Veteran teacher and blogger Nancy Bailey was stunned by Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times describing Mississippi’s schools as a national model of success. Her reaction: Can children learn to read when they are segregateed and hungry?
Bailey points out that Kristof is praising the work of Jeb Bush, who has pioneered third grade retention and even funded the study that allegedly proves the value of holding back third graders who flunk the reading test. This helps to improve fourth grade scores but multiple other studies assert that it harms those who are held back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I find all of this infuriating. As poverty soars, we teachers buy more and more healthy snacks and food for our students so that they can actually engage in our lessons. Last night I watched a video of a teacher who provides dinners for students as well as snacks during the day. I don’t want to read another article about learning to read, phonics, 3rd grade retention, etc. unless poverty and family healthcare are directly addressed.
“I don’t want to read another article about learning to read, phonics, 3rd grade retention, etc. unless poverty and family healthcare are directly addressed.”
This is very discouraging. I also teach poor children, and I know it is especially these children who need the best teaching methods I can provide during their time with me in order to help them succeed. I grew up poor, so I have firsthand experience. Two things can be true at the same time:
1) We need to address poverty and healthcare.
2) We need to provide our students evidence-based teaching methods.
It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
Here’s what evidenced-based instruction looks like: Getting Reading Right: On Truths, Truce, and Trust.
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2023/01/guest-post-getting-reading-right-on.html
True, true. Good teaching and our professionalism and expertise must always be upheld. I am exhausted by having to deal with the dysfunctional policies that exacerbate childhood poverty, and I am exhausted by having to fight against my own district to distribute resources better to the students with the highest needs, and then get questioned about my high academic standards for my students. We are talking past each other in these conversations, and teachers like me get vilified for speaking out and demanding more IEP’s (to approach what the rich kids whose parents have lawyers get), smaller class sizes (we currently have high school classes of 35), and healthier and more plentiful food, and eyeglasses and medical wraparound services, etc.
How is it that every single person in history, even those who claim “evidence-based teaching methods” are essential to reading instruction who are older than 30, has never been subjected to them? Certainly no president of the US, president of a university, no current members of Congress excepting perhaps Maxwell Frost. Not a single best selling or poorly selling author. Not a single person, I would venture to guess, who has ever visited this blog or may be reading this now. How in the world has the world progressed? Or, more recently, regressed?
Diane! Don’t start me off! I am trying to get my last week’s work done so I can take my little Johnny to the pool and fool around with him tomorrow and July 4th.
As an autistic child he is behind several years in reading. He has many friends in his class with typically developing children. He has these three girl friends who take care of him and love him dearly.
We would be fools to harm him by keeping him back because he is delayed in reading development. Do I need to say more?
Rich Migliore About children being “behind” in reading . . . I’ve seen this problem in its detail many times; and every time, the “powers that be” seem to completely forget about how, the younger a child is, the more their social environment influences their development as children as well as the dynamics that inform their ability to learn. It’s a terrible oversight of what occurs in actual learning. It seems some out-of-classroom power brokers completely miss the “developmentally appropriate” aspect of learning which, again, includes the social aspect of it, even as they “go away” to college. CBK
Catherine, What you say is so important for us all to understand. Social relationships are so important for all children whether they are typically developing or not. Autism is a social disability which often causes anxiety and an inability to talk and communicate. Since Johnny entered Manoa elementary he has developed his ability to talk between the ages of 6 and 9, and was not ready to learn to read until he learned to talk. His development was mostly because of his classmates in his regular class and his relationships with all of the teachers in the school.
The way his classmates in regular classes interact with him and take him under the their wings is awesome to see. I walk him to school every morning and pick him up every day. The way those three little girls love him and care for him is precious to see. His one-on-one para, “Mrs. S”, texts me pictures and videos of his interactions with them and others almost every day.
It is the total Manoa elementary school experience which has caused his amazing growth in every way. His “Mrs. S” sends me videos of him reading with his reading specialist and Mrs S. He is just now reading about the first grade level and is going to fifth grade. He is an emerging talker and an emerging reader. He will get there “on his schedule.” His rate of progress is increasing significantly.
He is so smart in so many ways and understands what is going on around him. He “thinks in pictures.”
He is going to transition to middle school for sixth grade after next year along with all of his classmates — because he “needs them and their emotional support.”
Rich Juxtapose your son’s social experience with him sitting at a computer alone for hours . . . no contest. CBK
Miracles
Mary in the ice cream cone
Jesus on the waters
Miracles of edu zone
Are really like the others
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule
Thanks for the video
Imagine the first time a raccoon encounters one of those lizards and tries to chase it into the water thinking it will have an easy dinner.
Mythbusters did a very funny episode on walking on water.
But they were no where near as successful as the lizard,
In fact, they failed miserably
Have no fear in a couple of years Kristof will issue an apology saying again!, he got it all wrong. Of course it will not cost him anything to do so. Do we really think Kristof or Editors of the Times are incapable of figuring this out .
Makes one appreciate the up side of AI. The Publishers will need fewer writers and editors to do their bidding.
Is it odd that media identified Lorie Smith as an evangelical Christian but, Joseph Kennedy’s religious sect was not identified? His lawsuit which made it to SCOTUS was about prayer on the football field at a public school.
One of the worst repercussions from so-called reform is a national preoccupation with test scores. The pursuit of scores is counter-productive, reductive and misleading. All changes should start with what will help students the most. Poor students in the South would benefit tremendously from site based community schools that start with student needs. They do not need more failed initiatives that ignore poverty and hunger like Reading First 2.0, aka, The Science of Reading, or more devastating third grade retention policies endorsed by non-educator, profiteering clowns like Jeb Bush. I agree with Nancy Bailey. Kristof should know better.
Pence blathered on the networks this morning. The spectacle provided proof that Republicans are hypocrites and liars. Pence credited the SCOTUS’ affirmative action decision to the accomplishments of Black students who, through their successful learning, were no longer at a disadvantage. Simultaneously, the Republican talking point is the failure of schools. So, the public is supposed to buy-in to an unexplainable and unsubstantiated miracle.
The religion-addled are giving Jesus a bad name.
Pence and other members of the GOP are simply biased windbags. The media rarely fact checks their assertions that generally do not have a shred of actual evidence behind them.
More hypocrisy from the right wing- conservatives loudly whine about discrimination against them at universities. But, they cheer discrimination when a religious court declares it a homophobic entitlement.
Excellent point, Linda!
More hypocrisy from the right wing- conservatives loudly whine about discrimination against them at universities. But, they cheer discrimination when a religious court declares it a homophobic entitlement.
Nicholas Kristof’s allegations that Mississippi’s schools as a national model of success depends on what his definition of that success is — not what most professional and dedicated teachers think. Kristof may be right and not wrong when we take into account what he means by success.
And I think the explanation of what Kristof means by success may be found in National Geographic Magazine’s May 2022 issue in Forcibly Removed starting on page 74. I provided a link below if you can open it.
As I read Forcibly Removed, I kept thinking, “This sounds familiar. It sounds like what most if not all Charter School chains are doing with the same goals, to break the spirit of the children and turn them into obedient worker drones for a ruthless fascist controlled cutthroat capitalist country where the wealthy on the extreme right worship only money and power.
The goal of the boarding schools Forcibly Removed focuses on, where indigenous American children, torn from their families by force, were sent for centuries was not to educate those children, as stated, so they’d be able to survive in a western caplislist culture, but to beat and bully their culture out of them, including their language, leaving them broken without the culture they were born into and the skills to thrive in the invaders ruthless culture.
I hope you can open and read this piece. The parallels to the publicly funded, private sector charter school and voucher movement are striking, frightening, and tragic.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/native-americans-separated-families-children-feature?loggedin=true&rnd=1688323518058
I think what Forcibly Removed describes in detail is what WOKE means to DeSantis and all the other fascists that have been working for decades to turn the United States into a dystopian nightmare for everyone but the wealthiest 1% that will hold most of the wealth and all of the power power after they get rid of anyone wealthy that doesn’t go along with their libertarian-fascist ideals.
Pluto-theocracy
DeSantis appointed Gary Lester to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Lester recently hosted a $13,200 a couple fundraiser for DeSantis. Lester is President of the Villages Charter School and he’s VP of the Villages Community Relations. Before the Villages, he was the pastor at a Florida Presbyterian Church where he “grew membership from 121 to 1,300.”
I did not think there were any Children in the villages. Must be pretty lonely. But in the spirit of equity on Diane’s page. We have this from NYC. No need to worry about those 3rd graders reading English. They have solved that problem no one does.
The orthodox Hassidic communities must be a horrible place for women and children and, possibly men who find the truth in, “be careful what you wish for.” The novel, The Loneliest Polygamist, enabled readers to see how men and boys are harmed in ultra conservative religious sects.
I’m relatively certain that if a Jewish person, a Mormon or an evangelical Christian brought a “moral disagreement” on the conservative side to SCOTUS, media would identify his/her sect.
Linda
Must be a Deep State Conspiracy.
Or perhaps the very influential people and groups that you highlight are not officially sanctioned by Rome . You would be right to question whether they represent the views of many in the Catholic Church far beyond the Right Wing American Conference of Catholic Bishops. But they are not actively and overtly spewing their hate from the Pulpit(IMHO ). Actions that (for now) on the surface would put them in conflict with Rome. Right Wing Evangelicals have done so for at least 70 years starting before Billy Graham. Neither Paul Weyrich nor Lenard Leo… were or are Clergy. In addition they have formed a political union with Right Wing Fundamentalist protestants which further cloaks their identity as Catholics.
Joel What’s going on with many Catholics (people that I have known for years) is that, though they are progressive in many senses, they are really hung up on the abortion issue and what they see as killing children. For them (and I’m sure it’s not the view of ALL), it’s not about suppression of women or women’s rights–they don’t even get there with this issue, and they are on board with most women’s equality concerns. For them, it’s about crossing the line regarding their respect for human life, regardless of all else. They are serious about the beginning of life and the subsequent implications of abortion. And for them, there is no compromise with this life and death issue.
I’m not excusing, but rather explaining a faction in the Church that, short-sighted politically or not, is far from having its source in common corruption or, in Church language, sin . . . as is the case with many others who are on the anti-democratic train and that are rightfully objects of disdain in many notes here. So regardless of all of the other so-called conservative destruction that’s going on, to vote for a candidate that supports abortion puts it in the “impossible” range in their thinking.
I don’t read Linda’s notes anymore for reasons I have expressed elsewhere on this blog; but I did read and appreciate your thoughtful note on this complex issue.
Also, interesting point about Leo and Weyrich not belonging to the clergy. But if organized right-wing Catholics “cloak” themselves with the uncloaked, overt, and louder identities of spewing right-wing fundamentalists, they also USE their Catholicism (in the right company) as their “ticket-in.” Such group power is apparent (from what I can tell) in the Federalist Society and ALEC and probably others.
But in the end, I think: the bigger the bank account, the more corporate/ capitalist predatory power goes to the names on the accounts. In that situation, and at some point, if fascism really does play out to its pinnacled end, there is probably a big place under the bus for right-wing, anti-Christian Catholics as well as for fundamentalists. At least we haven’t gotten to the point where fascist armies, knowing the power of Catholicism among the people, are holding the Pope’s power in check by making hostages out of Catholics residing in their territories.
BTW, I am Catholic but also think the decision to abort, whatever its implications, and though I think it should occur as early as possible, belongs to the mother and whomever she decides to consult with. CBK
“to vote for a candidate that supports abortion puts it in the “impossible” range in their thinking.”
CBK, I think you are far more typical of the Catholic voter who doesn’t embrace the far right agenda, not those who say they support some progressive issues but make abortion their litmus test. No doubt there are some, but I grew up in a religiously diverse community with many Catholic classmates, and even among those who have been more conservative and supported Republicans, abortion wasn’t their litmus test, and as the national Republican party became so far right and started spewing the most extreme values, those Catholic voters could not vote for their candidates. I expect some of them are still strongly anti-abortion and do vote for some Republicans because of that issue, but it is not their litmus test.
The ones who vote for the most reprehensible hate-spewing Republicans might say that abortion is their litmus test, but I question the characterization that they are “progressive in many senses”. It seems to me that there are a lot more Catholic voters who are anti-abortion and conservative but whose values mean that they cannot stomach the far right Republicans who have moved far beyond their conservative values, and while they are anti-abortion, it is not a litmus test. If some more progressive Catholics are citing abortion as their litmus test reason for voting for an extreme far right neofascist candidate, I wonder about how progressive they really are.
NYC public school parent and GregB The Catholic Church is a huge group of people with hugely different factions of political and social thought. In my note about abortion and, as you put it, the litmus test, I was talking about ONE FACTION that I know of, not ALL Catholics. Your own understanding (in your note, NYC) of what’s going on with Catholic voters is probably also true of many . . . but neither of us can know the numbers.
But I’ve been to enough Catholic and protestant services, and experienced the relationship between pew and pulpit enough, to know that there is very little “blindly following the leader” going on in many religious groups. In my experience, none of the priests or pastors expected that kind of thinking from their parishioners, if they ever did. (And again, I am sure that’s the case for SOME, still.) However, if there are clergy in any religious institution who think the more liberal factions in their churches are not going to “sweep” at some point, I think they are living in a self-built fantasy land.
If anything good has come from the internet and social media, it’s the constant introduction of other ways of thinking than what some Jim Jones-to-Oral-Roberts-to Jerry Fallwellian thinks or wants their “followers” to think.
I also think that much of the chaos and horror that can come from the “too much” variety factor, or that goes on in the history of religions, is less an information or religious problem than a philosophical one (again, foundations).
In the case of the recent account here (GregB’s and Bob Shepherd’s?) of the very real and recalcitrant religious elitist attitude that “We know best, and so, politically, we can do whatever we want in the name of truth,” the philosophical problem is to have separated the means from the ends. Aristotle’s Ethics, and even Kant, who royally screwed up epistemology for generations, had that right. The other problem, which in my view, is too common on this site, is either/or thinking, fueled by dogmatism, and sans an understanding of nuance as is, in this case, of quashing the clarity available by exploring different factions in a huge group of diverse people.
And I’m glad to see here a reminder of Jefferson’s treatment of Jesus and the Bible. CBK
CBK,
I understood you were talking about one faction only. The faction that makes opposition to all abortions period their litmus test. There is a faction of Jewish voters who make unconditional support of whatever Israel’s politicians choose to do their litmus test. But I still stand by my belief that those voters are not progressive, even if they voice some lip service to also preferring some other policy that is more progressive.
Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics, and the definition of “litmus test”. There is a point when the dishonesty, criminality, fomenting of violence, and hate that a politician preaches comes into play, and at that point, the people who still cite the politician’s support for xxx as their litmus test cannot rightly be called progressive in any way, shape or form. I don’t doubt that some German said they were progressive but were voting for Hitler because those voters had some litmus test policy that Hitler supported. But calling them a progressive who voted for Hitler is an oxymoron, in my opinion. So I wasn’t questioning that there were voters out there like that, but I was questioning whether it was correct to refer to them as progressive in any way. There is a point when a candidate is so far to the right and dangerous that even conservative voters who strongly support their anti-abortion policy won’t vote for him. When progressive voters are saying that candidate’s other positions don’t matter because they are anti-abortion, then they have left behind any progressive values.
NYC public school parent Of course, we can think what we want about the thinking of factional groups. I’m only telling you what I have heard and taken as truth in what they say about an operative litmus test for voting; and in how they live their lives and raise their children in ways that reveal a bent towards liberality. Sometimes, thinking doesn’t make it so, and we just cannot know what we cannot know. CBK
Some people have their heads in the sand. When will politicians, writers, and local school boards stop the disasterous, cruel punishment of retention!!!!! It is like putting a gun to the students head if they don’t cheat. Retention destroys a child’s self-image and once that is destroyed it is almost impossible to regain it. When medical researchers publish a finding , we listen; we had better or most of us would be dead by now. But when brilliant psychologist publish their research, it is ignored. Some psychologists compare the destructiveness of retention to that of a death of a parent.
The only valid reading test is that which the teachers create. The tests should be evaluating what was taught in each specific grade in the school. It profits no one to take a test that doesn’t follow the curriculum and anchored in the States’ Standards provided that the Standards are anchored in Constructive approach.
If the State Standards aren’t anchored in a Constructive/ Interactive approach students will never achieve on level much less excel.
Learning must be contextualized – building on prior knowledge.
Emmanuel Kant, a philosopher in the 18th century purported that new information, new concepts, and new ideas can have meaning only when they can be related to something the individual already knows… Reason without experience is hallow. Experience without reason is aimless.You can’t expect people to reason their way through life- it won’ t work.
John Dewey was emphatic about interaction for learning; learning can’t be on an abstract, passive mode. Learning is social. We don’t see with your eyes, or hear with your ears. We perceive with your whole being which is based upon our experiences.
Instead of wasting money on invalid tests, the govt. should spend it on teachers, books for the classrooms and libraries.