I remember how it was -- JR
Our children aren’t being taught to read and we need a national commitment to save their futures
It’s no accident that you can read and understand this sentence. A solid education empowered you with this fundamental skill. Yet today there are literally millions of kids in our nation who are behind in reading and, sadly, too many who can’t read at all. Your child may be one of them.
The latest data provide the facts — and they’re alarming. The National Assessment of Education Progress released its latest 4th and 8th grade reading scores for U.S. students and found that nearly 70 percent of these kids are testing "below proficient" in reading and are in real trouble. That’s not just appalling – it’s heartbreaking, especially because most parents think their kids are doing fine.
How did this happen? In a recent podcast series, "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong," journalist Emily Hanford shared stories of parents who discovered their children couldn’t read and the many challenges they faced in seeking help.
One parent, Corrine Adams, realized her son in kindergarten was not being taught to read when she helped him with his remote schooling during the pandemic. When she turned to Twitter to share her experience, Adams quickly found parents across the country had children who were not being taught how to read either.
This nationwide failure is real, and it has the potential to rob our children and grandchildren of a chance to reach their full potential. To cite one example, economist Eric Hanushek estimates that students impacted by pandemic-related learning loss will earn 6-9% less income throughout their life.
The path forward is effective policy. It’s why I founded the Foundation for Excellence in Education 15 years ago. Our organization recently hosted over 1,200 attendees at its annual National Summit on Education in Salt Lake City. Attendees heard from both Hanford and Hanushek and many other speakers in policy-focused discussions.
Central to our work is that every one of these solutions begins with what’s best for students. It’s why I strongly believe every child should have access to every educational option, similar to what was passed in neighboring Arizona with its Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program.
But that’s not all. In Utah, leaders have already made strides to enact commonsense policies. Senate President Stuart Adams is a champion for accountability that grades schools using letter grades – so schools are held accountable. Utah Sen. Ann Milner has championed some of the fundamentals of early literacy policy that include literacy coaches, screeners to promptly identify kids who are struggling, and early intervention, monitoring and supports for students until they’re on grade with their peers.
Jeb Bush: Nation's report card showing poor math and reading scores should be 'call to arms'Video
Yet in education, success is never final, reform is never complete. There’s still more that can be done. It starts with ensuring all early literacy curriculum is aligned with phonics and the science of reading and disallowing failed policies. States would be wise to follow the leads of Arkansas and Louisiana that have banned curriculums containing "3-cueing." As the podcast series I referenced earlier unveils, this failed method literally teaches young children to guess words rather than work on sounding out the letters and truly learning how to read.
I don’t expect parents to know this – they shouldn’t have to. But there is an industry that profits off this curriculum, despite overwhelming evidence it impairs a child’s reading skills.
It’s time to put students first and put an end to what’s not working for kids.
But there’s too much at stake – we all must play a part to help every child rise. There are things parents, guardians, grandparents and any trusted adult in a child’s life can do to help students recover lost learning.
Invest just 20 minutes of reading every day with a child. And research has found an additional 30 minutes a week of extra math work have proven to help students make educational gains.
As a national problem, it requires a national effort. It requires a national commitment to education excellence for every child. I know we have it in our capacity as Americans to help every child close these gaps and ensure every child can access their God-given potential for a meaningful life.
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New York Willing to Put Schools in Danger if They Don't Get Rid of Native American Mascots
Those entrenched in State-sanctioned education continue to display how they value political correctness over safety and are happy to use state aid as a means of extorting compliance.
The New York State Education Department’s Senior Deputy Commissioner, James Baldwin announced in a letter on Thursday a mandate that would affect all New York school districts.
According to the letter, the mandate would require New York schools to remove all mascots, team names and/or logos associated with Native American heritage by the end of the 2022-23 school year.
The letter stated that the use of Native American-themed imagery in schools violates the “Dignity for All Students Act” which was a law allegedly created to combat student harassment and discrimination.
Baldwin also cited an obscure psychological study that claimed Native-themed mascots in schools had negative impacts on Native American students including “reinforced stereotyping and prejudice among non-Native persons.”
Failure to comply with the mandate or to obtain permission from tribal leadership associated with the mascots or team names would mean the withdrawal of state funding.
The withdrawal of funding — according to the letter — would also include the loss of “school officers” for non-compliant schools.
New York City has one of the largest school districts in the country and since 1998, has required the presence of school safety officers on school grounds to protect students and staff from violence.
According to CBS New York, staffing levels for this position are already dangerously low.
CBS quoted Gregory Floyd, who is a Teamsters Local 237 president and representative of school safety agents.
Floyd stated that “the combination of ‘defund the police’ cuts and the vaccine mandate have spelled a dramatic drop in personnel — 1,200 agents who retired weren’t replaced and 600 more are not at work because they refused to get the COVID shot.”
“This results in violence not being prevented,” he continued.
Despite these important positions not being filled, misguided bureaucrats like Baldwin are threatening to pull the entirety of school safety officers should no schools comply with the mandate.
The piece by CBS discussed how New York parents are already concerned for the safety of their children and the increase in violent incidents on school grounds.
Parents who have children in non-compliant districts should be doubly concerned now that New York officials have declared political correctness to be a higher priority than that of their children’s safety.
“About 60 school districts in the state still have nicknames or mascot images that reference indigenous people,” according to NYSED in an article by Times Union.
Should any readers currently have children enrolled in any of those 60 school districts, it may be wise to consider alternative educational venues as woke “leaders” like Baldwin gladly risk their safety for the sake of virtue signaling.
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As California Schools Fall Even Further, A Charter School Shows How To Succeed
Only about one in four California students is proficient in math. Or in English. Or in science. California’s K–12 school system has been broken for decades, and it is getting even worse, despite a school budget that now spends on average nearly $500,000 per year, per classroom. This is failure on a grand scale, and what makes it so much worse is that our kids are the ones paying the price.
This could be turned around quickly, and it would not require more spending or new educational philosophies. All we need to do is follow the K–12 success stories that are quietly advancing the ball: schools that are spending less, that have less bureaucracy, and whose vision is focused on their students. The Kairos charter school in Vacaville, California, can teach the rest of California’s schools so much. Kairos has generated so much enthusiasm in their small community that their 650-student school, which admitted its first students only in 2015, has a waiting list for admissions that recently hit 1,000 students.
It is obvious why parents are flocking to the Kairos school. Compared to students in the district’s traditional schools, Kairos students are performing at very high levels. Since Kairos began in the 2014–15 school year, English language arts proficiency for students has averaged 64 percent at Kairos, compared to 48 percent for traditional schools in the Vacaville school district and 48 percent for all California schools. This performance advantage exists across all demographic groups: among poor households, 52 percent of students are proficient at Kairos, compared to 35 percent for the district and 36 percent for California; among Hispanic households, proficiency is at 54 percent for Kairos kids versus 38 percent for the district.
There are similar performance differences in math: on average since the 2014–15 school year, 52 percent of Kairos students have demonstrated proficiency, compared to 36 percent of students in both district traditional schools and in all California schools; among poor households, 37 percent are proficient at Kairos, compared to 23 percent in both the district and in all California schools; among Hispanic kids, proficiency is 42 percent for Kairos versus 26 percent for the district.
These performance differences are enormous. To put them in perspective, if California schools could broadly deliver Kairos-level learning outcomes, California’s school ranking within the United States would rise from well below average to among the best-performing state school systems in the country.
Kairos also operates a non-classroom-based homeschool program to support families homeschooling their children. During the pandemic, the school’s experience with this program helped Kairos manage teaching during mandatory school closures much more effectively than many other schools were able to. Kairos also chose to reopen their school much earlier during the pandemic than traditional schools, providing their students with seven additional months of in-person learning during the 2020–21 school year.
Kairos’s mission statement describes how it put students first: “Kairos Public Schools is committed to empowering generations of learners to think critically, analyze and apply knowledge strategically, and utilize relevant tools to interact thoughtfully within a global community.”
I had the opportunity to speak with Jared Austin, the cofounder and executive director of the school. He explained how the school has economized on the number of staff, which not only expands funding available for education but also creates a leadership team of a manageable size. Both the 650-student main campus and the homeschooling enrichment program together operate with an administrative staff of just six. Austin serves not only as the school’s executive director (superintendent) but also as the school’s principal, facilities director, and technology director.
Kairos is run efficiently. Kairos is building a new campus on a 27-acre site, land that was recently acquired using funds that the school had saved. The first phase of construction—a 12,000-square-foot learning center that will provide enrichment classes in areas such as math, science, and robotics for homeschooled children—will be completed early next year.
I asked Austin how they could possibly design the project, receive permits, and finish construction on a project of this size in less than a year. For California, this is the construction equivalent of light-speed space travel. “We have a great relationship within the community, including the fact that our students perform 5,000 hours of community service each year. The community really came together to help us make sure we could get this done as quickly as possible.” A 45,000-square-foot campus to address the waitlist will follow.
School success requires passionate and dedicated teachers. Austin described how teachers are included in key decision making within the school, including the decision to reopen the campus well before other California schools reopened. It is interesting to note that the Kairos faculty has chosen not to unionize.
The Kairos charter school recipe for success can be replicated. But a recent California law has made it difficult to form new charter schools. California Assembly Bill 1505, which passed in 2019 despite strong opposition from the Senate Republican Caucus, changed the approval process for new charter schools. Under AB 1505, an application for a new charter school can be denied if the charter would have a negative fiscal impact within the district. Traditional schools do not want to face the competition created by a charter school, since students who matriculate to a charter school take much of the associated per-pupil funding with them.
Under the new law, a charter school application could be denied if it would substantially undermine existing services or academic or programmatic offerings provided by incumbent schools. A new charter school could also be denied if the existing school was performing so poorly that it was in either state receivership or if the introduction of the charter school would draw enough resources away from the existing school that it could not meet its financial obligations.
Yes, the new law is written to keep students trapped inside the worst-performing schools. The truly awful aspect of this new law is that the worst-performing schools tend to be in low-income neighborhoods, where parents cannot afford private schools or other educational alternatives. If this law were about any other good or service provided today, it would represent a blatant violation of our antitrust laws. Somehow we continue to tolerate a horribly performing monopoly, one that substantially damages our children and our future.
The Kairos charter school shows that we don’t have to accept California’s failed school system. California’s school system could improve quickly and significantly if our political leaders were willing to permit competition within our education sphere. This would incentivize traditional schools to adopt best practices. But California’s school system is not focused on educating our kids. If it were, our schools’ performance would have been turned around decades ago. Instead, the system is focused on doling out a multibillion-dollar budget to satisfy a vast array of vested interests. And if you doubt this, just ask your local elected representative where they send their own kids to school.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14342&omhide=true&trk=title
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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