Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post wrote recently about … the mess we call middle school. Ms. Strauss states that, “Nobody quite knows what to do with students who are of age to be in what we call middle school.”
She goes on to say that, “Puzzled educators have experimented for decades with the K-8 model, junior highs, middle schools (different from junior highs because they have earlier grades), and then back to the K-8 model. Nothing seems quite right.”
The part that I keyed into was this phrase, “another part of the problem is that we keep trying to do the same kind of academic thing. Let kids spend more class time reading and talking about books --books that they select themselves. Give kids who need basic skills the time and support they need — and let kids who want to memorize ‘Hamlet’ have at it.”
“With a significant percentage of American adults practically illiterate, our current approach is obviously not working. (According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 14 percent scored in 2003 at below basic — meaning they could no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills, and another 29 percent were at the basic level, meaning they could perform only simple and everyday literacy activities.)"
“Changing the grade configuration isn’t going to do it. More tests and a mountain-range of data won’t do it either. We need real reform.”
I agree Ms. Strauss. Real reform in my mind looks like dropping the pretense of teaching reading in favor of actually teaching reading. Of course, this means that we have to give teachers the tools and skills they need to teach decoding skills.
See what other educators and teachers are doing to introduce common core innovations for reading.
