Can Reading Be Saved?

In the Education Week Teacher article Can Reading Be Saved?, Kelly Gallagher outlined his vision for correcting a sagging reading level in students.  Gallagher is a 25-year veteran from California and has authored four books on reading and writing. 
   
In the interview article, Gallagher points to the usual suspects for student ill-ability to comprehend what they read…Facebook, texting, IMs…but he reserves most of the blame on teaching strategies. 

“I think what we are doing is selling out the long-term prospects of our kids becoming readers for the short-term pressures to raise test scores.  And the sad thing is, I don’t think that those two things are mutually exclusive.”

His solution is to have kids read books that are interesting at the student’s level.  While its important to offer challenging reading text, he argues, its more important to have books that they can handle. 

“…if you have a high school kid reading at the 4th grade level, he or she should be reading a lot of books at the 4th grade level.   And once they get better at that, then he should be reading books at the 5th grade level.”  And so on.

Mr. Gallagher sees well-intentioned culprits for the lack of reading development.  Here is a brief list:

• Teaching “strategies”
• “Fake” school writing (as opposed to the writing we want kids to do when they grow up.)
• Slowing down stories to recap and explain. 
• Stressing standards at the exclusion of classics.

 All of the above are done in an attempt to help students, but they are counter-productive according to Gallagher.


“More than ever, we need to reintroduce kids to the richness and creative play of our subject.”

A Moment of Parenting Genius

A recent conversation caused me to remember a rare moment from a few years ago.  I was driving my oldest child, then 6, to her first violin recital.  She was all dolled up with her best hair and fancy dress.

Like every 6-year-old, she was unpredictable.  This child was ADHD, showing glowing brilliance one moment and then hanging upside down on the furniture the next.  I wanted desperately for everyone at the recital to see the former and scared that they may see the latter.  To add to the parental pressure, the other performers were all from a music family.

About 1/2 mile away from the recital, I started to think about all of the last minute coaching advice to give her.  "Stand up tall", "focus on what you are doing", "be sure you pay attention to when you are up", and "if you mess up, just pick up where you left off and keep going" all rushed into my head.  Then my mouth opened.

For a brief moment, I was brilliant.

"Have fun" is all I offered.

What did I know about playing the violin, anyway?

On that day she had played as well as I had ever heard her.  In some other recitals she didn't.  But she always looked forward to the recital as something to enjoy.  She did NOT see it as a job where Dad gets all over her or as something to just "get through" without embarrassment. 


I won't take credit for all of that, or her love of competition.  But I can proudly say that I didn't HURT the cause on that day. 

Depts. of Ed. Grow While Teachers are Laid Off

This is a call to all readers to share their stories about the matter.  Since RTTT funds have been dispensed, the departments of education in the winning states have expanded.  At the same time, teachers positions are being eliminated, budgets for basics (like books) shrink wildly, and employee benefits are being reduced.

Instead of laying out the evidence that I have found to support the claim, let's open this up to discussion.  We would really like to hear what's going on across the country.

How Does Cutting Benefits Help Recruit Teachers?

North Carolina educator Shalon Matthews had her salary frozen not long after she started teaching several years ago.  Last week, the North Carolina legislature passed new law that will cost teachers more to receive the same benefits.  Shalon is beginning to run out of reasons to stay in the profession.  “The pay isn’t great.  Benefits were a perk, and now that’s gone.”

She is not alone in her frustration.  And this blog post does not purport that there is anyone specific to blame.  When money and budgets dwindle, hard and unpopular decisions have to be made.  People suffer.

The point of this post is to reconcile the events in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and other states with the current Administration’s plans to make becoming and staying qualified as a teacher or principal more difficult and expensive. 

Becoming and staying a teacher continuously becomes less attractive.  Shalon adds, “Whenever there is a change, its never good.”  She has a point.  Never in her career has there been any news of a pay increase, benefits increase, or new policy that reduces the schools’ overwhelming responsibilities. 

In the mid 1990s, then governor George W. Bush issued changes that increased teacher pay significantly in Texas.  Other than that, all news had been bad news.

Laws continuously change to hold schools more accountable for student learning, well being, and safety.  Fair enough.  The laws also keep increasing the school’s culpability for what happens in a student’s home, how they get to school, how much they eat, what they are eating, the decisions that they make outside of class, what they are wearing, what NOT to say to them regarding what they are wearing, etc.

Teachers' jobs are often held over their heads because of these matters.


Again, its hard to find one person to blame.  But it is the reality of the situation.  Where do we get teachers who want to do all this…and keep doing it when the number of hoops they have to jump through increases while pay and benefits don’t?

Need another reason to question the attractiveness of teaching?  Read this article about abused teachers.

If you have a solution, please leave it here.  The world will be better for it.

What We Can Learn by Watching the Japanese

Unless they were living near Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945, the people in southeast Japan have not seen a worse time.  The have faced a magnitude 9 earthquake, devastating tsunamis, and a perilous situation with a nuclear reactor.  Any one of those individually could mark a worst time in anyone's life.  They faced all three in the same day.  The troubles brought by the first two are still very real, as is the third.

So the people wait in line for hours to get the barest of bare essentials.  Water, food, fuel.  Some come up empty handed despite the wait. What is amazing about how the people of Japan have handled the crises thus far is what they have NOT been doing.

To date there are no reports of a single incident requiring law enforcement.  The people are not shoving each other to get a better position in line.  They are not looting stores.  They are not fighting.  They are not going on TV to pronounce that their current leader is the reason for the suffering.  They are not blaming the rest of the world for not coming to their aid fast enough.

Instead these people wait their turn.  They share what limited amounts of food and water that they have.  They hold each other's place in line.  They help their neighbors carry the heavy loads. 

There isn't enough space on this blog to justly qualify how incredible the Japanese people have been.  So why try? 

The Japanese people have absolutely been an incredible testament to what the best of humanity can be.

The Real Value of a Simon Cowell

In his mega-best seller The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman described the “American Idol Effect.”  It happens to people who are facing criticism for the first time and are shocked to hear that they aren’t perfect.  He pulls the comparison to wannabe American Idols when they faced Simon Cowell for the first time and were not ready for what they heard.  

Some huffed, some threw water, and some just melted down and yelled obscenities.  

Friedman was making the point that we are doing a disservice to American high school students when we leave them to incorrectly think that they are performing at a high level.  The longer we put off telling them the truth, the harsher their American Idol moment.  

Simon Cowell delivered American Idol moments like no one else could. He was blunt, succinct, and sometimes over-harsh.  But he told the contestants what they needed to hear.  He send extra sharp words to contestants that didn’t seem to hear normal critique, he used colorful analogies and metaphor for contestants that didn’t seem to “get it”, and sometimes he would say what a contestant needed to get a fire lit under their butt.  He was the best at it and sometimes hated for it.

What Simon did so well is not easy.   By nature people prefer to deliver good news and be liked.  Teachers, parents, friends included.  But everyone needs a Simon.  Whether it was the whiner who Simon told, “never beg” or the many who were informed that they’d be better suited for cabaret singing.  They all needed to hear it.  It is too bad that they had to wait until adulthood.

On the occasion that Simon laid out a compliment or offered a “well done”, everyone knew that it meant something.  It was earned and was a fail-proof sign that a performer was “getting it done.”  The same cannot be said for the multiple (over) affirmations students receive in their daily lives.  They come so often and for so many reasons, the students sometimes never grasp where reality is.

The exception to the rule is students who perform in front of others and allow themselves to be judged.  Kids who perform and compete in band, drama, choir, debate, public speaking, and sports are told daily where they need to improve.  They are also judged (sometimes unfairly) by spectators.  These kids get it.  They face it at an early age and they get the reality of where their performance is.  They also grow as people.

In the cycle of correction, adjustment, performance, and critique are lessons that so many American Idol wannabes don’t get.  And they show the ill effects in the first round, to the sadistic delight of television viewers everywhere.  

What says you?  Leave a comment and let’s get to the bottom of this.

Is STEM Education Getting Too Many Props?

In a recent Huffington Post article, Alfie Kohn takes exception with what he sees as an excessive and disproportionate amount of emphasis given to STEM subject areas.  Using the bet humor he could muster, Kohn tries to make sense of “why STEM subjects consistently attract so much money and attention.”

Among decision leaders and the general public, I suspect that STEM enjoys an immediate advantage simply because it tends to involve numbers. Our society is inclined to regard any topic as more compelling if it can be expressed in numerical terms. Notice how rarely we evaluate schools by their impact on students' interest in learning; we focus on precisely specified achievement effects. Issues that inherently seem qualitative in nature -- intrinsic motivation, say, or the meaning of life -- we consign to the ivory tower. And when questions that don't lend themselves to quantification aren't simply brushed aside, they're reduced to numbers anyway. Witness, for example, how English teachers have been told that they not only can, but must, use rubrics to quantify their responses to students' writings.

Ok then. Where Mr. Kohn gets his figures for Science and Math "over-funding" must a very different source than that used by...well...everyone else.  And if Mr. Kohn could produce a reliable system for measuring student interest, he'd make a killing. 

I will concede a few points, although the author never made them.  First, Science and Math performance is easily compared across countries because of the universal nature of the subject areas.  For Math and Science, we have TIMMS.  Finding a way to compare Language Arts proficiency between American students and students from Singapore is an exercise in futility. An international comparison in Social Studies is even more difficult.  Afterall, General Santa Anna is held as a military and intellectual hero in Mexico and some of the world has yet to see the Industrial Revolution.

The second concession is that a degree in a STEM field does not necessarily offer better career prospects.  No degree is a “guarantee” of anything.

But in response to Mr. Kohn, I must concur with one of the online reader comments:

“I have a degree in the art, but think we have neglected math and science too much…mostl­y because it's hard and we don't want to put too much pressure on the kids. Grrr.

Perhaps if we pushed math and science a little more, people could have calculated their mortgage payments and realized they couldn't afford what a conniving bank said they could.”

Its not that Science and Math deserve more funding and attention than the humanities, it’s that they (Science, especially) have been so under-emphasized in the past.  They have also been taught incorrectly way too often.  Elementary grade teachers are almost always "Reading People" by preference and education.  That is not inherently a bad thing, but we do need to see the situation for what it is.

The habit of eschewing “the harder” subjects is carried by students when they get to college.  The graduation rate of pre-meds and engineers is still severely dwarfed by Sociology majors.  Heck, all majors are dwarfed by Sociology.

Of those that do graduate form an American university with a high level STEM degree,  growing numbers are from other countries.  Why?  Because foreign students are coming to American colleges better prepared for the hard stuff. 

What say you?  Leave your comments here and let's get to the bottom of this.