You Mean Phonics Alone Doesn't Work?

Many years ago we did reading workshops for parents and teachers at our store. The presenter, Dolores Hiskes, had the participants read a phonetic passage in a foreign language. Everyone carefully sounded out the words, which were broken into syllables. After everyone read the passage, perfectly, she asked us what it meant. Guess what - phonetic decoding isn't reading!

Progress stalls on NAEP
The Christian Science Monitor reports that for the first time since 2003, America's fourth-graders made no improvement in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the "nation's report card." Achievement gaps between whites and blacks, whites and Hispanics, boys and girls, public and private school students, and low-income students and their middle- or upper-income peers also remained unchanged, compared with 2007 and with 1992, when NAEP was first administered. Overall, "we've stopped making gains, we've stopped closing gaps... the last thing we need right now is an educational recession," says Amy Wilkins, vice-president of the Education Trust, which works to close achievement and opportunity gaps. One "glimmer of hope," The Monitor says, is that individual states have succeeded in whittling both racial and income-based achievement gaps. Still, "anybody paying attention over the past eight years" to NCLB's implementation should not be surprised, writes Valerie Strauss on The Answer Sheet blog of The Washington Post. At its heart, NCLB supported specific approaches to literacy instruction that emphasized explicit phonics instruction and didn't do enough to foster comprehension. Reading experts warned that the program would fail, according to Strauss, but the Bush administration didn't listen.
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0324/US-report-card-on-reading-8th-graders-gain-4th-graders-don-t
Related: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/reading/naep-reading-scores-bad-news-w.html
See the results: http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/

Another Educator Joins the Chorus

From today's Times

I'm starting to turn this blog into a collection of anti-education policy articles from the NY Times, but the drum beat is getting stronger. Here's a bit from today's installment:

Among the topics on which Dr. Ravitch has reversed her views is the main federal law on public schools, No Child Left Behind, which is up for a rewrite in coming weeks in Congress. She once supported it, but now says its requirements for testing in math and reading have squeezed vital subjects like history and art out of classrooms.

Do you think?

Time to Dump Standards?

I love trend spotting, and especially trends that go my way. In the past two weeks the NYTimes editorial page has featured opinion pieces that illustrate how wrong the current obsession with teaching to standards is, and how much harm it's doing to education. I hope this trend gains momentum - exciting and relevant teaching is what makes it all worthwhile, not making sure 22 24 26 28 kids can pass the same test!

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Where the Bar Ought to Be
By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 23, 2010
In Harlem, an educator is expecting the best, not the worst, from students at her charter schools.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/opinion/23herbert.html

What Are We Teaching?

Susan Engel writes in the New York Times:
Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.

In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

Imagine an educational system that emphasized something other than testing! Might a literature-based classroom even save money, once we eliminate the textbook publisher's restrictive, expensive package deals?

Werner Herzog Interprets Mike Mulligan

Pretty funny stuff if you're a fan of Mike or Werner. (via Daddytypes.com)

An Apple in Every Classroom!

Edutopia is picking up the talk about Apple's big announcement this last week. Educators are weighing in on what this new device means to them. I was surprised at the negative comments, as I'm seeing a classroom tool that should be in every teacher's hands within a very short time. The reason? It's all about the apps. What the device can and can't do is outlined at WiredEducator, but here's the bottom line: the Ipad will be able to do anything you or some other clever person wants it to do. Just like the Iphone. Let's see, Grade Book, Class Roster, Plan Book, along with email and internet. That's while it's on the teacher's desk. Attach it to the Ipodium (or whatever the device turns out to be called) turn on the LED projector and it's good-bye interactive whiteboard. There is no way in the world those instant dinosaurs are going to keep up! If you know anyone in purchasing at any school or school district, tell them to save their money, sell what they have on Ebay and cut their losses today. Just check out what's available right now for the Iphone. That's available today, but once people get their hands on the Ipad, there will be a lot more.
I'm not usually a big tech fan when it comes to education. I think there are often too many bells and whistles and not enough basic skill transfer. The Ipad is not a way of educating, it's a tool for an educator, and as that, I think it will excel.

Who Killed the Wooden Train? (Part 2)

Those of you who remember the TV show Columbo remember that there was never any mystery about the crime - they showed the crime being committed in the first minutes of the show. The mystery was how Columbo would solve the puzzle. In that spirit, I am going to reveal the murderer of the wooden train right now!
Or at least I will very shortly. The important thing about the crime is not who did it, or why, or even when. The important thing is it was done. If I was to say that the wooden train died in early summer of 2007, you might guess that I'm blaming Thomas the Tank Engine (or more specifically his friend James the Red Engine) for the great train wreck. That's the day the victim died, but wrong on the date of the actual crime, as well as the how and the why, and most important, you would be blaming poor Thomas for his own murder! Thomas was hanging out with a bad crowd, and that led to his demise, but he didn't do himself in. Thomas, and the wooden trains he came to represent, are victims of a conspiracy! "I just had one more question" our friend Columbo would say "how can an over-hyped toy recall on a red engine kill a category of toys that defined childhood for generations?" We'll find out in part 3...