Free Republic

Democratic senators put on quite a show Thursday at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. Desperate for a "gotcha" moment that would disqualify the Trump nominee, the senators asked pointed questions and gave lectures about transparency. But, they embarrassed themselves in the process. Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) got the loudest laugh.Booker's theatrics came at the very beginning of the hearing. He interrupted Chairman Chuck Grassley's opening remarks to announce that he had broken Senate rules and released "committee confidential" documents about Kavanaugh's opinions on racial profiling. He even referred to himself as "Spartacus," as if he was some kind of...

Subtitle: Fix reading and half of our education problems disappear--It's a common problem in the US. Children in the second and third grades, even the fourth and fifth grades, are struggling readers. They guess; they skip ahead; they search for clues from context; they look at pictures to read words. Did I mention they guess? Typically, these children are unsuccessful in most school subjects and very unhappy. The school may think this slow progress is fine. But perhaps you as a parent know younger children who've already learned to read. You worry that your child Is falling behind. You are...

A Michigan judge ruled last week that children do not have a fundamental right to learn how to read and write. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Public Counsel, the nation's largest public interest law firm, on behalf of Detroit students that sought to hold state authorities, including Gov. Rick Snyder (R), accountable for what plaintiffs alleged were systemic failures depriving children of their right to literacy, according to the Detroit Free Press. "I'm shocked," said Ivy Bailey, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, the newspaper reported. "The message that it sends is that education...

No cliché is more ubiquitous at teacher protests than signs that read, “if you can read this sign, thank a teacher.” That is, unless you disregard variations on the theme of “pay us more.” And yet, student performance on national and international tests suggest that the reading comprehension of most American students does not extend far beyond an understanding of nine-word sentences and basic signage. In the United States, only a fortunate few acquire reading proficiency. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have barely budged since 2002. On the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS),...

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick “Baily” on a Maryland plantation around Feb. 7, 1817, though no accurate records exist, as he was a slave. He later chose the birth date of February 14 as he remembered his mother calling him her “little valentine.” He never saw his mother in the daylight, as he was separated from her as an infant. He did not know who his father was. Around 12 years old, his master’s sister-in-law, Sophia Auld, was teaching Frederick the alphabet, despite this being against the law. When her husband found out and immediately forbade it, saying that if...

Many people use the phrases “sight-word” and “vocabulary word” interchangeably, when they are quite different. This confusion, I believe, serves a sinister purpose for our Education Establishment. A sight-word is a one-dimensional object. You know it visually, that’s all. When you see the graphic design, you are supposed to respond in an automatic or conditioned way. You say the sound represented by the design. The Education Establishment pretends this is “reading” but it’s not. On the other hand, a vocabulary word is a multi-dimensional object. Most importantly, you know it phonetically. You say the sounds represented by the letters. This...

California was sued earlier this month over poor reading skills among its students, a significant legal step in trying to combat lackluster literacy rates amid a larger conversation about education policy in the Golden State.

SAN DIEGO - A group of prominent lawyers representing teachers and students from poor performing schools filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Tuesday, arguing that the state has done nothing about a high number of school children who do not know how to read. The advocacy law firm, Public Counsel, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court to demand the California Department of Education address its "literacy crisis." The state has not followed suggestions from its own report on the problem five years ago, according to the lawsuit. "When it comes to literacy and the delivery...

Earlier this week John touched on the festival of hot takes surrounding Liz Phipps Soeiro, the librarian at Cambridgeport Elementary School who attempted to refuse a donation of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump. I specify “attempted” because it turned out that the school board stepped in and said it wasn’t her call to begin with. That hot mess should have come and gone fairly quickly, but it turns out that there was another chapter of the story to be written.The Mayor of the town where Dr. Seuss (actually Theodor Geisel) was born decided to add some balance...

About 70% of Los Angeles high school graduates enroll in two- or four-year colleges, but only 25% graduate within six years. ... it’s hard to assess recent district efforts that could be seen as pushing in different directions. On one hand, the district is touting higher standards: a high school graduation requirement that all students pass the courses necessary for applying to a four-year state college. On the other hand, the district requires a grade of D only in these classes and the colleges require a C or better to apply. The district also offers an array of “credit recovery”...

Hundreds of websites broadcast the same misguided message: children must memorize Sight-Words. This message is false. Probably the most aggressive falsehood is that such memorization is easy to do. One popular site proclaims this malarkey: “Because many Sight-Words are phonetically irregular, tend to be abstract, have limited visual correspondence, or even easily understood definitions, students must memorize them to read quickly and fluently.” Note the casual tone: “Students must memorize them.” The school certainly wouldn’t ask children to do something difficult or impossible, would it? Yes, it would! And therein lies the essence of the hoax. In the context of...

I'm certain this rather long essay has been around before. Because it is long, some of you may have not bothered to read it. If you do so now, you may agree with me that it outlines in brutal detail the origins of many of the troubles we now face. For that reason, I forward it again and encourage you to read it now. If you are EVER to understand why men like Jefferson, Lincoln and others believed that, while there are exceptions (think Sowell, Williams, Ben Carson, Colonel West, Herman Caine and others), it would take a looonnnggg time...

To gain admittance to college in the 17th century, students had to be able to read and translate various Latin authors on sight. 100 years ago, students were required to have read various classical works before being admitted. Today, however, many American students are being admitted to colleges without ever having read a book from start to finish. They are part of a cohort of students known as “book virgins.” The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has pointed out this phenomenon in their recent report titled “Beach Books: 2014-2016. What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?”...

I’ve long observed the state of black children with deep concern. It seems that with all the billions of dollars being spent to educate children in urban areas, this money is going to waste. This waste appears to be a mixture of good old government inefficiency, apathetic parents, and teachers who don’t care much about our children. But spreading the blame doesn’t actually solve the problem. While we are sitting around trying to figure out who destroyed our children, the little ones are left to languish in the stench of inherited ignorance. We live in an age of information, where...

At a time when the United States has plummeted in the global rankings of education standards, one of the country’s largest states is poised to scrap a test designed to measure the reading and writing skills of people trying to become teachers. Citing the fact that an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing the test, members of the New York state Board of Regents plans to adopt a task force's recommendation to eliminate the literacy exam, known as the Academic Literacy Skills Test, given to prospective teachers. The move to do away with the test has been...

Prospective teachers in New York will likely no longer have to pass a basic reading and writing literacy exam, the Associated Press is reporting. The state’s Board of Regents is expected to ditch the Academic Literacy Skills Test in part because black and Hispanic teaching candidates struggled to pass the exam, according to the AP.

One of the depressing things about trying to improve US education is that the great majority of the country seems to have given up. Mainly, you can credit the diabolical skills of our Education Establishment. They keep average citizens confused, divided, and overwhelmed by jargon and technical details. The people who should be our natural leaders -– doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, business executives-- probably are ashamed to admit they have no idea what anybody in education is talking about. Newspaper editors probably suffer from the same problem. So there is no deep coverage of education in this country, not at...

[A few words about America’s two biggest parasites--] if you’ve driven on southern interstates, you know kudzu. It’s that leafy vine that can cover the tallest trees. Finally, motorists see nothing but kudzu, which has earned the nickname, “The vine that ate the South.” Kudzu envelops everything and eventually destroys everything. In short, kudzu is exactly like Sight-Words. Kudzu, indigenous to Japan, was touted as an ornamental shade plant at US expositions in 1876 and 1883. During the 20th century, government agencies promoted kudzu as cattle feed. The Department of Agriculture also recommended “kudzu to help control erosion of slopes...

Attorneys for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder are asking a judge to toss out a lawsuit against the state of Michigan filed by students in the Detroit school system and claim that literacy is not a legal right in the state of Michigan. Seven children filed the lawsuit in September, saying decades of state disinvestment and deliberate indifference to Detroit's schools have denied them access to literacy. The plaintiffs say the schools have deplorable building conditions, lack of books, classrooms without teachers, insufficient desks, buildings plagued by vermin, unsafe facilities and extreme temperatures.

Herewith, a simple way to understand the destructive failure of most reading instruction in the United States. Consider our eyes. Their purpose is to grasp quickly what objects are: food or predator, useful or irrelevant? This is often a matter of life and death. How do eyes do their job? Eyes twitch, jerk, and flick rapidly from detail to detail in order to identify an object. There are no built-in sequences, no shortcuts. The eyes must twitch – perhaps dozens of times – until a positive identification is made. The technical term for these twitches is a saccade (which rhymes...