I think it's a mistake to politicize learning to read. Methods that work should be implemented, and it shouldn't matter which political party instigated the program or funded it or didn't fund it appropriately.
The sad fact is, that for the kids who were getting left behind in terms of learning to read, (which affects their ability to perform in every other aspect of and subject in school- even algebra) there are often processing disorders and memory issues which, like it or not, call for an incredible amount of rote and repetition to be applied in their reading instruction. That's just a fact. I've done it for years- and it is boring (to teach), but it's not boring for the kid who finally gets it because enough time has been spent on that basic skill. It sounds like these specific kids are getting what they need- finally. And successes can be transforming for children and schools who haven't ever had them before.
I do regret that it's at the expense of the kids who do not need so much repetition and rote instruction. The only thing I can see to do to change that is to go back to the old tracking system in which kids are grouped by ability and given the amount and level of instruction that pertains to their specific learning style. I don't know what the climate toward that is in the US right now, so I don't know how likely that is to happen.
I didn't vote for GB, and I wasn't for this act, but if teachers and parents are working together in problem schools and kids who couldn't read are learning to read-even just one- I don't really care which side of the partisan pile it all came from. Maybe we can take these results (if they're even accurate-let's face it, it's politics- so who the heck knows?) and fiddle and fine tune so that things can be moved around to suit some of the brighter kids.
But the fact that some parents and teachers are working together is a big change and a great start. (I hope that at least that part is true...)
Newsweek arrived in my mailbox this morning and I was reading the "My Turn" essay when I thought of this thread.
One paragraph says...
Quote:The fears are as irrational as they are rampant. Recently my children's elementary school failed to meet adequate yearly progress goals for a particular minority's reading progress under the No Child Left Behind Act and was placed on a warning list. This meant parents might gain the right to transfer their children to another school in the district. Never mind that this very same school sent more kids to the district's gifted program than any other, or that this entire district has the highest SAT scores in the state. The day the news broke, six different moms (none in the affected minority) asked me if I was planning to transfer my kids. From neighborhood pride and joy to threat to child's future overnight.
(Whole essay at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17770831/site/newsweek/)
Isn't one of the rules of NCLB that scores must keep improving?
McGentrix wrote: Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
Jesus wept.
You might also find, if you care to pull your cranium from your rectum and actually
think for a change, that there are quite a number of conservative opponents to NCLB.
Of course, these are folks that do not worship at GW Bush's feet, so they may not run in the same circles as you.
joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
This would be more believable had you ever shown a hint of having a sense of humor.
DrewDad wrote:McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
This would be more believable had you ever shown a hint of having a sense of humor.
Right. Coming from a humor challenged expert as yourself, I expect no less.
McGentrix wrote:DrewDad wrote:McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
This would be more believable had you ever shown a hint of having a sense of humor.
Right. Coming from a humor challenged expert as yourself, I expect no less.
It's easy enough to get one over on you, McG, you don't have to toss us ammo like this last post, really!
If you can't see the irony in what you wrote, it's really too late for you.
Cycloptichorn
you brilliant intellectuals and former educators can argue the merits of NCLB all you want but I work in the karaoke business where I get request cards turned in all the time. Believe me, from 7 to 37, 75% of my clientele can't spell, they can't read, an alphabetized songbook is just waaaay to confusing for them. And I do a lot of work with college students, high school students, middle school students.
I don't have to be a weatherman to look out the window.
Stupidity works.
Yes, no child left behind is working on the thing that it was created to do.
Now, lets look at the side effects: pushing slower learners through school is destroying the possiblities of those who are fast learners. I know, I went to school while the program was in effect. Those fast learners want to be challenged and see some things in class that truely intrest them, being in a class room with slower students doesn't allow teachers to give them this, which is what they need as modivation to aspire greater knowlege.
Short post, yes, I could rant for pages, but I'm gonna leave it at that and let your immagination tick.
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:you brilliant intellectuals and former educators can argue the merits of NCLB all you want but I work in the karaoke business where I get request cards turned in all the time. Believe me, from 7 to 37, 75% of my clientele can't spell, they can't read, an alphabetized songbook is just waaaay to confusing for them. And I do a lot of work with college students, high school students, middle school students.
I don't have to be a weatherman to look out the window.
This would be too easy...
McGentrix wrote:DrewDad wrote:McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
This would be more believable had you ever shown a hint of having a sense of humor.
Right. Coming from a humor challenged expert as yourself, I expect no less.
"humor challenged expert"
I see you could have done with an extra lesson in when to use hyphens.
Also, you should learn a better comeback than "I'm rubber and you're glue...." Seriously. That was weak.
Cycloptichorn wrote:McGentrix wrote:DrewDad wrote:McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
This would be more believable had you ever shown a hint of having a sense of humor.
Right. Coming from a humor challenged expert as yourself, I expect no less.
It's easy enough to get one over on you, McG, you don't have to toss us ammo like this last post, really!
If you can't see the irony in what you wrote, it's really too late for you.
Cycloptichorn
Duh, you think so? Why must every comment be explained to you guys? Are you really that thick?
Great, now where do the kids sign up for good paying jobs where they take tests all day?
I have taught in every grade in primary education except for third grade and as well both undergraduate and graduate university courses; focusing on taking tests is just simple minded bullshit and accounts for only a small fraction of the educational process and it should not be held up as some sort of Holy Grail.
Quote:"A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled"
Plutarch
Only the uneducated, simple-minded person looking for easy answers thinks that focusing on test scores is the answer to the educational crisis in America, you know, Conservatives and Republicans.
btw: I grew up just a stones-throw from the schools mentioned, and Norristown traditionally had bad schools because the Republicans running the town generally refused to raise school taxes, with most of the politicos sending their kids to private Catholic schools leaving the black kids to rot in the public schools.
I was raised by rote and have long decried it.
On the other hand, I knew my math tables and could spell fairly well fairly early, and knew my capitals around the world and some characteristics of various regions. Not only that, I think those beginning lessons helped me to work up a life long love of travel. More immediately, I had a pretty rigid idea of learning for course content. (I went to Catholic schools, only disliking the last one in retrospect.)
Sometime later, I caught on that I had no clue how to argue, though I did have disagreements with this and that as my high school and college years progressed - that is, I was apparently beginning to think.
People like me never had to take remedial English, but I think we were bereft re how to think. Well, maybe not how (vote for...), but the process of thinking, working things out.
Took me a while.
So, re children, I'd like to see those two happen more simultaneously, not waiting until someone is eighteen to start to instill the questioning/research/logic part.
From as far away as I am, it seems like the perfect time to develop arguing abiility, reasoning facility, debate techniques... is in the teens.
Not everyone is a born debator, but, simple logical reasoning seems a useful item to teach, as the urge to argue is ever present.
Can you tell I went to a school where one of my teacher's favorite t-shirts was "Question Authority"? ;-)
Those things can and do co-exist (I was reading well above grade level throughout elementary school and skipped my English class in middle school because I was able to convince the teacher -- who was resistant -- that I knew it all already).
(Er, I didn't actually know everything there was to know about the English language, just the grammatical rules and such that were on the seventh-grade curriculum.)
<waves "NCLB SUCKS!!" banner, dashes off>
I've never known the teacher that thinks their students are the ones that need programs like NSLB. They all believe they are the best teachers in the world and that it is the system that is failing their children. Programs like NCLB is unnecessary because "A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled"...
Yet we have so many kids across the nation who are not even learning the basics of how to read and write. Simple math is beyond them, yet no teacher can be faulted as they have a philosophy of "not my students".
Osso wants logic and reason and other super things taught in school. I just want them all to be able to read and do simple math. How about we reach my goals first, then shoot for the stars.
McGentrix wrote:joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:joe, quit being an instigator. Our children are beyond petty political bickering. This is just another Bush program that has been successful despite the left.
I have little hope for you,
McG, but I hope everyone else enjoyed the irony of your response as much as I did.
Should I have put a smily face in? I find that sometimes you guys fail to get something as funny unless someone cues you with a smiley face.
Translation: "I meant to do that."
