking, evidence does not support that they are "smarter" ...
(Full disclosure...They are all smarter than I am...LOL)
I don't know the answers, only what I observed after teaching public high school for 30 years. A gradual, very gradual, decline in attention span and desire to learn as opposed to doing just enough to get by. On my tennis team in the class of 2000, we had the graduating class' valedictorian and salutatorian as well as two others that were honor graduates. The top two went to UGA and later became doctors. One of the other two went to Tech and became an accountant. I don't know what happened to the other one. All of them had parents with high standards for both behavior and academics. On Sunday morning you could bet your bottom dollar that all of them were in church with their parents. Their manners were impeccable. After that, I had smart kids on the team but never any as driven and disciplined as those from that class.
I am sure that this is just about a statistical impossibility but from our small church in Albany we have had 4 Tech graduates in the last dozen years or so. One was a cheerleader and graduated cum laude, with a degree on the M train as it is called, one graduated in computer science, and became a TA while getting a master's. He works for one of the big tech companies in California. The other two majored in math and became accountants of some sort. All of them, ahem, were in my Sunday school class. Whether they were near geniuses like my brother in law, electrical engineering class of 1969 or a plugger like my dad class of 1950 in textile engineering, all of them share a common characteristic. An unusual capacity for hard work and a intense desire to find the right solution to a problem. After all, isn't that what engineers do? Solve problems? Well, one other thing, they are all a whole lot smarter than me but that is nothing to brag about.