Posted on 05/20/2008 11:29:44 AM PDT by chordmaster
TALLAHASSEE, FL - A report issued today by the Department of Education reveals that the expected illiteracy rate among high school graduates will decline significantly this year. This marks the first time in several decades that this benchmark has fallen in two consecutive years. The expected illiteracy rate of 32% is down from 33% last year ...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyredundancy.com ...
Break out the champagne!
I realize some are adept at hiding their illiteracy, but how can someone graduate w/o the ability to read and write?
1 in 3 high school graduates are illiterate and he is pleased? He should be embarrassed. Thank you NEA.
Note that the reporter that wrote this story must be a recent graduate. I believe "We're" is what should have been written.
That part doesn’t surprise me. What is pretty shocking is that one out of 3 graduates can’t read. If not, then what is the point of spending all this money teaching them?
Read the article its pardoy, and hilarious.
That one got me all the way into the boat.
No child left behind!
The self-esteemroller is chugging ahead...
The same usually happens to me. I just happend to read that it was from the dailyredundancy. Sadly enough the situation actually sounds plausable enough to be believed at first glance.
Got to love gubmit education
It is so close to the truth it makes me wince. Very well done.
I thought ,for sure, that they would tie the figure to a higher dropout rate.
DALLAS — It's May, which means thousands of high school seniors across North Texas can almost taste it: their diploma. This month 7,500 Dallas ISD seniors are expected to walk across the stage and make their families proud.
But what if we told you that 75 percent of the seniors headed to Dallas community colleges can't read above an 8th grade level, and others can't add or subtract?
Graduation is a time for feeling proud, but that might quickly change to frustration for thousands of DISD students like Gia Hollis come fall, when reality hits.
News 8 requested and received documents from the Dallas County Community College District that show, over the last three years, an average of 75 percent of the DISD students enrolled in classes took at least one developmental education course.
“My reading levels are so low, and I’m really not comprehending, and it’s really holding me back," Hollis said. "It’s taking me longer."
Hollis is in a developmental reading course at El Centro College.
Developmental courses prepare students to take college classes. In the Fall of 2007, out of the 1,110 DISD students enrolled in Dallas community colleges, 810 had to take one of these courses.
“This percentage is much too high," said Dr. Joan Rodriguez, who teaches developmental reading at El Centro. In her upper level course, where we met Hollis, most students read at an 8th to 10th grade level, struggling to comprehend what’s in some newspaper articles.
“I get so frustrated," Hollis said. "Don't know why I wasn't taught those skills before coming here and having to be at this point in my life and start all over. It’s been very challenging."
”It's very frustrating ... for the students who come in here who say: ‘Wait a minute, you're asking me to do all this? I don't know how to do this. I don't have enough time to do this. I'm not used to doing this. I don't want to do it,'" Dr. Rodriguez said.
Dr. Rodriguez believes high school tests reward students for minimal knowledge, which won’t work in college where professors expect you to know how to read and comprehend complex sentences. She says college professors don’t grade you on whether you try, but what’s right.
Students who got points for effort in high school find that doesn't apply at the college level.
”We have watered down too much material, and a lot of teachers know that," Dr. Rodriguez said.
One student named Dominique made it clear what the focus was in high school: "I learned enough to pass the TAKS."
And then there's math.
There are some students in these remedial courses who cannot add, subtract, or do basic multiplication. One professor says calculators are a big problem.
“Students have learned which button to push, instead of why they're pushing it," a math teacher told us.
We took our findings straight to Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa.
“That’s why we’re asking our teachers not to use TAKS worksheets," he said. "That’s why we’re asking them to have rigorous instruction so that we can address that issue. It’s important to us.”
Teachers say they're teaching just enough for students to succeed on the TAKS exam.
“That's what we're trying to change," Hinojosa said. "That doesn't happen at every school. I go to school on Wednesdays and we're trying to get that changed, but that's moving an entire system. We'll see that occur in the entire system."
But most teachers will tell you TAKS worksheets are shoved down their throats. We tried to get some teachers to talk on camera, but they declined for fear of getting in trouble.
Dale Kaiser with the National Education Association of Dallas says it’s not just DISD, but the state and federal governments pushing TAKS on teachers.
“Testing should not be the end-all determiner of whether a child learns or not,” Kaiser said. “Teachers have their hands tied. They're told we have to succeed; in fact, principals are given a $10,000 bonus based upon how their students do on TAKS scores. Everything is driven by the test."
So will it ever be possible for teachers to teach so that they don’t live in fear of losing their jobs if they fail to meet the TAKS standards? “We’re teaching them the principles of learning so that they understand that the foundation for what we believe in is academic rigor,” Hinojosa said.
The superintended added that by asking teachers to have so-called “rigorous instruction” in the classroom, it will accomplish his goal in the next couple of years to prove DISD students are college-ready before they graduate.
“It's not just a Dallas issue. It's a national issue. It's a state issue," Hinojosa said. "Of course I'm upset. We don’t need to blame people. We need to fix it."
While Hinojosa talks about fixing things, 7,500 DISD seniors prepare to walk across the stage this month, many of whom won’t be able to handle the daily tasks of higher education.
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dw....e5ca60c9.html
At that time a C was REALLY an average grade. In the 70s, because of higher illiteracy rates among non-whites, social passing became the norm to avoid charges of racism. When I entered college in the early 70s, there were serious challenges to the existing grading standards going on in academia, and I remember one "intelligence test" that went around called the "Chitlin Test." It was based on black urban culture, and claimed it proved that intelligence tests were culturally biased. The only question I remember from it was "What's a deuce and a quarter?" It's an Electra 225. Anyway, W. Edwards Deming (I think it was Deming, too lazy to research) was pushing for no grading at all. A lot of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is about the concept of the validity of grading.
Add to that, I interviewed Gordon Wood (any Texas football fan knows that name), and he asked me not to mention this in my article, but since he's gone and it's not in the article I think I've kept my promise) and Wood was very upset that his Brownwood Lions were playing other teams in the playoffs where players were functionally illiterate, but were passed to maintain their football eligibility.
As a final note, this study is of graduates. With "No Child Left Behind," mandating passage of certain areas, I'd like to know how the dropout rate has changed. If the dropout rate is up, this is not indicative of any improvement in the classroom, but simply of more illiterate students dropping out because they can't pass the exit tests.
That part doesn’t surprise me. What is pretty shocking is that one out of 3 graduates can’t read. If not, then what is the point of spending all this money teaching them?
Because now they can ask for more money to correct the problem. It’s always more money for the children don’t you know. After they get the money they spend it on sex education and experimentation...not reading.
Getting their diplomas will certainly improve their self-esteem. Now if they could only read them.
It may be parody, but it is, IMO, also too close to the truth. Too many graduates are illiterate Mexican peasants.
It is called “social promotion”.
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