Sold a Story podcast

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No wonder FCPS shelled out the money for Lexia and is forcing teachers to meet weekly minutes, analyze the data and deliver Lexia lessons based on that data.

Except in “forcing teachers”. They are actually forcing kids. It isn’t really about the adults now is it?

I would prefer my 6th grader to get better grammar instruction than Lexia so I supplement at home. Repeating the same definition over and over again about clauses and phrases in a broken computer voice isn’t helpful. The program itself is laggy and about as fun as calling Verizon self-serve menu where you are shouting and clicking repeatedly until the computer receives input. So I have not been impressed.

If you have ever seen the Lexia lessons for teachers to give they are pretty lackluster as well.

Poor kids, but I guess at least you are happy that teachers are being “forced to meet weekly limits.” Win for you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder FCPS shelled out the money for Lexia and is forcing teachers to meet weekly minutes, analyze the data and deliver Lexia lessons based on that data.

Except in “forcing teachers”. They are actually forcing kids. It isn’t really about the adults now is it?

I would prefer my 6th grader to get better grammar instruction than Lexia so I supplement at home. Repeating the same definition over and over again about clauses and phrases in a broken computer voice isn’t helpful. The program itself is laggy and about as fun as calling Verizon self-serve menu where you are shouting and clicking repeatedly until the computer receives input. So I have not been impressed.

If you have ever seen the Lexia lessons for teachers to give they are pretty lackluster as well.

Poor kids, but I guess at least you are happy that teachers are being “forced to meet weekly limits.” Win for you?

Yes we are getting reminders and checks on our class data and time usage. So I’m forced to force my students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so if I am the primary educational source for my kid- why do I pay taxes to support schools. Also, how many posts have I seen on here- respect the teachers! But now- they don't want to be accountable for reading outcomes and the inability or unwillingness to teach? I am so confused. Please pick a side and stay on it. Also- you want more money?

As the primary educator, all you need to do is the basic that most of us had. Read picture books, do letter puzzles, ABC games, etc. Kids learn very quickly in the first 5 years and can go into kinder with all their letters with minimum parent effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My older daughter was "taught to read" using this shit approach and is STILL behind and not reading well. F_ her kindergarten teacher.

You could take part of the blame as well. It’s not all on teachers.

Why? This was my first child and I trusted the school to teach my child how to read, and I trusted them when I said "she can't read these specific beginner books, is that a problem?" and they said "nope, she's right where she should be." How was I to know any better? I think he moral of the story here is you can't trust educators, which is so, so sad.

Spot on, that's why parents have to be the primary source of teaching for their children until they can fly solo (hopefully by middle school). Listen to, be respectful, but take teacher feedback with some skepticism; you as a parent can (and should) independently assess your kid at a young age and draw your own conclusions in addition to teacher, to reduce risk.

But nobody tells new parents this - I am the child of uneducated immigrants. Everything I needed to learn, I learned in school. I have a phD, I'm successful, yet I trusted that my kids would also learn everything they needed to know in school, and that was not the case. My child was in 2nd grade during Covid, and didn't learn how to read in K and 1st, so we had to spend all of last year (3rd grade) paying a tutor to get her up to speed after three years without learning how to read!!!

If your child could not read by time they got to second grade, then yes you should have done something at that point.

Should have done what? Asked the school to evaluate my child? Oh I did that and was gaslit about how she was on grade level and there was no issue. So we got private testing (waited four months and it $3800 out of pocket) and then we had to hire a private tutor at $125 per hour to teach phonics. Oh and then the school “reading specialist” kept trying to teach whole language. It was an overall awesome experience.

Ok well now you know and hopefully the problem got fixed. The good news is if she starts reading books on her own and if you keep her book reading interest up without forcing her (i.e take her to library, bookstore, and otherwise immerse and/or buy her any books she's curious about, comic books, etc.), she will hopefully love reading and can catch up and outperform her peers and read above grade level. It's a very common thing that kids who read everyday turn out to be way ahead in reading later in school.

And if there are plans for future kin, you know what to do at home, spend a lot of time talking with them, read to them every night, make sure they learn their letters and numbers before or during pre-k, and start slowly teaching them how to read just prior to K. Kids are amazing at picking up patterns, they just need someone to practice with and that would primarily be the parents for the first 5 years of their life.

[Anonymous]

Wow I didn’t know if I just read to my kid that they would magically learn to read.

Stop being moronic- this is not how it works.especially if your kid is dyslexic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow I didn’t know if I just read to my kid that they would magically learn to read.

Stop being moronic- this is not how it works.especially if your kid is dyslexic

Dude.. this is exactly how it works for the overwhelming majority of kids! Yes, dyslexic kids and other kids with LD's will need professional help from school that parents can't do, but that is not the norm. Seriously, stop being lazy and read and talk to your kid during their first few and most important years of life! No teacher and no school will parent your kids for you; even if they wanted to and they were the best in the world at it, they couldn't possibly do it at a 20/1 ratio!

[Anonymous]

As a fellow FCPS teacher, I cringe at the comments posted by teachers on forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow I didn’t know if I just read to my kid that they would magically learn to read.

Stop being moronic- this is not how it works.especially if your kid is dyslexic

Dude.. this is exactly how it works for the overwhelming majority of kids! Yes, dyslexic kids and other kids with LD's will need professional help from school that parents can't do, but that is not the norm. Seriously, stop being lazy and read and talk to your kid during their first few and most important years of life! No teacher and no school will parent your kids for you; even if they wanted to and they were the best in the world at it, they couldn't possibly do it at a 20/1 ratio!

No, it’s not how the majority of kids learn to read. I am a school psychologist and see everyday the devastating results of administrators and teachers promoting this idea. Most kids need direct instruction and practice in sounding out words in order to read well. Most do NOT learn just by being read to, not by looking at picture clues, not by memorizing some sight words and reading books with a repeated pattern so guessing words works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My older daughter was "taught to read" using this shit approach and is STILL behind and not reading well. F_ her kindergarten teacher.

You could take part of the blame as well. It’s not all on teachers.

Why? This was my first child and I trusted the school to teach my child how to read, and I trusted them when I said "she can't read these specific beginner books, is that a problem?" and they said "nope, she's right where she should be." How was I to know any better? I think he moral of the story here is you can't trust educators, which is so, so sad.

Spot on, that's why parents have to be the primary source of teaching for their children until they can fly solo (hopefully by middle school). Listen to, be respectful, but take teacher feedback with some skepticism; you as a parent can (and should) independently assess your kid at a young age and draw your own conclusions in addition to teacher, to reduce risk.

But nobody tells new parents this - I am the child of uneducated immigrants. Everything I needed to learn, I learned in school. I have a phD, I'm successful, yet I trusted that my kids would also learn everything they needed to know in school, and that was not the case. My child was in 2nd grade during Covid, and didn't learn how to read in K and 1st, so we had to spend all of last year (3rd grade) paying a tutor to get her up to speed after three years without learning how to read!!!

Preach it! It's disgusting that parents cannot trust the schools and people on this thread are blaming them (us) for what? Thinking teachers with teaching degrees and often masters degrees in teaching know more about reading development and teaching reading than we do? If that's an irresponsible assumption, then it's not parents who have the issue. It's the system, which is exactly the point of the podcast.

The other huge problem with it is, sure, the PhD lady and other educated people will eventually stop believing the teachers that everything is okay and pay major $ to fix it (as she did and so did I). But what about the uneducated immigrants who can't speak English? Many are working multiple jobs and don't have the time. What about the un-remediated dyslexic parents? Single parents? Poor parents? Or those with multiple of those disadvantages? If you're saying the only way to be a good parent is to do these things that are literally impossible for disadvantaged parents, you're saying their kids don't deserve to be taught to read. It's a huge social justice and equity issue.

This is not teacher bashing. This is pushback to parent bashing and a system that is failing a huge number of kids. And the implication that we parents on this thread were not involved or paying attention. I read and read and read to my kid and brought up concerns only to be dismissed multiple times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if you want to feel totally frustrated and depressed about how reading curriculum in this country changed to whole language/cueing/balanced literacy that had no science and was really developed for poor readers as a last ditch effort- you should listen to this podcast. The reporting is fantastic and there are times you will want to punch some of these smug authors who made a ton off a useless approach to reading. And, some of the teachers who fell for it because they had never been taught anything else just shows how messed up our public education system is. Also, poor George W Bush tried to make the right move to phonics and got bamboozled by lobbyists.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580473

I disagree as the reporter doesn’t talk at all about broader issues in public education at least not in any released episodes.
She also doesn’t seem to understand that the reading wars have been happening long before the 1960s. Because of those flaws, I wouldn’t call it great reporting.

If you were to broaden the scope from what she focused on, where would you have taken the podcast? Would you have taken the story back to Horace Mann vs. Noah Webster? And what related educational issues would you have talked about?

Okay, to start, she had a story to sell: that phonics is the way to go and teachers were “wrong” not to teach phonics. It is a good story in the current climate where parents rightly want spelling work.

Here is a veteran education reporter (Valerie Strauss from Washington Post) with a story that tells both sides:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/03/27/case-why-both-sides-reading-wars-debate-are-wrong-proposed-solution/

Here is a quote:

This conceptual confusion persists. Bowers (2018) shows that every subsequent meta-analysis taken to support systematic phonics over whole language has made the same mistake of comparing systematic phonics to a mixture of different methods, or comparing systematic phonics to interventions that included no phonics. Accordingly, none of these meta-analyses should be taken to support systematic phonics over whole language.

Here is a further historical perspective:

https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=9488

Basically, there is historical perspective that this is a “side” issue. Keeping to one “side” versus another allows educational curriculum companies to make money because districts always need to buy new curriculums to that meet the new “side’s” requirements.

The broader educational issue is that this is not just in reading, but also in broader educational policy: how districts choose curriculum, how companies make it and why it is profitable to keep the idea of “sides” going.

Cambourne has a "side" and so do the Bowers brothers. The Bowers brothers want to throw out phonics altogether, in favor of structured word inquiry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My older daughter was "taught to read" using this shit approach and is STILL behind and not reading well. F_ her kindergarten teacher.

You could take part of the blame as well. It’s not all on teachers.

Why? This was my first child and I trusted the school to teach my child how to read, and I trusted them when I said "she can't read these specific beginner books, is that a problem?" and they said "nope, she's right where she should be." How was I to know any better? I think he moral of the story here is you can't trust educators, which is so, so sad.

Spot on, that's why parents have to be the primary source of teaching for their children until they can fly solo (hopefully by middle school). Listen to, be respectful, but take teacher feedback with some skepticism; you as a parent can (and should) independently assess your kid at a young age and draw your own conclusions in addition to teacher, to reduce risk.

But nobody tells new parents this - I am the child of uneducated immigrants. Everything I needed to learn, I learned in school. I have a phD, I'm successful, yet I trusted that my kids would also learn everything they needed to know in school, and that was not the case. My child was in 2nd grade during Covid, and didn't learn how to read in K and 1st, so we had to spend all of last year (3rd grade) paying a tutor to get her up to speed after three years without learning how to read!!!

But now you know and are empowered to fix it, better sooner than later! Also, I'm surprised that you were not aware that many kids start to slowly read by 1st (sometimes even earlier in K) so you should have seen some warning signs by late 1st grade, irrespective of Covid. Personally, I'm trying to teach my kindergartener how to read now, and I'm expecting that it will click to some degree *this year* and she'll be able to read some simple picture books with easy words/sentences. If she does not improve during beginning to middle of 1st grade next year, I will feel that something is wrong. I'm not trying to blame you personally but think that parents should know the signs and be aware of this (they should certainly be asking teachers the hard questions if they don't see their kid start to pick up interest in reading, or improvement across quarters). And what they do in school is not enough, parents have to practice a little each day with their kids at home, that will bring tremendous improvement and result in kids being early readers.

OMG could you BE more condescending???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My older daughter was "taught to read" using this shit approach and is STILL behind and not reading well. F_ her kindergarten teacher.

You could take part of the blame as well. It’s not all on teachers.

Why? This was my first child and I trusted the school to teach my child how to read, and I trusted them when I said "she can't read these specific beginner books, is that a problem?" and they said "nope, she's right where she should be." How was I to know any better? I think he moral of the story here is you can't trust educators, which is so, so sad.

Spot on, that's why parents have to be the primary source of teaching for their children until they can fly solo (hopefully by middle school). Listen to, be respectful, but take teacher feedback with some skepticism; you as a parent can (and should) independently assess your kid at a young age and draw your own conclusions in addition to teacher, to reduce risk.

But nobody tells new parents this - I am the child of uneducated immigrants. Everything I needed to learn, I learned in school. I have a phD, I'm successful, yet I trusted that my kids would also learn everything they needed to know in school, and that was not the case. My child was in 2nd grade during Covid, and didn't learn how to read in K and 1st, so we had to spend all of last year (3rd grade) paying a tutor to get her up to speed after three years without learning how to read!!!

Preach it! It's disgusting that parents cannot trust the schools and people on this thread are blaming them (us) for what? Thinking teachers with teaching degrees and often masters degrees in teaching know more about reading development and teaching reading than we do? If that's an irresponsible assumption, then it's not parents who have the issue. It's the system, which is exactly the point of the podcast.

The other huge problem with it is, sure, the PhD lady and other educated people will eventually stop believing the teachers that everything is okay and pay major $ to fix it (as she did and so did I). But what about the uneducated immigrants who can't speak English? Many are working multiple jobs and don't have the time. What about the un-remediated dyslexic parents? Single parents? Poor parents? Or those with multiple of those disadvantages? If you're saying the only way to be a good parent is to do these things that are literally impossible for disadvantaged parents, you're saying their kids don't deserve to be taught to read. It's a huge social justice and equity issue.

This is not teacher bashing. This is pushback to parent bashing and a system that is failing a huge number of kids. And the implication that we parents on this thread were not involved or paying attention. I read and read and read to my kid and brought up concerns only to be dismissed multiple times.

Well said!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My older daughter was "taught to read" using this shit approach and is STILL behind and not reading well. F_ her kindergarten teacher.

You could take part of the blame as well. It’s not all on teachers.

Why? This was my first child and I trusted the school to teach my child how to read, and I trusted them when I said "she can't read these specific beginner books, is that a problem?" and they said "nope, she's right where she should be." How was I to know any better? I think he moral of the story here is you can't trust educators, which is so, so sad.

Spot on, that's why parents have to be the primary source of teaching for their children until they can fly solo (hopefully by middle school). Listen to, be respectful, but take teacher feedback with some skepticism; you as a parent can (and should) independently assess your kid at a young age and draw your own conclusions in addition to teacher, to reduce risk.

But nobody tells new parents this - I am the child of uneducated immigrants. Everything I needed to learn, I learned in school. I have a phD, I'm successful, yet I trusted that my kids would also learn everything they needed to know in school, and that was not the case. My child was in 2nd grade during Covid, and didn't learn how to read in K and 1st, so we had to spend all of last year (3rd grade) paying a tutor to get her up to speed after three years without learning how to read!!!

Preach it! It's disgusting that parents cannot trust the schools and people on this thread are blaming them (us) for what? Thinking teachers with teaching degrees and often masters degrees in teaching know more about reading development and teaching reading than we do? If that's an irresponsible assumption, then it's not parents who have the issue. It's the system, which is exactly the point of the podcast.

The other huge problem with it is, sure, the PhD lady and other educated people will eventually stop believing the teachers that everything is okay and pay major $ to fix it (as she did and so did I). But what about the uneducated immigrants who can't speak English? Many are working multiple jobs and don't have the time. What about the un-remediated dyslexic parents? Single parents? Poor parents? Or those with multiple of those disadvantages? If you're saying the only way to be a good parent is to do these things that are literally impossible for disadvantaged parents, you're saying their kids don't deserve to be taught to read. It's a huge social justice and equity issue.

This is not teacher bashing. This is pushback to parent bashing and a system that is failing a huge number of kids. And the implication that we parents on this thread were not involved or paying attention. I read and read and read to my kid and brought up concerns only to be dismissed multiple times.

Well said!

Yeah I read to my kid multiple times a day and had 100s of books. We are wealthy by even DC standards. We are white privileged and neither of my kids were “natural” readers. The schools failed them with this whole language BS. It’s is not teaching but guessing and once the pictures go away- there is no context. So like the podcast said- we hired a tutor and there problem was solved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow I didn’t know if I just read to my kid that they would magically learn to read.

Stop being moronic- this is not how it works.especially if your kid is dyslexic

Ok. Then you are giving them kindergarten readiness skills. Would you know your kids is dyslexic at 3 years old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been hate-listening to the podcast. Full disclosure: my kids are excellent readers, but one of their best friends is in middle school, and reads at a 2nd grade level (severe dyslexia). She's very bright but needs explicit phonics instruction and the parents assumed all along the school system knew best and was doing best for her. All the wasted years, hours of extra instruction, teachers' efforts. I don't blame the teachers at all. I think the blame lies with the ed schools, who should have been pursuing and teaching the science of reading all along, and should have been lobbying for school districts to use proven curriculum.

A horrifying statistic: approximately 80% of the prison population is illiterate.

Another statistic: approximately 20% of high school graduates are illiterate. 1 in 5. How do we, as a nation, allow this to happen?

This is the biggest national crisis we have. The fact that it is not even in the top 20 political conversations is appalling.

+1. Smartest post on this topic thus far. Dead right. Don’t forget school admins who agreed to this crap with their worthless PhDs in organizational behavior or whatever.