Nice To Know In 2009

  • Some tantalizing ideas about grades. Grades do not motivate students like qualitative feedback, self-assessment and reflection. Students will work harder in a classroom that emphasizes engagement, self-reflection and striving for improvement than one that emphasizes grades. Teacher time is better spent on lesson planning than grading papers. Zeros for missing work don’t help you measure student learning. Grading only some pre-determined significant assignments provides sufficient data to measure student learning.
  • A quick solution to a permanent marker used on a write board is to use the correct type of dry-erase marker to write over the permanent ink. Supposedly this breaks down the permanent ink and it wipes away. certainly worth a try.
  • Support the paddling of students? Twenty-one states, primarily Southern states, still allow corporal punishment. Texas and Mississippi are in the lead. Black students represent 35.6 percent of those hit although they comprise only 17.1 percent of student population. Special education students are also more frequently paddled than regular education students.
  • Talk slower! According to Wichita State University the average adult speaks almost 170 words a minute. The average 5-to-7-year-old processes 120 words a minute. Although a high-school student processes 140-145 words a minute, that is still slower than the average adult speaks.

Literacy Sites

About this blog

  • "Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society" according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Scotland literacy is defined as "The ability to read and write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners." The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 defines literacy as "an individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual and in society.' This is a broader view of literacy than just an individual's ability to read, the more traditional concept of literacy. As information and technology have become increasingly shaped our society [sic], the skills we need to function successfully have gone beyond reading, and literacy has come to include the skills listed in the current definition." Hence the titling of this blog: Literacy is All.
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Is NCLB Working and Who’s Going to Fix It?

There was a time, before the Depression of 2008, when members of Congress vowed to review and revise “the biggest social engineering project” of modern times – No Child Left Behind. Teachers across America can’t help but wonder if their concerns will be lost in the deluge of serious problems that face the new president and Congress. At the same time some individuals continue to insist that NCLB has been a success and literacy scores have risen dramatically, or at least significantly.  Some members of Congress, believing that claim, will not place NCLB revision in the forefront of their concerns for the future of this country.

 So, is NCLB working?  The January/February 2009 issue of NEA today claim that NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results answer that question.  Although critics may claim that a teachers' union publication would take that position,  data does support their claim.  This data is important as a measure because NAEP is administered to large, random samples of students across the country.  Whereas individual states create and score their own state tests, as required by NCLB, the NAEP test is the same for all fourth grade students and is scored identically for the students in Alaska and Maine. This makes it a more reliable measure; the state literacy tests in Texas and Georgia look quite different from the state tests in New York and Massachusetts.

What the data shows is that reading scores remain fairly level; fourth grade students perform slightly better than prior to NCLB and twelfth grade students perform slightly worse. Math scores also do not show a drastic upward trend.

 However, NAEP scores from the 1970s and 1980s showed significant gains in literacy scores for minority students.  Would that growth have continued if Bush and NCLB hadn’t interfered with high-stakes testing that caused districts to throw out literacy instruction to engage in endless test-prep and skill-and-kill practice.  The NCLB law, Reading First and Title I, requires that districts receiving funds employ “scientifically-based” methods and materials.  Has Congress ever realized that the decision behind NCLB and Title I requirements are not based on data, or “scientifically-based” information?  Reminds me of the decision to declare war on Iraq and ignore Afghanistan. 

January 08, 2009 in Current Affairs |

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