2016 Medley #25

Retention of Children with Lead Poisoning, Charters, SSR, First Amendment,
Teacher Shortage, Textbooks, Politics

RETENTION: PUNISHING CHILDREN FOR ADULT FAILURE

If you are the state of Michigan, you damage the ability of children to learn by poisoning them with lead-tainted water which causes

• decreased bone and muscle growth
• poor muscle coordination
• damage to the nervous system, kidneys, and/or hearing
• speech and language problems
• developmental delay
• seizures and unconsciousness (in cases of extremely high lead levels)

Then you punish them for not being able to "pass the test."

It's not just Michigan, of course, although Flint, Michigan is the poster city for lead poisoning in children. Lead poisoning is still a serious problem for America's children.

In addition, many more states besides Michigan require retaining students in third grade because of their failure to pass a test.

But Michigan is just the latest. Governor Snyder, who allowed the city of Flint to be poisoned by lead through mismanagement and not-so-benign neglect, just signed into law a bill which would require third grade students to pass a test, or be punished with in-grade retention.

Calling this sort of behavior "child abuse" isn't nearly strong enough. When will policy makers and politicians take responsibility for their impact on student achievement?

Michigan to Retain Children with Lead Poisoning

Michigan has a lead problem with its children in Flint, and a governor who failed badly his own accountability test. Many wonder why he is still governor. Some wonder why he isn’t in jail. But yesterday he signed off on a bill to fail third graders. How many children in Flint will wind up failing third grade due to the leaded water they drank? I’m guessing many.

So children fail, through no fault of their own, while the governor gets a pass. Fancy that.

I know there are exemptions to failing in Michigan, but that doesn’t excuse a rotten bill that highlights retention as something good.

We know that the fear of failing a grade for a child is on the same level as losing a parent. Once a child is humiliated by this action, they will have a difficult time ever fully recovering.

And children who fail third grade don’t do any better than those who are socially promoted, especially if those promoted get extra help.

So children who the State of Michigan failed by not protecting them—permitting the poisoning of their water—will now get a double whammy and get blamed for their school problems.

Let’s not forget children who don’t have lead poisoning, but, who, also through no fault of their own, have dyslexia or other learning disabilities.

Retention is punishment to children and it doesn’t work. We can’t forget that.

Florida Update: Also see FL: Oh, Come On Now!

How lead poisoning affects children

PRIVATIZATION: CHARTERS

U.S. Dept. of Education’s Own Inspector Again Condemns DOE’s Oversight of Charter School Grants

We need leaders who will stop the drain of public funds to corporate pockets. Elect state and local candidates who will direct public funds to public schools. Elect federal candidates not purchased by lobbyists for charter schools.

Letting the "marketplace rule" is inappropriate for public schools. When schools struggle – usually through insufficient resources – we need to help them improve, not close them.

• “(W)e found that 22 of the 33 charter schools in our review had 36 examples of internal control weaknesses related to the charter schools’ relationships with their CMOs (concerning conflicts of interest, related-party transactions, and insufficient segregation of duties).”
• (T)hese… internal control weaknesses represent the following significant risks to Department program objectives: (1) financial risk, which is the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse; (2) lack of accountability over Federal funds, which is the risk that, as a result of charter school boards ceding fiscal authority to CMOs, charter school stakeholders… may not have accountability over Federal funds sufficient to ensure compliance with Federal requirements; and (3) performance risk….”
• “Further, the Department did not implement adequate monitoring procedures that would provide sufficient assurance that it could identify and mitigate the risks specific to charter school relationships with CMOs.”

How Charter Schools Bust Unions

“The initial idea of charter schools was that teachers and communities would have a say in how our schools function so we could better meet the needs of our students. They were supposed to be teacher-led and teacher-driven. But until we have a contract holding them accountable to their promises, they will not be held accountable.”

READING: SSR

Sustained Silent Reading: The effects are substantial, it works, and it leads to more reading. A response to Shanahan (2016).

Allowing students to choose what they read and giving them time to read every day really works.

...fourth grade children in Taiwan and Hong Kong who reported doing more independent reading in their first language in school scored higher on the PIRLS 2006 reading test, controlling for students' reading attitude, parents' reading attitude, home education resources, the amount of outside school informational reading done, and the amount of in-class reading aloud done by students.

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW...ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH

School board president in Texas defends students who refuse to stand during the national anthem

Here's a principal who understands the first amendment. The constitutional protections of free speech allow us to say and do things that others disagree with. It also allows those who disagree with us to respond.

During an on air interview with WFFA, Carl Sherman, Jr., president of DeSoto Independent School District’s board, defended members of the girls volleyball team and cheerleading squad, who refused to stand during the national anthem at games in protest over recent shootings of African-American men by the police. “Yes there are possibly greater ways to get that message across, however, we are sitting here in 2016 and the messages that were brought forth in the 60’s were somehow lost in translation,” explained Sherman. “Yeah, we can criticize the method but we have to listen to the message.”

TEACHER SHORTAGE

The educator exodus: Indiana struggles to keep teachers in-state

Since 2005 the governors and legislators of Indiana have done everything they could to damage the reputation of teachers, remove incentives to become a teacher in Indiana, and make the profession of teaching less attractive.

“The stress that has come about due to high-stakes standardized testing is taking a toll on the retention rate of teachers in the state,” Tyner said. “The Indiana Department of Education needs to continue to work to find a solution to this problem.”

TEXTBOOK ADOPTIONS

Some Guy In Texas May Be Influencing The Content Of Public School Textbooks In Your State

In one review, which drove me nuts, ERA criticized a book for “political correctness (e.g., anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian bias).” What do they mean by that? Well, they complain about books that supposedly highlight “Meanness Of Whites To People Of Color.”

Under that heading, they list "The People Could Fly,” an acclaimed short story that some Texas 8th graders read from a textbook titled Elements of Literature. ERA’s beef is that this story has an anti-white bias because it’s a “Folk tale about oppressive whites, mistreated slaves in Old South.”

So, this group was offended that this story was being “mean” by misrepresenting white slave owners! According to ERA, it’s “mean” to accurately portray history through literature. Can you imagine? People being “mean” to others because of the color of their skin? Slave owners knew nothing about that, right?

This is merely one example, but there are hundreds of awful reviews on that site that hold up conservative Christians, whites and men as superiors.

POLITICS

At This Point, if You're Still a Donald Trump Supporter, Here's What You Really Are

What would Republicans say if Hillary Clinton had been caught on video saying, "...when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the balls."

"What if Barack Obama had five children by three different women?"

When did it become ok for candidates for the Presidency of the U.S. to act like this?

At this point, there’s not even a shred of sane or rational logic anyone can use to defend Donald Trump. While I don’t feel sorry for those who continue to do so, I do pity the fact that there are millions of people who are so deplorable that, even after Friday’s stunning story where he more or less said he believes he has the right to sexually assault women, they still think he should be president.

If these comments don’t drive away a good chunk of his support (which time will tell if it will), then almost nothing is going to.

As Trump said a few months ago, most of his supporters really are mindless sheep who’ll support him no matter what.

However, at this point, if you’re still a supporter of Donald Trump, here’s what you really are: You’re someone who’s cemented your place in history as an individual who we’re all going to look back upon with disgust and shame because you were ignorant enough to support one of the worst presidential candidates in United States history.

This is a man who’s:

• Mocked a man with disabilities.
• Attacked the parents of a fallen American hero.
• Belittled POWs and the war record of Sen. John McCain.
• Lied about how much money he raised for veterans.
• Called a former Miss Universe “disgusting” and fat, telling his Twitter followers to find her non-existent sex tape.
• Accused an American-born federal judge of being unfit to do his job because of his Mexican heritage...
• ...Re-tweeted anti-African American propaganda created by a white supremacy group.
• Played dumb about knowing who former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke was...
• ...Feels he has the right to sexually assault women.

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2014 Medley #21

American Teachers, SSR, School Prayer, Duncan, Poverty, Charters, Closing Schools

AMERICA'S TEACHERS

A series of articles about America's teachers.

We find that experienced teachers are leaving the profession. They're leaving not because the job is difficult...it's always been difficult...but because the federal and state governments are doing what they can to destroy public education and the profession of teaching in America. The plan is...

• tell teachers what to teach.
• tell teachers when and how to teach it.
• blame teachers when it doesn't work.

The results of the study quoted below aren't surprising.

High-stakes testing, lack of voice driving teachers out

Contrary to popular opinion, unruly students are not driving out teachers in droves from America's urban school districts. Instead, teachers are quitting due to frustration with standardized testing, declining pay and benefits and lack of voice in what they teach.

So finds a Michigan State University education scholar -- and former high school teacher -- in her latest research on teacher turnover, which costs the nation an estimated $2.2 billion a year.

Alyssa Hadley Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education, conducted in-depth interviews with urban secondary teachers before they quit successful careers in teaching. In a pair of studies, Dunn found that despite working in a profession they love, the teachers became demoralized by a culture of high-stakes testing in which their evaluations are tied to student scores and teachers have little say in the curriculum.

Next we learn that the nation's teacher bashers...those who complain that teachers are overpaid and lazy...are wrong. American teachers don't get paid more than others with similar training and background. American teachers spend more time teaching than other teachers around the world.

The constant whine from the anti-public education crowd is to get rid of the bad teachers. Where are all the "great teachers" going to come from when teaching is a job from which you can be fired at will, a job where you are told what and when to teach by people who don't have any experience, and a job where requirements are based on the assumption that "anyone can do it?"

American Teachers Spend More Time In The Classroom Than World Peers, Says Report

A study from the Center for American Progress in July found that slow teacher salary growth contributes to high turnover. Research shows that 13 percent of teachers each year move schools or leave the profession.

"The bottom line is that mid- and late-career teachers are not earning what they deserve, nor are they able to gain the salaries that support a middle-class existence," says the report.

It continues: "As a nation, we need to do far more to attract -- and keep -- mid- and late-career teachers. In the end, if we truly want to retain top talent in our classrooms, we need to offer top-talent salaries.”

Teachers, when was the last time a politician spent a week shadowing you in your classroom? Those who complain about how weak the teaching profession is...and how lazy teachers are...are not willing to experience what teachers experience every day. For the most part, they're looking at public education from the point of view of the child they were when last they set foot in a public school.

Now that a teaching shortage has hit how many of those complainers are going to move into the "easy" world of public education with its 180 day work year and short school days.

The Cruel Myths about Teachers

Often, those who complain the most are those who were average or below-average students who blame teachers, not themselves, for their mediocrity. Although most claim to be strong free-market capitalists, they believe teachers should not have much higher wages and benefits than they do, a philosophy bordering on socialism.

Why aren't there more men in teaching? Public school teaching is still a "mostly-female" profession. Think about what that might mean in a nation which still has a serious gender wage gap and a general disrespect for women.

Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching?

...men can earn much more, on average, outside of teaching, while women’s teaching salaries more closely match the average pay for women outside of education.

...Teachers unions argue that the swift adoption of new academic standards, the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers’ job performance and efforts to overhaul tenure all make teaching a less attractive career for anyone.

“The reality of teaching right now is that it’s always been a hard job,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union. It’s “harder now than ever before, with less and less respect,” she said.

The internationally high ranking Finns have found that having plenty of collaboration time for teachers to talk to each other, to compare teaching and experiences, and for planning lessons, has contributed to higher achieving students. Are we in the U.S. just beginning to discover that?

Do students learn more when their teachers work well together?

...researchers found that “the structure and content of relationships among teachers (teachers’ social capital) significantly predicted school-level student achievement [as measured by their test scores in both reading and math].”

Importantly, these effects were consistent across grades, and were sustained over multiple years...

SSR AND THE NRP

Sustained Silent Reading after the National Reading Panel: Alive and Well

The failure of the National Reading Panel (NRP) was well documented by Gerald Coles in Reading, The Naked Truth and Elaine Garan in Resisting Reading Mandates. Among other things the NRP foolishly rejected research about sustained silent reading (SSR). I have written about SSR before, but it's nice to see Stephen Krashen write in support of it, too.

The public schools of America have been obsessively focused on the five aspects of reading instruction named by the panel since the NRP report was released in 2000 -- phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. No one denies that those are important, but it's clear that the NRP only reported on those aspects of reading instruction because those are the easiest to measure via testing (see DIBELS), and indeed, the five were specifically included in No Child Left Behind.

Something was missing, though, which reading teachers understood...purpose, motivation and opportunity for reading. Richard Allington wrote The Five Missing Pillars of Scientific Reading Instruction soon after the NRP report was released. It's a two page addition which includes important aspects of good reading instruction.

1. Access to interesting texts and choice.
2. Matching kids with appropriate texts.
3. Writing and reading have reciprocal positive effects.
4. Classroom organization: Balance whole class teaching with small group and side- by-side instruction.
5. Availability of expert tutoring.

All the phonics, vocabulary and comprehension instruction in the world isn't going to be as effective if students aren't given opportunities to read texts of their choice and at an appropriate difficulty level. That's what SSR does. It gives students the opportunity to choose their own books and read them at their own rate.

Contrary to the conclusions of the National Reading Panel, study after study supports the practice of sustained silent reading in school. Some of my responses to the panel were published in Education Week, and others appeared in the Phi Delta Kappan and Reading Today (International Reading Association). I also discussed the panel's errors in The Power of Reading (2004).

In short, the panel missed many many studies, and misreported several others. In my first response to the panel (Kappan, 2001), I reported that sustained silent reading (SSR) was as effective or more effective than comparison groups in 50 out of 53 published comparisons, and in long-term studies, SSR was a consistent winner (Phi Delta Kappan, 2001).

PRAYER IN SCHOOL OR "SCHOOL PRAYER"

Right-Wing Firebrand Rick Santorum on His New God Doc

From an interview with Rick Santorum...

The movie argues that the observant are being forced to practice in private, for few hours in church on Sundays. But on a personal level, can’t you observe your religion wherever you want?
Not necessarily. You can’t pray in school, but it’s good to have prayer. Are people offended by prayer? Sure. But the constitution gives us the right to offend. There are a lot of things today in America that offend me.

Right, but isn’t school different? There are lots of rules in school that don’t apply to the rest of society.
This is a fallacy. By making such a judgment, you’re communicating what’s good and bad. Not having the Bible taught in school is a mistake. The Bible is the basis upon which Western civilization was built. It is the most influential book of all. And yet it’s not taught. In school, they can’t talk about the impact of this book. This is, in fact, putting forth a view of history that is ahistorical. It’s hard to not look at the history of Western civilization and not see faith.

Rick Santorum is absolutely wrong and he probably knows it. It's completely legal to pray in public schools as long as 1) the government (in the form of the teachers or administration) doesn't choose, mandate, or lead the prayers and, 2) as long as students who are praying are not disrupting the education of others or themselves.

In 1995, thirty-five organizations, ranging from Americans United for Separation of Church and State to the National Association of Evangelicals to the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation (Sikh), joined as signatories to a Joint Statement of Current Law on Religion in the Public Schools. In the statement they agreed that,

Students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers so long as they are not disruptive. Because the Establishment Clause does not apply to purely private speech, students enjoy the right to read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, pray before tests, and discuss religion with other willing student listeners. In the classroom students have the right to pray quietly except when required to be actively engaged in school activities (e.g., students may not decide to pray just as a teacher calls on them). In informal settings, such as the cafeteria or in the halls, students may pray either audibly or silently, subject to the same rules of order as apply to other speech in these locations. However, the right to engage in voluntary prayer does not include, for example, the right to have a captive audience listen or to compel other students to participate. [emphasis added]

Santorum is also wrong about the Bible being taught in school. Again, the Joint Statement...

The history of religion, comparative religion, the Bible (or other scripture)-as-literature (either as a separate course or within some other existing course), are all permissible public school subjects. It is both permissible and desirable to teach objectively about the role of religion in the history of the United States and other countries. One can teach that the Pilgrims came to this country with a particular religious vision, that Catholics and others have been subject to persecution or that many of those participating in the abolitionist, women's suffrage and civil rights movements had religious motivations. [emphasis added]

As is common with some politicians, Santorum misrepresents the truth. What he really meant to say was that schools can't lead children in the prayers he wants, and can't teach his religion using the Bible.

Now where was it that I read about "not bearing false witness?"

DUNCAN

Duncan Threatens to Withdraw Florida’s NCLB Waiver over ELLs

Arne Duncan needs to be fired. President Obama's education plan needs to be overhauled...

Duncan took away Washington State’s waiver because the legislature refused to tie teacher evaluations to student test score...Duncan took away Oklahoma’s waiver because the Legislature repealed the state’s participation in the Common Core, and the governor signed the law.

Editorial: Federal education enforcers out of line

Duncan's staff has put Florida on notice that the state is at risk of violating NCLB standards that require all children to be counted equally in accountability formulas. Earlier this year, with the support of educators and advocates, the Legislature agreed to give non-English-speaking students two years in a U.S. school before including their standardized test scores in school grading formulas. The change was an acknowledgement of the huge learning curve such children face and that schools should not be penalized if those students can't read, comprehend and write English at grade level within a year.

Yet to the federal bureaucrats enforcing the unpopular NCLB law, such common sense doesn't matter. They have given Florida a year to make changes or risk losing its NCLB waiver, which has allowed the state to substitute its own accountability efforts for some of the most unworkable federal mandates. Those include the idealistic but unreasonable federal standard for 2014 that each child at a school must be working at grade level for the school not to be deemed "failing."

POVERTY

By the Numbers: US Poverty

An update for your information...

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 23 percent of all children, including 39.6 percent of African-American children and 33.7 percent of Latino children. Children are the poorest age group in the US

CHARTERS UNDERPERFORM

CPS outpaces charter schools in improvements, especially in reading

Mayor Emanuel's rubber stamp school board closed 50 schools last year because they were underutilized. Then they opened dozens of charter schools to dump public money into the pockets of political supporters. Now we find, unsurprisingly, that the charter schools did no better than public schools.

Chicago’s public neighborhood elementary schools improved greatly in reading and slightly in math, outpacing average charter school growth last year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of recently released testing data.

CLOSED SCHOOLS

Mayor Emanuel, and Arne Duncan before him, closed dozens and dozens of neighborhood schools in Chicago. Here we read about the pain and stress that closing schools has on families and children.

Closed charter schools have a ripple effect

“It is a painful, really agonizing process to close a school,” Harris said. “The people who are there are choosing to be there. No one wants to see it happen.”

...“It’s heartbreaking,” she said.

...it still created upheaval for families.
“It’s a significant disruption of their life,” Deputy Mayor Jason Kloth said.

...For those children, catching up academically will be as difficult as grappling with the loss of their school and adapting to a new environment.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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I Learned to Read on the #82 Bus

LEARNING TO READ

After I got married (beginning 3 days after, as a matter of fact) I rode the #82 bus every day from Bryn Mawr and Kimball to the Ravenswood "El" (now the Brown Line) station at Lawrence Avenue. From there it was a 40 minute ride downtown to the Loop and my job at Carl Fischer Music at 312 South Wabash Avenue in Chicago. The full trip was about an hour...and it was during the 2 years I worked at Carl Fischer and made that trip daily that I finally "learned to read."

I could read before that. I had an Arts and Sciences degree from Indiana University (IU) and had been reading books, novels, short stories, and non-fiction for most of my life. I don't remember when I learned to read in elementary school, but I was never a very good student. There were other things getting in the way of my learning, and reading was a chore. I could do it, but I always had trouble focusing on what I had to read. I had trouble remembering what I read...characters, plot...it all went in as I read, but dissipated almost immediately. So I didn't really "learn to read" until I started riding public transportation, the CTA, to downtown Chicago every day.

One of my co-workers was a voracious reader and he got me in the habit of writing down the name of a book and its author in a little date book whenever I finished reading it. The first few months I only read a couple of books, but after a while, with two hours a day devoted to reading I made quick progress.

I read more, faster, and with greater comprehension and clarity than I ever had before. I also started reading books which had been more difficult for me...books by people like Dickens, Hesse, Proust, and Thomas Mann. I remember the latter especially. I had tried reading Buddenbrooks when I was in college, but found it to be too long and drawn out...too boring. In other words, too hard. But after a few months reading for two hours on the CTA I picked up a copy of Mann's Magic Mountain and thoroughly enjoyed it. I followed that with Joseph and His Brothers. Years later I was amazed when I picked up my copy of Joseph and found that the first paragraph in the introduction ran for several pages, and the language was once again, too hard for me to handle.

But during those two years I read and enjoyed so many great novels...like The Lord of the Rings and Pickwick Papers. Some of the books (like the Tolkien) I had read before, but not deeply. I hadn't retained what I had read...I missed a lot. I hadn't really enjoyed them. By the end of the two years I had read dozens of classics and popular novels and had understood them and actually had fun reading.

What was different? I hadn't gotten smarter in the two years since I graduated college. What I had done, though, was to practice reading every day for two hours a day.

SUSTAINED SILENT READING

That lesson stuck with me and when I started my post graduate work in pursuit of my teaching certificate I pounced on Sustained Silent Reading.

Earlier this month I wrote about how important it was to read aloud to children...at home and at school. In Reading Aloud: Still the Most Important Part of Reading Instruction I mentioned how Dr. Madden introduced me to reading aloud and it became the basis of my reading program from my first day in the classroom. He also introduced me to Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), and with the reinforcement I got from my own experience on the CTA in Chicago, as well as Jim Trelease, I used both reading aloud and sustained silent reading every day.

Trelease wrote,

The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
The more you read, the more you know; the more you know, the smarter you grow.

Sustained Silent Reading is, according to Jim Trelease, "read aloud's silent partner."

Among the many purposes of reading aloud, a primary one is to motivate the child to read independently for pleasure. In academic terms, such reading is called SSR— sustained silent reading. Take a book, a newspaper, a magazine, and enjoy it! No interruptions for questions, assessments, or reports; just read for pleasure.

The best thing about it is that SSR works, too.

"Wait," you say, trying to remember the staff inservice you went to 12 years ago, "didn't the National Reading Panel report that SSR didn't work?"

No. They didn't. For a complete treatment of the National Reading Panel's coverage of SSR read the following...then come back. I'll wait.

The Benefits of Sustained Silent Reading: Scientific Research and Common Sense Converge

At first SSR programs were designed to show students that reading could be fun...and didn't have to be connected to school, a test, or a goal of some sort. Reading was good in and of itself. Writing in Educational Leadership, Steve Gardiner wrote,

The primary goal of silent reading programs has always been to increase students' enjoyment of reading. Researcher Janise Arthur (1995) investigated the connection between sustained silent reading programs and attitudes toward reading, with special attention to aliterates— those who can read but choose not to. She found several studies that correlated daily reading opportunities with improved attitudes, which in turn produced other benefits.

Studies of children in kindergarten, primary, and middle grades who have demonstrated a voluntary interest in books were not only rated to have better work habits, social and emotional development, language structure, and overall school performance, but also these children scored significantly higher on standardized reading tests. (p. 2)

Sustained silent reading programs do more than improve students' attitudes toward reading. Studies show that students who enjoy reading also read more books and develop better skills in reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary.

Trelease goes a step further. He talks about "summer setback."

...the at-risk child’s summer includes a home without books, magazines, or newspapers, and without adults who read avidly; no car by which to leave a dangerous neighborhood; no bookstores or convenient library; a daily routine in which the child seldom encounters new people, new experiences, or new vocabulary, thus there is no growth in background knowledge; and little likelihood that educational or informational TV or radio will be seen or heard.

So it's important to build that habit of reading "for fun" during the school year.

Jimmy Kim’s study of 1,600 sixth-graders in eighteen schools showed that the reading of four to six books during the summer was enough to alleviate summer loss. He further noted that when schools required either a report or essay to be written about a book read during the summer or that parents verify the student had read one summer book, this greatly increased the chances of its being read.

[See: Jimmy Kim, “Summer Reading and the Ethnic Achievement Gap,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk ( JESPAR) 9, no. 2 (2004): 169– 88. See also Debra Viadero, “Reading Books Is Found to Ward Off ‘Summer Slump,’ ” Education Week, May 5, 2004.]

The results from the latest NAEP progress report (The Nation's Report Card: Trends in Academic Progress) are also clear. Reading for fun helps.

Results from previous NAEP reading assessments show students who read for fun more frequently had higher average scores. Results from the 2012 long-term trend assessment also reflect this pattern. At all three ages, students who reported reading for fun almost daily or once or twice a week scored higher than did students who reported reading for fun a few times a year or less...

The NAEP data reported a decline in the number of students who read for fun. In NAEP’s Solution to Flat Reading Scores: “Read for Fun” Educator's Room author, Colette Bennett tries to figure out why -- technology, television, whole language vs. phonics debate -- whatever the reason, she says,

The sad truth is that there was plenty of research by 1995 to support a focus on independent “reading for fun” in a balanced literacy program...Yet seventeen years later, as detailed in the NAEP report of 2012, the scores for 17-year-old students who read independently for fun dropped to the lowest level of 19%.

Ironically, these authors are assessment experts, data collectors, who have INCLUDED a strategy that is largely anecdotal, a strategy that can only be measured by students volunteering information about how often they read.

A POWERFUL COMBINATION

Now you know. Reading aloud to children helps improve their vocabulary, introduces them to language they wouldn't normally hear in their daily lives, and increases their interest in books. Sustained silent reading gives them an outlet for that interest...and an increase of reading "for fun" improves students' reading achievement.

Reading aloud and SSR are much more effective learning tools than test prep or drill and kill...and they're more fun.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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