This is why Mississippi is beating Vermont. While it may sound punitive to stop a third grader moving to a higher grade if they can read, providing resources before that should help, and an alternative really is the better option.
They buried the lede on how to do it:
“The proposed legislation would also require each public school district to provide an in-person summer academy to low-performing students, beginning after the 2027-2028 school year. If a student participates in the summer academy and passes an alternative reading assessment, they may be promoted to fourth grade.
The law would also require retained students to get at least an hour and a half of intensive reading instruction, and the state would assign literacy coaches to schools with students who score the lowest in third grade reading assessments.
Mississippi has spent around $15 million a year to implement its strategy, which includes free, full-day pre-K programs that focus on reading, literacy screening three times a year for kindergarteners through third-graders, individual reading plans for low-performing students, and literacy coaches.”
It seems like this is a cost effective approach, less focused on class size.
I saw that too. I was raised on phonics, and I can see not wanting to admit that it for populations where children don’t have support at home for their education, maybe that is what’s needed.
My son had an issue with whole word provided by our district. I used phonics to teach him. He loves reading and reads above his grade level. The contextual reading method is for AFTER a person has developed phonetics. It’s mind blowing that this debunked method is still taught.
Its not punitive to have standards, expectations and accountability. Set the bar, offer support and put the onus on the student and parent to put in effort.
Right now, there's a prevalent attitude that the responsibility of learning falls to teachers. It does not. I can provide instruction, learning materials, books, support, everything under the sun, but if the child refuses to put in effort and parents don't read to their kids at home, my efforts are wasted.
The minute a kid puts in no effort and is advanced anyway, we send the message that the amount of effort the put in is all they need to do.
There are a lot of policies that stem from loving, caring places but simply do not translate into real world results. No, we don't want to stigmatized kids for failing, but that doesn't mean protecting them from failure so they don't feel bad. It means helping them process the experience and turn it into something productive. A lot of policies rescue kids from negative experiences and it's a mistake. They need to have them so they can learn to process them problem solve, etc. The best place to do that is in school, in a measured, formative way.
Mississippi set the standard for advancement. Something like 4,000 kids failed the test and we're notified they'd be held back. By the end of one summer 90% of kids who failed the first time passed after summer school.
Serious question. Do parents not teach their kids to read anymore? I understand school is there for that, but my parents taught my brother and I the basics before organized schooling and worked with us on it almost every night. I taught my kids(all 6) before my mother-in-law started homeschooling them with assistance from my wife and my mother.
Some do. My nieces were raised as voracious readers before they saw the inside of their local school. Unfortunately they ended up against the brick wall of "we're sorry we don't have the time or resources to challenge you, but we're too busy trying to get the lower third of the class to make it through 'see Spot run' before they get shipped to middle school so you're on your own for 'beyond grade level' stuff."
21% (1 in 5) of adults cannot read well enough to complete basic tasks, much less teach a child to read. I imagine the number of adults who possess the skills to help a kid who has any sort of difficultly reading would smaller. The podcast Sold a Story does a great job explaining why some kids "teach themselves to read" through their parents reading to them, and other kids will need to be taught explicitly through phonics.
When I started teaching I was frustrated by a parent who wasn't responding to my emails. I eventually called them and the mom told me that she doesn't know how to read. It was eye opening and something I hadn't even considered.
“Standardized Tests” are standard for your state only. If you Google “are all standardized tests the same across states,” you’ll quickly find that states administer different tests. Mississippi does not equal Vermont. That being said, the amount of money we spend on K-12 should be no question, and we should be at the top of the spectrum. We have a small school and an administrative costs problem.
Edit: you can google every which way. SAT scores vs ACT, etc. the fact remains. VT Spends a lot of money on K-12 and we do not see the benefit because we waste a lot of that money on administration and high cost districts.
Fundamentally the question of can a child read or not, isn’t that subjective. The levels at which a student can comprehend is very subjective, but if they can read or not isn’t that subjective.
The system also uses other forms of assessment leading up to the testing and alternatives for learning over summer sessions to prevent student from being permanently behind.
Vermont is not getting a return on its investment given the high cost, but closing schools is a third wire when it comes to local educational control and a belief the state is trying to centralize control. Mergers need to happen, but there will still be hurdles.
There is no doubt our ROI is in the dumpster. Not sure what you mean by “closing schools is a third wire.” Local control barely exists, and if it does in small schools, like mine, I wish it wouldn’t. The folks on my school board should have to go back to school to have any qualifications to dictate what gets taught.
Edit: I assume you mean “third rail” as in its political suicide to close a local school. It’s also a third rail to raise property taxes, yet again. If I were elected, I’d take lowering property taxes and closing a school over raising property taxes and having subpar outcomes.
I think the commenter meant "third rail," similar to the saying that Social Security is the third rail of American politics... touch it and die. See electrically powered mass transit and why touching the middle rail is a Really Bad Idea.
Could you repeat that? The second part is true, but many schools aren’t actually sustainable and are closing on their own. They have trouble staffing and often tuition their students to neighboring districts. Windham, VT is a notable example. The parents actually supported the longer commutes because it meant their children had better opportunities. Plus the cost was higher than average and it wasn’t sustainable for the local taxpayers.
Are you unaware Vermont pay more per pupil than almost every other state at roughly $30k a year, and its educational outcomes are nowhere near where they should be. How you measure those outcomes might be debated but can your kid read basic sentences by the time they are 8-9, giving them support and multiple forms of assessment, seems to be a basic goal that Vermont is now failing at.
Closing schools doesn't lower costs. It has been tried with Act 46 and has now been amply studied and found it doesn't lower administrative costs and health care costs negotiated by unions, which are the driving factors for the state's high cost per student.
You cite one dubious example, but there are many schools that closed where the local population didn't support the closing, and it has had negative impacts on the economic and social wellbeing of the communities where young families will not move to because they don't have viable school options.
It should also be pointed out that closing schools also doesn't increase reading performance; the austerity mindset that drives this sort of magical thinking has been responsible for severely crippling education and social services in this country for decades. Vermont's reading scores are about average in the nation. Certainly not as high as we would like, but nothing to cry about. Our 14 year old is reading above her level just fine as are most of her peers. This isn't about improving performance or government efficiency, it's really just about lowering your property taxes, so you can just save us all the time and say that.
Actually, it’s a pretty good article, you should read it.
Also, it’s lede not lead when it’s the hook of a news story since the typeface was made with lead alloys, and it was confusing for printers. Usually try not to point out grammar or spelling, but if someone is being obnoxious, I’ll point it out.
This is an entirely useless and pedantic correction of language.
It’s an intentional misspelling of lead and has the same meaning and no reasonable person would misunderstand. The only people who think this is worth correcting are elitist and don’t understand that language is not static.
I corrected him not because I was trying to be pedantic, but because his comment was obnoxious, and it didn’t further the point of the post about education and literacy.
I also said that, when I corrected him and pointed out that the spelling for lede is intentional.
I’m sorry you didn’t understand the point of my correcting it.
Props to Mississippi. It's nice to see them actively trying to improve literacy and seemingly being successful.
This is why Mississippi is beating Vermont. While it may sound punitive to stop a third grader moving to a higher grade if they can read, providing resources before that should help, and an alternative really is the better option.
They buried the lede on how to do it:
“The proposed legislation would also require each public school district to provide an in-person summer academy to low-performing students, beginning after the 2027-2028 school year. If a student participates in the summer academy and passes an alternative reading assessment, they may be promoted to fourth grade.
The law would also require retained students to get at least an hour and a half of intensive reading instruction, and the state would assign literacy coaches to schools with students who score the lowest in third grade reading assessments.
Mississippi has spent around $15 million a year to implement its strategy, which includes free, full-day pre-K programs that focus on reading, literacy screening three times a year for kindergarteners through third-graders, individual reading plans for low-performing students, and literacy coaches.”
It seems like this is a cost effective approach, less focused on class size.
Supposedly, they also started teaching phonics again instead of "whole word." I can't find a source, it might be second hand.
I saw that too. I was raised on phonics, and I can see not wanting to admit that it for populations where children don’t have support at home for their education, maybe that is what’s needed.
I was hooked on phonics
Take a listen to the podcast, "Sold a Story".
See also LeVar Burton's "Right to Read" documentary; a fair amount of it is about the failure of the whole language approach.
My son had an issue with whole word provided by our district. I used phonics to teach him. He loves reading and reads above his grade level. The contextual reading method is for AFTER a person has developed phonetics. It’s mind blowing that this debunked method is still taught.
Its not punitive to have standards, expectations and accountability. Set the bar, offer support and put the onus on the student and parent to put in effort.
Right now, there's a prevalent attitude that the responsibility of learning falls to teachers. It does not. I can provide instruction, learning materials, books, support, everything under the sun, but if the child refuses to put in effort and parents don't read to their kids at home, my efforts are wasted.
The minute a kid puts in no effort and is advanced anyway, we send the message that the amount of effort the put in is all they need to do.
There are a lot of policies that stem from loving, caring places but simply do not translate into real world results. No, we don't want to stigmatized kids for failing, but that doesn't mean protecting them from failure so they don't feel bad. It means helping them process the experience and turn it into something productive. A lot of policies rescue kids from negative experiences and it's a mistake. They need to have them so they can learn to process them problem solve, etc. The best place to do that is in school, in a measured, formative way.
Mississippi set the standard for advancement. Something like 4,000 kids failed the test and we're notified they'd be held back. By the end of one summer 90% of kids who failed the first time passed after summer school.
Serious question. Do parents not teach their kids to read anymore? I understand school is there for that, but my parents taught my brother and I the basics before organized schooling and worked with us on it almost every night. I taught my kids(all 6) before my mother-in-law started homeschooling them with assistance from my wife and my mother.
Some do. My nieces were raised as voracious readers before they saw the inside of their local school. Unfortunately they ended up against the brick wall of "we're sorry we don't have the time or resources to challenge you, but we're too busy trying to get the lower third of the class to make it through 'see Spot run' before they get shipped to middle school so you're on your own for 'beyond grade level' stuff."
21% (1 in 5) of adults cannot read well enough to complete basic tasks, much less teach a child to read. I imagine the number of adults who possess the skills to help a kid who has any sort of difficultly reading would smaller. The podcast Sold a Story does a great job explaining why some kids "teach themselves to read" through their parents reading to them, and other kids will need to be taught explicitly through phonics.
When I started teaching I was frustrated by a parent who wasn't responding to my emails. I eventually called them and the mom told me that she doesn't know how to read. It was eye opening and something I hadn't even considered.
Source for literacy rates: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
“Standardized Tests” are standard for your state only. If you Google “are all standardized tests the same across states,” you’ll quickly find that states administer different tests. Mississippi does not equal Vermont. That being said, the amount of money we spend on K-12 should be no question, and we should be at the top of the spectrum. We have a small school and an administrative costs problem.
Edit: you can google every which way. SAT scores vs ACT, etc. the fact remains. VT Spends a lot of money on K-12 and we do not see the benefit because we waste a lot of that money on administration and high cost districts.
Fundamentally the question of can a child read or not, isn’t that subjective. The levels at which a student can comprehend is very subjective, but if they can read or not isn’t that subjective.
The system also uses other forms of assessment leading up to the testing and alternatives for learning over summer sessions to prevent student from being permanently behind.
Vermont is not getting a return on its investment given the high cost, but closing schools is a third wire when it comes to local educational control and a belief the state is trying to centralize control. Mergers need to happen, but there will still be hurdles.
There is no doubt our ROI is in the dumpster. Not sure what you mean by “closing schools is a third wire.” Local control barely exists, and if it does in small schools, like mine, I wish it wouldn’t. The folks on my school board should have to go back to school to have any qualifications to dictate what gets taught.
Edit: I assume you mean “third rail” as in its political suicide to close a local school. It’s also a third rail to raise property taxes, yet again. If I were elected, I’d take lowering property taxes and closing a school over raising property taxes and having subpar outcomes.
I think the commenter meant "third rail," similar to the saying that Social Security is the third rail of American politics... touch it and die. See electrically powered mass transit and why touching the middle rail is a Really Bad Idea.
Closing schools doesn't lower costs, and it forces kids to commute long hours in a rural state.
Could you repeat that? The second part is true, but many schools aren’t actually sustainable and are closing on their own. They have trouble staffing and often tuition their students to neighboring districts. Windham, VT is a notable example. The parents actually supported the longer commutes because it meant their children had better opportunities. Plus the cost was higher than average and it wasn’t sustainable for the local taxpayers.
Are you unaware Vermont pay more per pupil than almost every other state at roughly $30k a year, and its educational outcomes are nowhere near where they should be. How you measure those outcomes might be debated but can your kid read basic sentences by the time they are 8-9, giving them support and multiple forms of assessment, seems to be a basic goal that Vermont is now failing at.
Closing schools doesn't lower costs. It has been tried with Act 46 and has now been amply studied and found it doesn't lower administrative costs and health care costs negotiated by unions, which are the driving factors for the state's high cost per student.
You cite one dubious example, but there are many schools that closed where the local population didn't support the closing, and it has had negative impacts on the economic and social wellbeing of the communities where young families will not move to because they don't have viable school options.
It should also be pointed out that closing schools also doesn't increase reading performance; the austerity mindset that drives this sort of magical thinking has been responsible for severely crippling education and social services in this country for decades. Vermont's reading scores are about average in the nation. Certainly not as high as we would like, but nothing to cry about. Our 14 year old is reading above her level just fine as are most of her peers. This isn't about improving performance or government efficiency, it's really just about lowering your property taxes, so you can just save us all the time and say that.
Shhh Vermont has to do it in it's own very unique way because "we're special."
The “city on the hill” concept where god has shone his grace on the Puritans was certainly inherited by Vermont, albeit with a secular outlook.
Well thanks for nothing everyone. You have shed no light.
By the way, journalists might bury the lead.
Actually, it’s a pretty good article, you should read it.
Also, it’s lede not lead when it’s the hook of a news story since the typeface was made with lead alloys, and it was confusing for printers. Usually try not to point out grammar or spelling, but if someone is being obnoxious, I’ll point it out.
Guilty as charged. Thanks for the education.
This is an entirely useless and pedantic correction of language.
It’s an intentional misspelling of lead and has the same meaning and no reasonable person would misunderstand. The only people who think this is worth correcting are elitist and don’t understand that language is not static.
I corrected him not because I was trying to be pedantic, but because his comment was obnoxious, and it didn’t further the point of the post about education and literacy.
I also said that, when I corrected him and pointed out that the spelling for lede is intentional.
I’m sorry you didn’t understand the point of my correcting it.
Wow, woosh