Posted on 09/28/2003 4:34:22 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
All over the country, students, their parents and teachers are in an uproar about the tens of thousands who flunked the test designated as the requirement for high school graduation. Threats of withholding diplomas have brought out accusations, recriminations, and even angry mobs.
States have devised various ways to deal with this crisis. Award the diplomas anyway, stonewall the complainers, keep the students in school an extra year, postpone the deadline to 2004 or even 2006, lower the standards, lower the cut-off score, reduce the number of questions a student must answer correctly, substitute another test, or seek test waivers from the federal government.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 doesn't mandate a test for graduation, but it does require all schools to implement standards and annual tests in reading and math for the third through eighth grades, and show "adequate yearly progress" not only for the school but for minority subgroups. The buzz word is accountability and non-compliance brings costly sanctions.
The Act was passed with bipartisan support. But the Democrats' biggest constituency, the teachers unions, opposed the tests initially and are now inciting the clamour against them, along with the usual whine that the solution is more money.
I'm going to venture the heretical opinion that I sympathize with the students who flunked. After the school failed to teach them to read, gave them good grades and promoted them year after year, it's no wonder they feel cheated when they are denied diplomas.
How did anybody expect the students to pass their 4th grade, 8th grade and 12th grade tests if they didn't learn phonics in the first grade? Don't lay the guilt on the students; lay it on the system that failed the students.
On June 19 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) , known as the Nation's Report Card, reported that 36 percent of 4th graders cannot read at what the test defined as a "basic" level. The figure for whites is 25 percent, for Latinos 56 percent, and for blacks 60 percent.
The NAEP report also revealed the consistent and dramatic decline of all reading skills in the upper grades. One in four 12th graders cannot read at a "basic" level, down from one in five in 1992.
The explanation for this depressing report is obvious. Elementary school children can memorize a few hundred words so they are recorded as reading at grade level, but when they get to high school they can't read the bigger words because they were never taught phonics (the system of sounding out the syllables and putting them together like building blocks).
The public school establishment adamantly refuses to teach first graders to read by phonics even though study after study, including one released in June by the National Institute for Early Education Research, shows that phonics is essential to becoming a good reader. Some teachers colleges even peddle the paranoid theory that phonics is a "Far Right" conspiracy.
The public school establishment is digging in its heels against the Bush Administration program called Reading First, which offers $5 billion over six years to state and local school districts to help every child read by the end of the third grade. The schools are running to their pals in the liberal media to air opposition to the requirement that a proven, successful reading system be used.
To conceal the public school's abysmal failure to teach reading, education theorists who call themselves "social constructionists" are "departing from traditional notions of reading and writing" and trying to "redefine what it means to be literate." They are spreading the ridiculous notion that literacy does not mean reading the printed text, but is "inherently social" and flows from students developing "ways of thinking from such socially based experiences."
According to these academics quoted on the Electronic Classroom website, "meaning from text is not `out there' to be acquired but is something that is constructed by individuals through their interactions with each other and the world." So, students can "construct" their own understanding of the text by interacting with their (probably semi- literate) peers.
The role of reading teachers is supposedly "not to impart universal truths about text but to foster an environment where learners come to construct understanding through interaction." It's more important to engage in "student talk as opposed to teacher talk."
Under this new definition of literacy, you can call yourself literate if you can send a terse e-mail that has been spell-checked, or you can engage in electronic chat sessions. "Being literate ... means being able to communicate in a post-typographic world."
Teaching reading is not rocket science. Parents who care about their children's education should teach their own children to read using a good phonics system, which is what I did with my six children.
Yes, they did. Then parents started divorcing each other in larger numbers, so more and more children were without fathers most of the time, and also without their mothers who then had to work, even if they hadn't before the divorce.
Parents who are guilty because they aren't there for their children tend to be much more lenient with discipline & other things. They don't like to scold, or sometimes they are too tired to scold or to help with homework.
When I was a child, if a couple had been living out of wedlock, they'd have been shunned and their children probably wouldn't have been allowed to play with the other children - I'm sure the other children wouldn't have been allowed to visit the sinful household.
According to these academics quoted on the Electronic Classroom website, "meaning from text is not `out there' to be acquired but is something that is constructed by individuals through their interactions with each other and the world." So, students can "construct" their own understanding of the text by interacting with their (probably semi- literate) peers.
The role of reading teachers is supposedly "not to impart universal truths about text but to foster an environment where learners come to construct understanding through interaction."
I reely don't see what's the problim here. This makes perfeck sence.
I take issue with this paragraph in the article. I learned to read by memorizing the words. I have an excellent memory and have to visualize the words in order to spell them correctly.
All three of my kids learned to read early -- my youngest was reading 6th grade books in kindergarten! -- and I taught them by reading aloud to them. They learned to read by sight, and even today they rarely come across a word they can't pronounce.
IMO, phonics is NOT the only way to learn to read.
Agreed, but Bush's proposal to have every child reading by the end of the 3rd grade is already a quantum leap over current school capabilities.
My middle daughter was struggling to read in school, even with the wonderful, carng (and Christian) teacher she had in 1st & 2nd grade. We started homeschooling her in 3rd grade (last year) using a phonics-based curriculum, and now she is a voracious reader - at or above the 4th grade level (her current grade).
It's criminal how the NEA sh!t-fer-brains refuse to teach reading using phonics.
I admit that the NEA is big, but I submit that there is a more influential lobbying organization by far. An Establishment of unparalleled influence--"the press.""The press" belongs in quotes not because it does not have First Amendment protection (though some of it patently does not) nor because "the press" (by which is meant nothing other than journalism) is not the only printing business protected by the First Amendment. "The press" belongs in quotes because it is not supposed to be--but in a very real sense is--a single entity like the NBA.
The NBA consists of competitive divisions such as the Lakers, Spurs, and so forth. But in regulating that competition by such means as giving each division the exclusive right to place certain players on its roster, the NBA acts as a single competition-limiting entity. It does that openly and publicly, and has lost antitrust suits over that behavior.
Like any illicit entity, "the press" denies its own existence as an entity; examples of this are nauseatingly routine whenever a journalist submits to Q&A. But any establishment coheres around a "turf," and must "send a message" when its turf is violated. What is "the turf" of "the press?"
Victory in any debate makes and the winner's side seems moderate, fair, objective, and balanced--and makes the loser's position seem "extreme". The turf of "the press" is the appearance of objectivity. Actual objectivity is of course impossible--topic selection is a fingerprint of the ineluctable perspective of the writer--but "the press" manipulates the appearance by use of the excuse of the fog of breaking news.
"The press" coheres in the following code:
The objectivity of anyone who adheres to the party line that journalists are objective is never challenged by any other member of "the press".The PR sythesis of the appearance of objectivity by "the press" is so pervasive and so effective that it is actually possible, even easy, to use that imposture in the"liberal arts academic fields. History , for example--precisely the field which should filter appearances out and, at the price of the wait, reveal truth which current events conceal--can be guilty of producing only a second draft of journalism. Some "truths" of journalism persist by the citation of journalistic reports alone, without serious scholarship in primary source material. See for example, the many fatuous "proofs" of the "McCarthyism" canard.If a Bernard Goldberg does write a Bias, he does not cease being a journalist--he is an unperson who "never was a journalist."
Brownsville Elementary School in Bremerton, WA has 460 students and one principal. All 15 elementary schools in the Central Kitsap School District have one principal apiece. The middle and high schools have principals and assistant principals. The district has the normal administrative positions for a district of its size of 13,156 students. There are 880 certified employees (teachers) and about as many classified employees. 71.24 % of the annual budget is allocated to the classrooms. The % of budget allocated to administration is one of the lowest in the state, according to the district website. Class size ranges from 19 to 28 students per class depending on the grade. Teachers consider this to be fairly high; maybe that's why they're complaining. Caution against using admittedly left-leaning teacher union employees as unbiased sources. I'm not trying to bust your chops. I've been both a teacher and a school district administrator. If you have further questions, I'd be happy to help out.
It seems to me that these problems - flunking exit tests - should have been caught and addressed long before these kids ever made it to high school.
Exactly.
Well, I'm relieved that we agree. LOL.
Perhaps you'd also agree with my post here?
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