Reply to when schools focus on the wrong things (from a teacher)

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[quote=Anonymous][b][quote=Anonymous]I'm a second year principal.  I taught K-2nd for 20 years, I was a reading specialist for 5 years.

I'm curious, the poster who said that testing doesn't measure decoding....do you use F&P in 2-5th?  If not, if you have any influence over curriculum decisions, I strongly recommend it.  F&P measures decoding, fluency, and comprehension.  You can see very clearly the type of errors a child makes and why, ie, are they missing their sight words, are they having trouble with vowels, are they making visual/meaning/syntax errors, what kinds of comprehension questions they are struggling with (ie, strict recall, inferences, etc).  Once a teacher knows what the issue is, she can remediate it pretty easily as long as there is no underlying cognitive issue.  [/b]If it is a decoding issue, that is a fairly easy fix and any teacher should be able to do this.  [b]In my school upper grade teachers who run into either decoding, fluency or comprehension issues all work on and remediate these issues.

What I see in our population is comprehension issues due to poverty, second language issues and lack of education among parents.....but it is interesting to hear some places are having decoding issues in upper grades.  I've quite literally never heard of this in 25 years in the field.  I suspect your students come from high poverty schools where the lower grade teachers are overwhelmed with behavior issues and other needs and cannot properly teach reading because of it.  And likely, reading specialists are few and far between.  So then they get to upper grades and they are behind.  I'm fortunate to be in a lower income school with highly trained teachers, small class sizes and a really tight knit professional community, which all helps to ensure strong reading instruction.  I know not everyone has that.

And as for the useless meetings?  You think teachers have a lot of these?  Absolutely.  Admins have more.  It is part of my mission to cut down on useless meetings at my school so we do a lot through emails and google docs.  [/quote]

Wow. How can you have been a reading specialist? It really isn't an easy fix to remediate a student who can't effortlessly and accurately decode. It is tragic that so many upper elementary students can't decode. Those students don't get help because most schools aren't teaching these students to decode. They are advanced to junior high and high school where they continue to struggle. A classroom teacher with 25 other students in 4th and 5th grade aren't stopping to teach basic reading skills to the students who can't decode. It is painful to hear these students read. I am a school counselor and so many of these kids have emotional and/or behavioral problems because they feel awful that school is so hard for them. One of the first things I do is listen to them read. I used to be a teacher and realize decoding is not being effectively taught in many schools.[/quote]

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