Anonymous wrote:

As has been said on DCUM many times before, the overwhelming majority of teachers are not able to provide enough in-class differentiation for it to make a difference. This is why schools need more robust support to get kids up to grade level, i.e. tracking, and/or additional reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum.

You can put in reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum, but that is at the sacrifice of electives like art, music, tech, cosmetology, child care, electronics, auto shop, etc.---because this is a zero sum game. The students who are behind are "punished" because they are not allowed to take these fun and interesting courses that might play to their more applied abilities. And, many of these students have been in those kinds of remedial classes for years with no huge increases in reading and math levels. The applied classes may actually be just as effective in getting the kids to improve in reading and math. And, the kids actually may be happier (but who cares about that).

How do you think these students feel when they fail the standardized tests year after year and are forced to go to remediation? Many give up. They HATE the tests. Teachers spend inordinate amounts of time trying to "pump them up" for the tests. They bring food, promise pizza parties, promise higher grades, whatever. Principals do crazy things like dance on the roof if they pass.

But, eventually The students start misbehaving. School has not been a positive experience for them. They try to get themselves kicked out of school because they feel like failures and want an excuse to save face. They stop showing up to school mostly and then there is no hope for any teacher (much less a great one) to "save them".

It's all a big downer and teachers are feeling very tired of all of it.

Yes, so true. Rick Lavoie, the special education expert, says that most of the prison population in this country actually have learning issues.

Here's a very interesting exchange:

Prison Cell Building Based on Literacy Rates

David Boulton: Now I'd like to invite you to go into this question that I asked earlier about the relationship between learning disabilities in the field and reading, and reading as a learning-disabling process for those that don't get it.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

David Boulton: To an extent that it's just mind-boggling to me, when we look at the various things children are at risk for, that they might develop that could do harm to their lives, that could diminish their potential in life, the risk of having some reading-related difficulty that can harm their life is greater than everything else we pay attention to combined.

Rick Lavoie: Absolutely. Reid Lyon talks all the time about the number of states in the United States who use reading skill levels in third grade to project how many prisons they're going to need twenty years down the line. That’s horrifying to think of that, but they really do. Their prison-building programs are based on the literacy rates in the third grade and they're figuring in twenty years they're going to need this many prisons based on the number of kids who can't read in third grade. That's how close the correlation is. That's how real the correlation is.

David Boulton: What we're basically saying is this comes back to the shame avoidance, the kind of things that you've been talking about. What we're saying is that children that struggle with learning to read become self-disabled in some ways. Their relationship with themselves becomes disabled. They become more prone to social pathology, and it radiates, at massive expense to our society as a whole and to our population as a whole, to such an extent that this is the nation's greatest learning disability.

Rick Lavoie: There are a number of schools within the field of education; in terms of the way we view the relationship between reading and learning. I come from the school where the inability to read is a symptom of a larger language problem. The overwhelming majority of kids who have difficulty, who have learning problems, have difficulty reading. And the overwhelming majority of kids with reading problems also have learning problems. So, I have a difficult time teasing the two of them away because they are so fundamental and so interlocked.

Rick Lavoie, L.D. and Special Education Professor, Source: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/lavoie.htm#PrisonBuildingPrograms

Washington State Democratic Party State Committee Rejects Common Core


http://www.livingindialogue.com/washington-state-democratic-party-committee-vote-rejects-common-core/


Resolution Opposing Common Core State Standards
WHEREAS the copyrighted (and therefore unchangeable) Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a set of controversial top-down K-12 academic standards that were promulgated by wealthy private interests without research-based evidence of validity and are developmentally inappropriate in the lowest grades; and

WHEREAS, as a means of avoiding the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment prohibition against federal meddling in state education policy, two unaccountable private trade associations–the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)–have received millions of dollars in funding from the Gates Foundation and others to create the CCSS; and

WHEREAS the U.S. Department of Education improperly pressured state legislatures into adopting the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes standardized testing based on them as a condition of competing for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) stimulus funds that should have been based on need; and

WHEREAS as a result of Washington State Senate Bill 6669, which passed the State legislature on March 11, 2010, the Office of the Superintendent of Instruction (OSPI) adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on July 20, 2011; and

WHEREAS this adoption effectively transfers control over public school standardized testing from locally elected school boards to the unaccountable corporate interests that control the CCSS and who stand to profit substantially; and

WHEREAS the Washington State Constitution also calls for public education to be controlled by the State of Washington through our elected State legislature, our elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and our elected local school boards; and

WHEREAS implementation of CCSS will cost local school districts hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for standardized computer-based tests, new technology, new curricula and teacher training at a time when Washington is already insufficiently funding K-12 Basic Education without proven benefit to students; and WHEREAS some states have already withdrawn from CCSS;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we call upon the Washington State legislature and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to withdraw from the CCSS and keep K-12 education student-centered and accountable to the people of Washington State.

Here is a big upper for students who qualify (must be a citizen). The Department of Labor actually has 125 schools through a program called Job Corps. There are 60,000 students in Job Corps nationwide and the focus is on vocational training (what the public K-12) is not emphasizing. The students are ages 16-24. I have visited Job Corps and I have referred students there. It is a great alternative.

No matter what the future job market may hold, these look like jobs that will be there.

http://recruiting.jobcorps.gov/Libraries/pdf/outreach_flier_bilingual.sflb

As has been said on DCUM many times before, the overwhelming majority of teachers are not able to provide enough in-class differentiation for it to make a difference. This is why schools need more robust support to get kids up to grade level, i.e. tracking, and/or additional reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum.

You can put in reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum, but that is at the sacrifice of electives like art, music, tech, cosmetology, child care, electronics, auto shop, etc.---because this is a zero sum game. The students who are behind are "punished" because they are not allowed to take these fun and interesting courses that might play to their more applied abilities. And, many of these students have been in those kinds of remedial classes for years with no huge increases in reading and math levels. The applied classes may actually be just as effective in getting the kids to improve in reading and math. And, the kids actually may be happier (but who cares about that).

How do you think these students feel when they fail the standardized tests year after year and are forced to go to remediation? Many give up. They HATE the tests. Teachers spend inordinate amounts of time trying to "pump them up" for the tests. They bring food, promise pizza parties, promise higher grades, whatever. Principals do crazy things like dance on the roof if they pass.

But, eventually The students start misbehaving. School has not been a positive experience for them. They try to get themselves kicked out of school because they feel like failures and want an excuse to save face. They stop showing up to school mostly and then there is no hope for any teacher (much less a great one) to "save them".

It's all a big downer and teachers are feeling very tired of all of it.

Who would be a proponent of these standards? It would have been like being a cheerleader for Enron.

As has been said on DCUM many times before, the overwhelming majority of teachers are not able to provide enough in-class differentiation for it to make a difference. This is why schools need more robust support to get kids up to grade level, i.e. tracking, and/or additional reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum.

I don't see how your second sentence follows from the first one. If teachers cannot do something now, ask them to do something more impossible? Telling teachers to do something impossible without any more support (lower class sizes, more teachers, more $$$) is not going to help.

Your "robust" standards fall on deaf ears (because the teachers can't do anything about the lack of support in their schools). To blame these people is a worthless exercise. You will just get new teachers who experience the same thing. If you think this is all about the teachers, you are badly mistaken.

We need to find ways to make people productive based on their strengths. Maybe that cannot be STEM for everyone. Maybe some people are happy doing other things and improving on their own timelines. Let's make education broader and make schools a happier place. Happiness must enter into our lives somewhere. An unhappy populace makes for a miserable country.

These guys were reading at a 3rd grade level *before* they started college. How did they graduate HS reading at a 3rd grade level? It's not the colleges forcing the ES and MS to graduate kids with just a 3rd grade reading level.

A lot of such kids also have parents that are functionally illiterate. I don't know what the percentages are, but I don't think the majority of people who are functional illiterates have LD/SN.

You are flat wrong.

From a federal government document:
^^^^^

The employment problems of individuals who are functionally illiterate or deficient in
basic skills has recently become a policy concern in the Administration and in Congress. A
related concern is that a substantial number of functionally illiterate or basic skills deficient
persons may. in fact, be learning disabled. If a substantial proportion of persons in Job
Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and other employment and training programs who have been
identified as functionally illiterate are learning disabled. it may be necessary to reconsider
programmatic approaches to assessment and training.

Please read the rest of this paper:

http://wdr.doleta.gov/opr/fulltext/91-learning_es.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

It is the parents who are the problem.

And therefore we should blame the teachers.

Surely the teachers noticed the lack of reading skills, grade after grade? Aren't they supposedly able to differentiate to provide the additional needed support to get them up to grade level?

Guess not!

As has been said on DCUM many times before, the overwhelming majority of teachers are not able to provide enough in-class differentiation for it to make a difference. This is why schools need more robust support to get kids up to grade level, i.e. tracking, and/or additional reading and math labs beyond the core curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

And they do this at the college level, too. Some educators keep perpetuating it.

http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/03/college-g...s-to-keep-them-playing-sports/

"So far, few people seem to be pointing out that some high schools are graduating illiterates."

The "college athletes who are illiterate" problem is the exception. That stuff happens because of the money in college athletic programs, not because there were no standards in high school. Get rid of the college athletics and you will solve the problem. Athletes will not be given a free pass through high school for the benefit of college "big money" athletics.

Parents surely must come into the picture somewhere with these kids who are illiterate. Don't they notice that their kid is not learning to read and write? In most school districts there would be testing for special education. Maybe that's where the problem is----school districts that are not testing for special education.

These guys were reading at a 3rd grade level *before* they started college. How did they graduate HS reading at a 3rd grade level? It's not the colleges forcing the ES and MS to graduate kids with just a 3rd grade reading level.

A lot of such kids also have parents that are functionally illiterate. I don't know what the percentages are, but I don't think the majority of people who are functional illiterates have LD/SN.

Getting off topic, but there is a letter to editor in Wapo today about Head Start kids and their truancy. That is not the teacher's fault.

It is the parents who are the problem.

And therefore we should blame the teachers.

The "college athletes who are illiterate" problem is the exception. That stuff happens because of the money in college athletic programs, not because there were no standards in high school. Get rid of the college athletics and you will solve the problem. Athletes will not be given a free pass through high school for the benefit of college "big money" athletics.

Parents surely must come into the picture somewhere with these kids who are illiterate. Don't they notice that their kid is not learning to read and write? In most school districts there would be testing for special education. Maybe that's where the problem is----school districts that are not testing for special education.

This may be the most naïve post I have ever read. It is the parents who are the problem.

The "college athletes who are illiterate" problem is the exception. That stuff happens because of the money in college athletic programs, not because there were no standards in high school. Get rid of the college athletics and you will solve the problem. Athletes will not be given a free pass through high school for the benefit of college "big money" athletics.

Parents surely must come into the picture somewhere with these kids who are illiterate. Don't they notice that their kid is not learning to read and write? In most school districts there would be testing for special education. Maybe that's where the problem is----school districts that are not testing for special education.

No. College athletics has nothing to do with it--except to get kids in college who are not qualified. You really don't understand the problem.

And they do this at the college level, too. Some educators keep perpetuating it.

http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/03/college-g...s-to-keep-them-playing-sports/

"So far, few people seem to be pointing out that some high schools are graduating illiterates."

The "college athletes who are illiterate" problem is the exception. That stuff happens because of the money in college athletic programs, not because there were no standards in high school. Get rid of the college athletics and you will solve the problem. Athletes will not be given a free pass through high school for the benefit of college "big money" athletics.

Parents surely must come into the picture somewhere with these kids who are illiterate. Don't they notice that their kid is not learning to read and write? In most school districts there would be testing for special education. Maybe that's where the problem is----school districts that are not testing for special education.