A recent meeting with a parent and student was both revealing and typical. The young teenager was having trouble in his classes when it came to reading comprehension. The parent was a college grad and professional person and wanted to have some insight into why his child was lagging.
I asked whether or not the family had the newspaper delivered in the morning?
No.
Do you receive any magazines?
No.
Both parent and child – a father and son in this instance- said they hated to read.
Here’s where it’s typical. I’d imagine colleagues all over the country have had similar meetings and coming to similar conclusions. We are quickly becoming a society that does not read. We play video games, text, watch TV and listen to music piped directly into our ears. If we don’t read, we won’t be any good at comprehending. Ultimately it results in a serious lack of progress in school.
Reform over the last few decades has been focused on schools and teachers. Today’s article by noted education writer Diane Ravitch delves into the problem:
I used to be a strong supporter of school accountability and choice. But in recent years, it became clear to me that these strategies were not working. The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program enacted in 2002 did not produce large gains in reading and math. The gains in math were larger before the law was implemented, and the most recent national tests showed that eighth-grade students have made no improvement in reading since 1998. By mandating a utopian goal of 100 percent proficiency, the law encouraged states to lower their standards and make false claims of progress. Worse, the law stigmatized schools that could not meet its unrealistic expectation.
Choice, too, has been disappointing. We now know that choice is no panacea. The districts with the most choice for the longest period — Cleveland and Milwaukee — have seen no improvement in their public schools nor in their choice schools. Charter schools have been compared to regular public schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and have never outperformed them. Nationally, only 3 percent of public school students are enrolled in charters, and no one is giving much thought to improving the system that enrolls the other 97 percent.
What this underscores is that both sides of the political spectrum have been long. Democrats have long just advocated for more funding and sided with unions for political reasons. Hasn’t worked. Republicans took on the unions and created high standards and accountability for schools. That hasn’t worked either.
So where do we go now? Ravitch does an outstanding job of crunching the numbers and her conclusions are spot on, but here solutions are just a reshuffle and repackage of what we are doing now. It’s time we as a society reprogram ourselves.
We need to be readers again.
Get the newspaper delivered again and read it while having breakfast. Get a subscription to a magazine in an area your that interests your child – motorcycles, sports, music, skateboards, whatever.
President Obama has proved to be a thoughtful man when it comes to education and I believe that he and his wife care deeply about America’s children. The Obama’s could make a difference immediately if they began advocating that American families start reading again in the home.
We’ve gotten away from being a culture that reads and we badly need to return to one that does.
Posted under Uncategorized
This post was written by bobsikes on April 2, 2010
