[Vision2020] education numbers, per Heirdoug

[keely emerinemix]

I'm sure the list will understand if I decline Heirdoug's gracious 
invitation to "show him the numbers."  I don't think that would be a good 
use of my time.

I will point out, though, that the perspective of the anti-"compulsion 
schooling" crowd -- and I'm quoting Doug; the rest probably call it 
"compulsory schooling" -- is sufficiently illustrated by a sentence in one 
of the paragraphs below.  In it, the author refers to kids whose parents fed 
them, rather than kids who were fed through the "stealing" of other people's 
tax money to feed hungry children.

Not much I could say would illustrate the differences between us as much as 
his apparent embrace of that idea, and so I think I'll devote my time to, 
ohhhhh, counting raindrops or something.  It would be at least as productive 
and nearly as fun.

keely
http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?type=ra&msg=34C02334-3A29-4021-898D-CD866DF4099B&start=0&len=13999&curmbox=00000000%2d0000%2d0000%2d0000%2d000000000005&a=9882f47bc9f321c5072d3187d2bed8b287920bcf8290c27b21ac647e95b0cbc3#
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From: heirdoug at netscape.net
To: kjajmix1 at msn.com, vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] upcoming midterm election
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:45:00 -0400

… Luna's support comes from the side of the political spectrum that 
believes in a solely market-driven approach to public education and denies 
the reality of an institution that, dealing as it does in the education of 
human beings, is enormously more complex and crucial to the functioning of 
society than the management of, say, a jewelry store -- or an industrial 
scales business, which is the business Luna runs.

…The crushing burden of No Child Left Behind, social and economic factors 
that affect children, the complexities of education law and procedure, and 
the challenges of a largely rural state with very different demographics 
throughout is something that requires experience in education, 
administration, and a committment (SIC) to the institution itself.

… This inability to acknowledge the reality of today's federal oversight 
of schools in terms of standards, funding, assessments and bureaucracy, 
coupled with an apparent inability to …

…see children as human being and not units of production…


Keely,
If Compulsion Schooling is so great and is such a wonderful institution why 
is its funding based upon the number of seats filled, and not the outcome of 
students being able to read at even a 9th grade level?

“Washington, D. C., Oct. 10. Following in the footsteps of “No Child 
Left Behind,” the Department of Education is considering new requirements 
applicable to all colleges and universities benefiting in any way from 
federally financed programs, such as student loan and dormitory-financing 
programs. Continued eligibility for participation in the programs would 
require graduates receiving a baccalaureate degree to demonstrate at least a 
9th-grade level of reading ability and a 7th-grade level of ability in 
mathematics.”

I thought that the following editorial would be of interest to some of you 
who don’t wish to listen to the tales of school woes.

Keely, show me the numbers!

lemeno, Doug
_______________________________________________________________
The One-Question Test
by Linda Schrock Taylor

In 1812 (forty years before the passage of our first federal compulsory 
school laws), Pierre DuPont de Nemours published the book, Education in the 
United States. Dupont, one of the founders of the DuPont fortune, known to 
be brutally honest and direct, spoke of the phenomenal literacy rate in the 
United States; was amazed by the difference he saw when compared to European 
literacy. Dupont said that less then 4 people out of every thousand in the 
new nation could not read and do numbers well.

In 1992 (one hundred and forty years after the passage of compulsory 
schooling laws) Regna Lee Wood, Director of Statistical Research for The 
National Right to Read Foundation, published the article, "That's Right – 
They're Wrong." In that very important piece, Wood compared the literacy 
rates of World War II recruits with those of the Korean War. She discovered 
that,

AFQT scores indicated that illiteracy (defined by the War Department as 
inability to read 4th-grade lessons, or today's 5th-grade lessons) among 
millions of prospective recruits with at least four years of schooling 
soared from almost zero (0.004 percent) during World War II to an 
unbelievable 17 percent during the Korean War. ("That's Right – They're 
Wrong" National Review, 9/14/92)

Such information should be considered as explanations are sought for the 
massive failure of our schools in these years since World War II; a massive 
failure that has occurred just within my lifetime. We should also consider 
whether those "4 people out of every thousand"; that "0.004 percent"; might 
be a more accurate reflection of the true occurrence of severe handicapping 
conditions in the general population.

Might "4 out of 1000" be the actual number of unfortunate individuals born 
with true handicaps so severe that the achievement of literacy is simply not 
possible? The observations of Dupont, and the statistics examined by Wood, 
certainly suggest a very different – and a vastly smaller – group of 
nonreaders than does the current educational Alphabet of Excuses (AE) for 
school failure – ADD, ADHD, ODD, BD, EI, LD, SLD, HI, VI, EMI, MR, MI, CI, 
AU, TMR, POHI…

No Child Left Behind should be identifying and using research like that done 
by Regna Lee Wood. Actually, NCLB should have done its homework before it 
forced narrow certification and ever-broadening assessment guidelines on 
each school and every teacher in the land; before it acted on such a massive 
scale to violate the sovereignty of local jurisdictions to make the 
educational decisions that best serve the local people who are actually the 
ones financing their local schools.

NCLB should have attempted to discover: the full impact of basic literacy 
upon the total educational experience and life of each individual. NCLB 
should have discovered: exactly how literacy was so skillfully brought about 
back when the purported 996 out of every 1000 Americans were literate.

NCLB laws; accepted by lock-step and/or ignorant administrators; enabled by 
uninformed and/or incompetent school board members; have failed to identify 
the vital issue upon which all other aspects of schooling rest; the one 
single element; the Rosetta Stone – READING!

With that foundational academic need in mind, the effectiveness of any 
school can be assessed, and the decision made as to whether a school should 
remain open, – based upon whether a school passes or fails The 
One-Question Test:

"Does said school absolutely, positively, insure that 996 out of every 1000 
children are literate prior to the end of third (3rd) grade?"

(Now, this is the kind of outcome-based education that America needs and has 
needed for at least seventy-five years.)

One-roomed schoolhouse teachers were able to teach reading to almost every 
child. More importantly, back then the goal was to have every child literate 
by the end of first grade – in an era when homes owned few books other 
than the Bible; Webster's "Blue-backed Speller"; a reading book filled with 
wisdom, intelligent stories and big words; and a slim arithmetic book.

Children came to school – many without breakfast – carrying a lunch pail 
that might hold something as simple as a butter sandwich (made more 
nutritious by being provided by the hard work of the parents rather than by 
funds stolen from the taxpayers to feed someone else's child). The children 
often came from extremely poor homes; many where chickens and more, might 
have shared the dwelling on bitterly cold winter nights. The children often 
came in rags or hand-me-downs. But…the main difference between schools 
then and schools now is that then schools taught almost all children to 
read. The schools back then leveled the population UP!

For this massive increase in illiteracy, coming so soon after the prior war, 
our welfare-growing, prison-building, America can thank Sight Words and Dick 
and Jane, including all their offspring and clones, including Whole 
Language, Balanced Literacy, and any other 
avoid-systematic-phonic-instruction fads.

Most children, who learn to read well in our current educational climate, 
learn to read in spite of the teaching. Until such time as teachers are 
trained to skillfully and effectively teach phonics, spelling, writing and 
reading, this method of not-so-benign neglect, which fails the majority of 
the children, will continue to be used with each generation, with 
ever-worsening results. That steady decline has been the norm since the 
sight word fad usurped educational decisions and destroyed the meaning of 
scholarship.

The educational culture must drop pet theories and favorite fads in order to 
properly train teachers to skillfully teach reading, spelling, and writing 
skills. Educators would be wise to seek out the few remaining one-room 
schoolhouse teachers and ask them to teach the professors at all the schools 
of education How to Really Teach Reading. My Great-aunt Mildred, who taught 
for fifty (50) years, probably knows, herself, more about reading 
instruction, than most graduate schools of education currently know 
collectively!

Those graduate degrees are quite impressive on paper, but too often the 
schools of education only require that professors who train future teachers 
in How to Teach Reading have "an earned PhD and three (3) years of classroom 
experience." Three years!! Almost every teacher spends the first three years 
getting organized and learning more from the kids than the teachers were 
able to get taught. Yet, inexperienced teachers are actively recruited to 
train America's future teachers! It is no wonder that American education has 
lost its footing on the shifting sands of fads and theories. PhD research 
papers abound, as each tries to outdo the next.

I confronted one such theorist at Michigan State University. He had made up 
a flyer to advertise the graduate class that he would be teaching. On the 
flyer he explained that the outcome of the class would be that the students 
would know about a lot of different theories of reading. I acted naïve and 
explained that I wanted to learn how to teach reading so I was wondering if 
his class would provide me with the skills I would need. He danced around my 
question, never answering it. He knew full well that I would waste my time 
and my money, yet be unable, at the completion of the class, to teach a 
nonreader of any age how to read.

Graduate degrees are given for the study and research of theories (pet or 
otherwise). In all likelihood, a teacher with a master's degree in Reading 
will still lack the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively do the job 
for which such teachers are certified, recruited and hired. Still, the 
certification process, as well as NCLB, refuses to acknowledge that literacy 
is the cornerstone of education; which is the foundation of scholarship; 
which is the basis of intelligent, logical thought and decision making.

Instead of asking the only question that matters, NCLB flounders in 
ever-widening circles of failure and rights violations, fruitlessly 
searching for potential demons to exorcise: Physical education teachers; 
Physics majors; Career counselors; Early childhood teachers… On and on the 
search goes – at all levels; throughout all subject areas; losing all 
effectiveness, and most certainly all focus, in that process.

There is only one question!

"Does your school insure that 996 out of every 1000 students are literate 
prior to the completion of third grade?"

One question – yet fifty-one departments of education; scores of colleges 
of education; thousands of school districts; are unable to pass the most 
important test of all.

Unless foolish and progressive (a misnomer if ever there was one) fads are 
thrown out of schools, and teachers return to the explicit and accurate 
teaching of phonics, any attempt to save the schools will be meaningless 
rhetoric. Until the first weeks of school, at every grade level, in every 
building, are used to teach reading until 996 of every 1000 children are 
literate enough to be successful in all other areas of study, all else is a 
sham.

The future of America is at stake, yet the Fascist educational establishment 
is uninterested in actually educating the populace. Our schools educate for 
ignorance. The deck has long been stacked against teaching children to read 
early and well.

Remember…Thomas Jefferson said that if a nation expects to be ignorant and 
free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will 
be, and prepare for the end of America as a sovereign, civilized and free 
country.



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