*advice

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you an educator?

When DCUM becomes "DC educators win arguments with DC Urban Moms and Dads by saying that they're educators," I'll let you know.

Well, until then, perhaps you shouldn't be giving advise on how students at low-performing schools learn best.

Anonymous wrote:OK, we get the basic idea that reading and writing and arithmetic needs to be ABOUT something to make sense. I just think it should be pretty tightly focused on the basics in order to build that skill set up.

We don't need the circumlocutions of logic about enrichment and non-core skillsets like, well, learning music makes you want to learn about other things, or dance makes you gain discipline, or finger-painting makes you spatially gifted and able to understand higher math.

All those things are probably true. But they're tangential to core life skills. And the kids who are already in educational deficit are not in a position to be focused on the tangential. And if they don't connect with the core life skills of reading, writing, and math, they'll have no further educational options. And what do you do with your life if you read and write at a third grade level and can't balance your checkbook? Would they even let you clerk at the quik-e-mart?

Question: What qualifies you to decide what the "core life skills" are?
Comment: Most people I know, including many who graduated from Ivy League schools, can't or don't bother to balance their checkbook.

Anonymous wrote:Are you an educator?

When DCUM becomes "DC educators win arguments with DC Urban Moms and Dads by saying that they're educators," I'll let you know.

Does anyone know if DCPS has rescinded the offer to Ms. Carter? Or are they just ignoring the Dallas matter?

Anonymous wrote:OK, we get the basic idea that reading and writing and arithmetic needs to be ABOUT something to make sense. I just think it should be pretty tightly focused on the basics in order to build that skill set up.

We don't need the circumlocutions of logic about enrichment and non-core skillsets like, well, learning music makes you want to learn about other things, or dance makes you gain discipline, or finger-painting makes you spatially gifted and able to understand higher math.

All those things are probably true. But they're tangential to core life skills. And the kids who are already in educational deficit are not in a position to be focused on the tangential. And if they don't connect with the core life skills of reading, writing, and math, they'll have no further educational options. And what do you do with your life if you read and write at a third grade level and can't balance your checkbook? Would they even let you clerk at the quik-e-mart?

Are you an educator?

OK, we get the basic idea that reading and writing and arithmetic needs to be ABOUT something to make sense. I just think it should be pretty tightly focused on the basics in order to build that skill set up.

We don't need the circumlocutions of logic about enrichment and non-core skillsets like, well, learning music makes you want to learn about other things, or dance makes you gain discipline, or finger-painting makes you spatially gifted and able to understand higher math.

All those things are probably true. But they're tangential to core life skills. And the kids who are already in educational deficit are not in a position to be focused on the tangential. And if they don't connect with the core life skills of reading, writing, and math, they'll have no further educational options. And what do you do with your life if you read and write at a third grade level and can't balance your checkbook? Would they even let you clerk at the quik-e-mart?

Anonymous wrote:

I honestly do not follow. If you are illiterate, scientific and historical context isn't going to help you READ that sentence. Literacy is fundamental. It is the first step to learning other stuff. Science and history and music are wasted if you can't read.

Okay, let me try to explain this to you. I am a literacy teacher. I can teach an illiterate student to read about 90% of words in the English language (sound out words and pronounce them correctly) in less than 1 year. The first 6 months are spent on learning spelling variations for sounds (phonics), the rest of the year is spent mostly on building fluency--meaning, sounding out words quickly, automatically.

Through this method I can get a kid from Kinder-level reading to 2nd or perhaps even 3rd grade reading level in one year. But I can't get them any higher than that. Why? They lack the necessary background knowledge and vocabulary to understand 3rd-5th grade level texts. If they are only given texts about contemporary American kids and their families (like Diary of A Wimpy Kid, etc) they understand. Give them a 3rd grade passage on another place, time, culture, or an non-fiction text? Not a clue. Why does this happen? Daniel Willingham explains it best:


"The mistaken idea that reading is a skill—learn to crack the code, practice comprehension strategies and you can read anything—may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-reading-is-not-a-sk.html

Anonymous wrote:Try reading a paragraph from a medical text book. You may be able to decode the whole thing but you may struggle to explain. Poor kids come in to elementary school so far behind in terms of general language it is very hard to catch up. Look at schools that at are doing it Kipp and to a certain extent Haynes and you see tons of additional support for this background knowledge That is why there is a lot of hope for more structured pre-school programs to help poorer kids not start so far behind. However it will take a long time to see if that works.

Exactly!

Try reading a paragraph from a medical text book. You may be able to decode the whole thing but you may struggle to explain. Poor kids come in to elementary school so far behind in terms of general language it is very hard to catch up. Look at schools that at are doing it Kipp and to a certain extent Haynes and you see tons of additional support for this background knowledge That is why there is a lot of hope for more structured pre-school programs to help poorer kids not start so far behind. However it will take a long time to see if that works.

Anonymous wrote:Hate to say it to the parents of these seriously undereducated kids at Garfield, but with scores like these:

MATH: 52.29% below basic 42.20% basic 4.59% proficient 0.92% advanced
READING: 42.20% below basic 47.71% basic 9.17% proficient 0.92% advanced

These kids could stand to skip science and enrichment for a while and learn some reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.

Too bad not to have science education. But without the ability to read or add, these kids are going to be cut off from the world for the rest of their lives.

Sorry not to be politically correct, but wasn't Garfield rated THE WORST of all DC elementary schools on DC-CAS recently? Time to teach to the test a little, and this lady sounds like the one to do it.

uninformed nonsense. Science and humanities instruction are vital for low readers in order to develop the vocabulary needed to read. If you don't know the words, you don't understand what you
are reading.

I know for a fact that at HD Woodson High School they have established a cohort to begin teaching to the test. It is the most ridiculous thing I have heard. Although, if you inform everyone upfront of what you are going to do to cheat, is it cheating?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hate to say it to the parents of these seriously undereducated kids at Garfield, but with scores like these:

MATH: 52.29% below basic 42.20% basic 4.59% proficient 0.92% advanced
READING: 42.20% below basic 47.71% basic 9.17% proficient 0.92% advanced

These kids could stand to skip science and enrichment for a while and learn some reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.

Too bad not to have science education. But without the ability to read or add, these kids are going to be cut off from the world for the rest of their lives.

Sorry not to be politically correct, but wasn't Garfield rated THE WORST of all DC elementary schools on DC-CAS recently? Time to teach to the test a little, and this lady sounds like the one to do it.

Try to read this sentence and pretend you've never learned anything about science or social studies:
Penicillin was discovered sixty-three years after the end of the US Civil War.

Learning how to read isn't all about sounding out letters and words.

I honestly do not follow. If you are illiterate, scientific and historical context isn't going to help you READ that sentence. Literacy is fundamental. It is the first step to learning other stuff. Science and history and music are wasted if you can't read.

Did you ever study a second language, but not become fluent at it? Chances are you might be able to literally READ an entire story in that language aloud (or in your head), but at the end you'll have no idea what the story is about. That is what it means to be able to decode, but not comprehend. The reason you don't understand it is because you are not familiar with enough of the words, not because you literally cannot read it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only thing that can be done is to support DC's renaissance as a middle-class city. The schools will follow. The (much fewer) remaining poor families will get a good education in schools that have 10% poverty as opposed to 80%. The rest will get an education in MD or VA.

IOW - the way to improve DC schools is to get rid of the poor black children in them.

How true. the schools will improve, but the poor black kids won't - but who cares if the real issue is "DC's renaissance"

THe poor black kids will disappear into MD or VA and won't be an embarrassment to DC anymore.

So much for narrowing the achievement gap and for providing a good education for all children, regardless of zip code.

80-100% low SES schools will not succeed. Segregation, whether racial or economic is wrong. Having those low SES kids in diverse schools rather than segregated into a few very poor schools is better for everyone.

Are you proposing moving out many of the poor kids to help them learn in integrated classrooms in VA and MD or to just move them out so white folks can move in -- sort of like the reverse of the 50s in DC?

Anonymous wrote:

I honestly do not follow. If you are illiterate, scientific and historical context isn't going to help you READ that sentence. Literacy is fundamental. It is the first step to learning other stuff. Science and history and music are wasted if you can't read.

The Garfield kids are not illiterate in the way you imagine - they can read and write. They may know their letters and may be able to sound out words and recognize many words. They don't rate "proficient" on the tests because they don't understand the meaning of the questions or don't express themselves well in writing.