Horrific. This will have massive, long term consequences for these kids and their communities.
American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/reading...ytcore-android-share |
Not a surprise. Kids barely read anymore, even in school. They are taught how to read short test passages and answer questions. Some students have gotten to high school without even reading an entire book.
Plus, public schools are a majority poor. It’s been that way for about 10 yrs now. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the scores are low. |
I blame Tiktok, Youtube, etc. Kids have super short attention spans and want to be fed content with minimal effort. My kid is a 4th grader and usually has to be forced to read. There are just so many other options. When I was a kid, there wasn't a whole lot else to do. And at least when we watched tv, it wasn't presented in infinite 30 second clips. |
It's not going to get better. It's just like penmanship. Generally gone. Forever. |
The shift towards accountability in the last twenty years has backfired. What matters now to school systems is standardized test scores, so that’s what teaching is geared towards improving. Using various online programs seems like an easy solution to improving test scores, and school systems continue to pour money into them despite the dropping reading scores. Anecdotally I think kids read much less at home now and they definitely read less at school (rather than reading when they aren’t in a reading group with the teacher, now they are on online programs). And kids are coming into school with fewer and fewer pre literacy skills. The Sold a Story Calkins stuff doesn’t help, but it’s certainly not the entire problem.
Parents, teachers, and school systems need to agree this model is failing. The instruction piece is improving, now we need to ensure kids spend less time on devices and more time reading. |
also closing schools for (in some areas) over 2 years didn't do us any favors.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/studen...4890be737eb4a1&ei=40 |
Blame Lucy Calkins. |
No phonics was taught in years and years in what some think was a good school |
I blame parents giving their children devices before they learn to read |
No amount of intervention will fix low literacy, checked out parents. |
and I blame schools too focused on gender stuff, DEI and other indoctrination. Every time some new flavor of the week trend is introduced into the schools, some traditional subject like reading, writing, math or science has to be forfeited. |
Have you been in a classroom lately? This is not surprising. |
Ha, I am too busy trying to teach my students to write complete sentences. I would like to indoctrinate them into literacy, that’s it. |
I would love to remove all devices but the teachers keep assigning homework in apps. Get rid of the garbage apps. |
Too much Lucy Calkins. Go back to the basics—teach phonics, spelling, grammar, penmenship, vocabulary, direct instruction, etc. |