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Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

economist.com

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Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#91

Post by justin66 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #88
justin66 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll certainly review the podcast when I have time. Thanks! I read Pournelle's column in Byte in the late eighties and at times he bemoaned the lack of phonics in modern reading curriculum while also pumping his wife's expensive phonics-based reading software. I ran this by teachers I knew and the general response I got was a confirmation that teachers use phonics all the time, along with some frustration about the r…

I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. None of the kids whose parents didn't read to them could read well by 3rd or 4th grade. Moreover it is factual that universities instructing teachers were for decades only teaching the whole language approach. Implementation varied state to state, but you can literally look at curriculum material used in vario…

> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words.

I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old)

> The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought in by consultants selling a curriculum. This is also easily confirmed.

I actually have no idea how to confirm that, but I'm sort of willing to take your word for it. By contrast, it's easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents, like the one I mentioned in my post. Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.

To be clear, I don't think those lessons are necessarily useless. Time spent with kids outside class on their education is a positive thing.

> Implementation varied state to state

I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#92

Post by tstrimple »

mikkupikku wrote: post #49
cestith wrote: post #34

Two ways poor school districts could work on serving the kids are take some money from administration salaries to pay teachers and take some money from administration salaries to pay for breakfast and lunch for students.

The latter will probably work much better. Good teachers get embittered and burned out through exposure to bad students (who are mostly bad because their parents are trash, and feeding the kids breakfast partially mitigates this.) Of course the teachers will tell you that paying the teachers more is the solution, but that doesn't seem to track with the evidence. Good schools, which are good because the students are g…

I tend to think "good teachers" is a thing that doesn't really matter outside of niche 1-1 breakthrough moments. I know there are exceptions. Teachers who go way above and beyond, but that's not a scalable solution. A great teacher can make a difference in a handful of children. But they can't fix a fundamentally broken system. I tend to agree with you that it's not teachers that make a school good. It's the reputation and the parents who will move to areas based on said reputation. It's already selecting for parents who have the means and willingness to decide where they live to achieve better results for their child's education. They are invested in other ways as well.

Thus bad schools don't necessarily have bad teachers. They have a concentration of complacent or actively bad parents who drag the entire experience down for everyone. Throw in the bulk of special needs kids who fall on the public school system that is not in any way equipped to actually handle them and it's no wonder very few kids are learning effectively.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#93

Post by ch4s3 »

justin66 wrote: post #91
ch4s3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. None of the kids whose parents didn't read to them could read well by 3rd or 4th grade. Moreover it is factual that universities instructing teachers were for decades only teaching the whole language approach. Implementation varied state to state, but you can literally look at curriculum material used in vario…

> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old) > The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought i…

> I mean... would you remember?

Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it.

> I actually have no idea how to confirm that

Marie Clay is the name you want to google.

> easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents

The reason there was a market for this is because what schools were doing was not working.

> Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.

It's important to step away form the culture war aspect of the "reading wars". There is simply put an evidence based and scientific way to teach reading, and one based on wacky theories fro mt he 1960s that don't work but were popularized by hucksters. The excellent podcast series sold a story has great coverage. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (I wish they published long for text, and its ironic I know, but here we are).

> I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.

This is to an extent true, but teachers have to get trained on instruction in literacy and for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.

That said, it's important not to over focus on the mechanical part of reading, phonics, because background knowledge and vocabulary are key to using phonics well.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#94

Post by [deleted] »

ch4s3 wrote: post #93
justin66 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old) > The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought i…

> I mean... would you remember? Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it. > I a…

[deleted]

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#95

Post by justin66 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #93
justin66 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words. I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old) > The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought i…

> I mean... would you remember? Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it. > I a…

I appreciate the thoughtful reply - thanks! There are some things here to follow up on eventually.

I'm very skeptical that the aforementioned "consultants" made money off of the phonics controversy in a way that was comparable to those selling home lessons, but that's my main quibble at this stage.

> for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.

That must be an exaggeration. It made me realize I actually have no idea how many different streams of methodology there are in education, outside of what we define as the mainstream. Certainly phonics is a part of Montessori education. Ah well, another thing to read about someday.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#96

Post by gwbas1c »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #62
gwbas1c wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can someone explain why we ever stopped doing that? Talk to someone educated in the 1950s and 1960s and you'll understand. There was always one or two kids in the class who were 2-3 years older than everyone else, because they frequently had to repeat grades. It caused a problem for them because they weren't with their peers, age-wise. (As opposed to the kid who was born too close to the cut-off and held back a yea…

I knew kids in public school that were held back a year. Never more than one, or if two they would go to some other school. I also went to private school. There, it was clear that every student was expected to advance every year, but that each had to also truly meet the standard to advance. No teacher would let you fall behind, and any and all actions needed were taken. I see this as the #1 benefit of private school,…

> I see this as the #1 benefit of private school, to be honest - if a student does not succeed, the teachers do not get paid (you pull your kid from the school)

Charter schools have the same benefit too, at a much lower cost to you.

Personally, after my father pushed me to an "expensive" college that ended up not being very good, I got over my love for private schools. Two points to consider:

1: My dad kept trash-talking UMass Amherst when I was a teenager. Turns out it was the 4th best CS department in the US, #17 in the world, and the expensive private college he talked me into had a very lousy CS department that didn't even rank.

2: We (wife and I) chose our town based on school rankings. The local public schools are AWESOME compared to the private schools I went to as a kid. Much more resources and attention than I got; and they get to take advantage of economies of scale from having many more students. (Granted, I live in a high tax town where the residents prioritize great schools.)

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#97

Post by mikkupikku »

tstrimple wrote: post #92
mikkupikku wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter will probably work much better. Good teachers get embittered and burned out through exposure to bad students (who are mostly bad because their parents are trash, and feeding the kids breakfast partially mitigates this.) Of course the teachers will tell you that paying the teachers more is the solution, but that doesn't seem to track with the evidence. Good schools, which are good because the students are g…

I tend to think "good teachers" is a thing that doesn't really matter outside of niche 1-1 breakthrough moments. I know there are exceptions. Teachers who go way above and beyond, but that's not a scalable solution. A great teacher can make a difference in a handful of children. But they can't fix a fundamentally broken system. I tend to agree with you that it's not teachers that make a school good. It's the reputati…

I do think the impact good teachers have is relatively minor, except for the part where a good teacher isn't a bad teacher, and the damage a bad teacher can do is enormous. A young inexperienced teacher is almost certainly getting into the career because they want to help kids. They may become a bad teacher, the bitter sort of teacher, after many years of seeing little but negative outcomes. At that point, they become part of the problem and realistically the only way to correct this is to wait until they quit. Incidentally, high wages are more likely to keep bad bitter teachers in jobs they hate longer, while young optimistic teachers require less fiscal motivation.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#98

Post by marysminefnuf »

teacher here. there is a huge reason why we dont use reading levels to promote in michigan. its unfair to hold a third of the kids back because of biology. the kids develop early on in elementary school rapidly and kids born at the end of the year from september to december will always be a few months behind in development. unsurprisingly, the current statistic we have is that 1/3 of our 3rd graders are illiterate according to our state. not just having trouble reading, but cannot read at all. that tracks in my classroom, but we're getting better about it as the year progresses. Ive found that reduced screen time is the best way to get kids literate again in my homeroom.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#99

Post by TimorousBestie »

j_w wrote: post #89
TimorousBestie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing nothing to combat chronic absenteeism Not something I was advocating, thanks.

"I'm against the solution which has been shown to work for [unsubstantiated reason]." Without providing any other proven-to-work solutions is basically advocating for the problem.

It’s not the solution, it’s one intervention among others in a focus program. They had at least one other intervention going on at the same time (essentially, decriminalizing truancy—a “proven-to-work” solution by your standards, and one I do support), and probably more.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#100

Post by ch4s3 »

justin66 wrote: post #95
ch4s3 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean... would you remember? Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it. > I a…

I appreciate the thoughtful reply - thanks! There are some things here to follow up on eventually. I'm very skeptical that the aforementioned "consultants" made money off of the phonics controversy in a way that was comparable to those selling home lessons, but that's my main quibble at this stage. > for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense. That must be an exaggeration. It made me realize I actually…

The way primary teachers are taught is indeed an interesting topic, and its bizarrely not interdisciplinary. You have teaching colleges 100 yards from world class psychology or developmental neuroscience programs and they just don't talk.
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