In a post written back in March, Valerie Mitchell posed the question of why teachers of native English speakers are increasingly adopting classroom activities designed for ESL students. As she pointed out, the fixation on scaffolds in the form of “visuals, vocabulary aids, graphic organizers, etc.” does not make much sense. For native speakers, the point of English class is (presumably) to help them express increasingly complex ideas in more sophisticated ways, not to teach them basic vocabulary in a language they have been surrounded by since birth. I had no idea that this was such a widespread phenomenon until I read her piece, but once it was called to…
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- Common Core, Dyslexia, Ed School, Fluency, Learning Disabilities, Lucy Calkins, Reading Instruction, Science of Reading, Uncategorized
Munchausen by Special Education
I think what we have is a system that doesn’t really, at the end of the day, want students to get better and improve.
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2019 NAEP Reading Scores vs. The Ladder of Reading: A Striking Correlation
When the most recent set of scores from the NAEP (National Assessment for Educational Progress) were released in 2019, the results for Reading were dismal: only 35% of fourth graders were rated Proficient or Advanced, whereas a whopping 65% were rated either Basic or Below Basic (up from 63% in 2017). For eighth graders, the results were slightly worse: 34% percent Proficient/Advanced vs. 66% Basic or Below Basic (up from 64% in 2017). Obviously, these scores do not paint a particularly encouraging picture of American elementary and middle-school students’ reading skills. One of the major criticisms the NAEP is that the score ratings do not align—and are not intended to align—with…
