[Durham INC] Literacy, not 751, is the crucial issue facing County Commissioners.

Mon Jun 11 08:58:33 EDT 2012

Ok, here we go again.  I will do my best to limit my comments due to grappling more with this on the Rev-elution.  I will say this, at the root of the Republican led movement to stress accountability in education through reading scores, is a push for vouchers.  Minority parents will be able to transfer their children into private schools.  This is yet another attack of public education, and fails to address what is really behind those poor test scores.  Lets be real about it.  Low scores in Durham, and across the country, are result of shifts in black boy's performance after the 3rd grade.  Something happens once they enter 4th grade.  I call it checking out.  Below is an article I use to process through what this means. This study refutes all claims that suggest more stress needs to be placed on those years before they enter school.  If all is comparable before 4th grade, we should be thinking about the shift rather than the assumptions involving breakdown before they enter school.How We Are Failing Black BoysRead this excerpt from the article Are schools failing black boys? by Celeste Fremon & Stephaine Renfrow Hamilton:A 1990 study of more than 105,000 students in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, where African Americans made up about 65 percent of the enrollment, showed that black male pupils performed comparably to boys and girls of all races on first- and second-grade standardized math and reading test. But by fourth grade, African American boys experienced a sharp decline in their scores. More recent national studies have shown similar findings: In 1994, fourth-grade reading scores of African American boys lagged behind those of all other groups at the same grade level, according to the NationalCenter for Education Statistics.It’s sobering to think that any group of kids as young as eight or nine years old can lose interest in school. But a number of experts have been making this observation about black boys for more than two decades. (Although the performance of black girls also declines around the same age, the dip isn’t nearly as pronounced and is often recouped in later years, researchers say.)Black boys have several things working against them: schools that cater to female learning styles, the continuing effects of racism in schools (stereotyping black boys as “aggressive” or “dumb”), and a culture where male role models are seriously lacking.In 2002, 66% of boys lived in a home absent of their biological father. Can Things Change?If things are ever to change, now is the time. The United States has a black president who acknowledges the fact that black children need male role models. On Father’s Day, President Obama gave a speech about the role of fathers to a predominantly black crowd. Here is a brief excerpt:We need to set limits and expectations. We need to replace that video game with a book and make sure that homework gets done. We need to say to our daughters, Don’t ever let images on TV tell you what you are worth, because I expect you to dream without limit and reach for your goals. We need to tell our sons, Those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in our house, we find glory in achievement, self-respect, and hard work.President Obama, whether you agree with his politics or not, is an important and significant role model for African American boys. If he continues to promote the value of reading and of education in general, educators, parents, and students will listen.  What Can Parents and Educators Do to Encourage Black Boys to Read?Provide their sons and students with positive black male role models. Enroll their children in mentoring programs, hire black male teachers, give boys examples of positive black male role models, bring in adult black male readers to read to classrooms.Provide black males with a male-centered learning environment.Make sure libraries and classrooms are stocked with books and magazines that cater to African American culture. It can get frustrating for black kids to continuously read about white protagonists. Check outwww.brownsbooks.com, a site committed to African-American Children's Books, Multicultural Children's Books and Workshops. Be sensitive about stereotyping ANY student of a different race or gender. Have a zero-racism policy in your classroom/ library/ home.Be encouraging. If your son or student whines that he “can’t,” remind him that “can’t” is a lot different than “won’t.” Black boys are JUST as capable as anyone else. They just have more obstacles in their way sometimes.Make sure their basics needs are being met. It is hard to concentrate on reading, or school work in general, if one is hungry, cold, or living in an abusive environment. Be sensitive to what’s going on at home or even in school when you are not there.On the other side, hold ALL boys, regardless of race, accountable for their behavior. Don’t allow their homework to slide or their attitude to be less than respectful based upon their race or gender. Parent-teacher contact is important and vital to student’s educational growth. For more information about providing black male students educational support, read this recent article from EducationNews.org entitled Supporting African American Boys in School by the Wisconsin Center for Education.

From: pats1717 at hotmail.com
To: inc-list at rtpnet.org
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 07:51:13 -0400
Subject: Re: [Durham INC] Literacy, not 751, is the crucial issue facing County Commissioners.

I didn't say to wait. Given that global competition and technology is raising the bar on how well our kids need to be educated and that we are probably going to see more kids with challenges and deeper challenges, we need to be "upping our game" a lot.  I did say that the proposal to simply flunk kids not reading well is, like the worse of the liberal proposals, too simple, and like most such simple proposals is going to have nasty unintended consequences and probably benefit someone other than the kids.  Specifically."Illiteracy" is an unfair "hot button" term if most people are like me in thinking "illiterate" means like my Great-Uncle Fritz who never learned to read (the family was German-speaking and their school wasn't into bilingual education)."Literacy" is a complicated thing; people who read list-serves probably have no sense of how complicated learning to read can be.    The kids I see who literally aren't reading are probably biologically incapable of reading.  Using pass/fail of end-of-grade tests is so 20th century because failing can mean anything from having almost no "sight words" (needing to sound out everything) to simply not having the cultural connections to understand what a reading is about.Given that "reading below grade level" can have so many shades of gray, I would put a lot more faith in parents and teachers to choose correctly for the student than in any simple rules.I'm dubious about "summer reading camps."  Sounds like big profits for band-aid providers.As I said in my previous note, math is at least as big an issue as reading.  There are LOTS of 8th graders who use fingers and number lines to add when they should be figuring out what subtracting negative numbers means (and even tho they were required to learn "commutative property" in 3rd(!) grade, they add 2+9 by going "2,3,...11" instead of doing the simpler thing of counting 2 up from 9).  Algebra II students use their calculators as such a crutch that to just try all the possible divisors to find factors of a number.  Fourth graders turn in their filled out multiplication tables daily, and 5th graders seem to enjoy the challenge of long division.  So I think that addition and multiplication tables are like Spanish verbs -- you use them or you lose them.  I'm not convinced that having calculators as crutches is a problem, but if you we want students to retain their tables, we need to make them routinely do hand calculations.  Which will take time from something else. 
What would I do:Get better information to parents about costs and benefits of retaining their kid -- what exactly are the indicators that another year in 3rd grade is going to be beneficial, would some kind of summer experience help them catch up?Give more options beyond just promote / retain.  For example, a magnet or charter school for 4th and 5th graders whose reading levels, as measured by the LEXILE? tests are below grade.  To do it right would be expensive since you would want rooms with space more like 1st grades, teaching assistants, and at least one reading coach / specialist.  Pay for it by taking money from charters that don't provide meals and transportation.If you heard this story about learning to read to kids:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/29/153927743/small-change-in-reading-to-preschoolers-can-help-disadvantaged-kids-catch-up, we should make sure the libraries and teachers are using these skills, and ideally be giving classes to parents on this.We already have some volunteers (Fred Foster was doing this when he was hired to be a TA at E. K. Powe, Wendy has also been a volunteer).  in the schools working with kids.  I'm not sure how much training they get.  Get more and better at this.

> From: rbford at aim.com
> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:00:43 -0400
> To: inc-list at rtpnet.org
> Subject: Re: [Durham INC] Literacy, not 751,	is the crucial issue facing County Commissioners.
> 
> Guess I'll have to pull out my dog-eared Rules for Radical to discover how "literacy" is another GOP trick.
> 
> So let's be sure to tell the parents and kids with reading difficulties that they'll just have to wait to learn to read until, as determined by Pat and Melissa, the world is remade into their Progressive Vision!
> 
> It never ceases to amaze me that folks cannot admit that the present literacy outcome is unacceptable and we must change our strategy.
> 
> The County is about to appropriate  $146M of our tax dollars for the DPS. I would hardly call that "indirect" involvement. As several Commissioners mentioned at our INC forum, they have the "power of the purse."  But do they have the will to use it??
> 
> I think we have a community problem calling for a community response, not partisan ripostes.
> 
> Dick
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> Durham INC Mailing List
> list at durham-inc.org
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