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Worrying about how little Johnny or Suzie feels about failure is the the crux of the problem. We do children a disservice when we worry more about how the feel than what they accomplish.
What I said about repeating an entire middle school grade for failing one class, which would be offered the next year in high school, went completely and totally over your head.
Think it through and come back. Use common sense, try to use actual experience instead of what you've "heard" in analyzing the effect on a student repeating all of a year's classes which she passed in order to pass one failure. Take into account the probable behavior of that student in the classes already passed.
It takes an act of God to hold a child back. The problem here is that grade retention doesn't work but neither does just pushing kids forward. Grade retention is seen as hurting their egos so they are pushed forward. What works is grade promotion WITH remediation but we don't have the resources to do the remediation so it's not done and it probably would be deemed to hurt a child's ego anyway to be the one who gets remediated. Remediation becomes one more thing shoved on the room teacher's plate when things are already falling off of that plate. Just last year I had to take a reading intervention class in order to renew my certificate. I teach high school chemistry. Seriously, when will I have any time to remediate students who cannot read??? What we need is tracking but that's taboo. It hurts Johnny's ego to see Suzy go into the high class when he gets put in the low class. We cannot win here.
You can't retain or remediate kids without calling attention to them and that is seen as harmful to their ego. So all remediation is done on the sly (as in the entire class get remediated for the sake of the kids who need remediation) by the room teacher and something else gets cut out of the curriculum to make room for the remediation. We really have to quit protecting kids egos in school. Life will not protect their ego if they can't do anything. Life rewards those who are capable. It doesn't reward everyone regardless of ability.
We need to get back to when grades meant something and we need to move kids who need remediation onto a remediation track but teachers are powerless here. We can't retain so grades are inflated and everyone passes. We can't call attention to the student who needs remediation so the entire class slows down so that student can pass. EVERYONE is losing but parents and politicians cannot see that. We've got to get off of this ego boosting trip.
And reading difficulties need to be addressed early, in 2nd and 3rd grade, before reading progresses to the point where it seems overwhelming and hopeless to the student.
Remediation can be done without calling undue attention to the struggling students. In the last third or so of reading class time, the kids can be broken up into small circles, and the teacher could cluster the struggling ones together, and work with them for 15 minutes a few times/week. Or the clusters could include one or two good readers, who could help the slow ones. That's how it was done in my gradeschool. It was not a big deal, egos didn't get hurt, and lesson time wasn't sacrificed.
And reading difficulties need to be addressed early, in 2nd and 3rd grade, before reading progresses to the point where it seems overwhelming and hopeless to the student.
Remediation can be done without calling undue attention to the struggling students. In the last third or so of reading class time, the kids can be broken up into small circles, and the teacher could cluster the struggling ones together, and work with them for 15 minutes a few times/week. Or the clusters could include one or two good readers, who could help the slow ones. That's how it was done in my gradeschool. It was not a big deal, egos didn't get hurt, and lesson time wasn't sacrificed.
If you did that in MY district you'd be accused of using the good students to do your job. We're expected to reward good students with extra work.........at a higher level.......which they see as punishment. Parents want them CHALLENGED not used to teach slower students.
I've only seen one school program I liked here and that was in the charter school my dd's attended. They sent older kids down to the lower grades to read to small groups of younger students to get more practice reading at their level. Teachers and paras (all classes had a para in the elementary school there) kept watch over them as they read to their groups helping out where need be.
I agree that reading intervention must be done early. I cannot believe I had to pay $1800 to take a class in reading remediation when I teach high school math and the physical sciences. I am NEVER going to remediate a student who cannot read. That they get to my class needing remediation is very sad. Reading is so critical to anything you do in life.
And reading difficulties need to be addressed early, in 2nd and 3rd grade, before reading progresses to the point where it seems overwhelming and hopeless to the student.
Remediation can be done without calling undue attention to the struggling students. In the last third or so of reading class time, the kids can be broken up into small circles, and the teacher could cluster the struggling ones together, and work with them for 15 minutes a few times/week. Or the clusters could include one or two good readers, who could help the slow ones. That's how it was done in my gradeschool. It was not a big deal, egos didn't get hurt, and lesson time wasn't sacrificed.
Which is the elephant in the room. By the time the kid is in high school he's so far behind it's almost impossible to catch up.
Not helping was the deemphasis of Reading starting in the 1990s and, believe it or not accelerating with the introduction of computers.
Last edited by North Beach Person; 10-30-2016 at 06:01 PM..
I wonder if technology is making our kids brains weaker. I swear I see fewer and fewer students as the years pass who can actually entertain an original thought. They want answers. Just answers. Over half of my students will tell me that a standard curve is "A type of graph used as a quantitative research tool" when I ask them on the test what one is AFTER they have made and used one in class. That's the first sentence from the Wiki definition. You should see the funny looks I get when I don't accept that answer and ask them to explain it to me. Maybe I need to change the question to "Explain how/why a standard curve is a quantitative research tool?"
I'm so tired of kids just googling answers to get an answer and not even thinking about what they wrote down. In the case above it's the next two sentences I'm after. I don't know how to get them to think. Just this past week I had a tutor take me on because I expect the student she's tutoring to find the distance between parallel lines the long way when she found a little formula he could use. I kept telling her that I'm trying to get my students to reason their way through problems not just plug and chug. I got Well that's the way we do it in Texas. Sorry dear, you're not in Texas anymore. In Michigan you're expected to be able to think. (I didn't say that but I wanted to. I would have been reprimanded if I had said anything.). She left in a huff and announced loudly that she's taking this to the assistant principal. I'll find out tomorrow if the assistant principal sides with her or me. It's a coin toss as they've sided with the student many times in the past. The really sad part her is that if she'd put half as much effort into teaching him the long way instead of trying to find a loophole he'd probably pass the test tomorrow. The long way in this case involves many steps that show up in other problems on the test so it has much more value than her little formula.
If you did that in MY district you'd be accused of using the good students to do your job. We're expected to reward good students with extra work.........at a higher level.......which they see as punishment. Parents want them CHALLENGED not used to teach slower students.
I've only seen one school program I liked here and that was in the charter school my dd's attended. They sent older kids down to the lower grades to read to small groups of younger students to get more practice reading at their level. Teachers and paras (all classes had a para in the elementary school there) kept watch over them as they read to their groups helping out where need be.
.
OK, fine. Though helping slower students can be a learning experience in itself; the better readers learn how to help, how to teach a little, which can be self-esteem-boosting.
However, if that's not PC for whatever reason, the teacher can still do the cluster approach, and give the best readers more challenging material to read aloud to each other, while she works with the lagging students. Passing non-readers on does not work and cheats the student, I think we can all agree on that.
And students who graduate without being able to read (functionally illiterate, basically) end up prone to a life of crime, since they don't have a crucial job and survival skill. (As a public defender, my brother got plenty of cases of people who couldn't read, in spite of having a HS degree.) It's scandalous that this problem has never been adequately addressed in the schools. This has been going on since my brother had to be taken out of public gradeschool, because he wasn't reading, and then the same thing happened to his own son: the school kept sending him on, even when my brother met with the teacher and principal to demand they hold his kid back and teach him to read. No dice. He was sent to a different school for a year, got caught up, then re-entered. Not all parents have the resources to do that. Failing to teach kids to read should be a crime.
How do school admins think students who can't read feel, in higher grades? They don't think that's harmful to the ego and self-esteem?! What's wrong with these people?
I kept telling her that I'm trying to get my students to reason their way through problems not just plug and chug. I got Well that's the way we do it in Texas. Sorry dear, you're not in Texas anymore. In Michigan you're expected to be able to think.
Texas teacher here. (5th grade) We want our students to be able to reason/think as well. Anyone who just tries to give them tricks does them a disservice. Eventually, students realize that they can do certain things (invert and multiply, cross multiply, etc.) But we really want them to know and understand WHAT they are doing.
I'd like to weigh in on this. I'm an adult literacy teacher. There are many and various reasons why people don't learn to read as children. Most of my my students have dyslexia, complicated by poverty.
Those who are not dyslexic were in special ed, and suffered from low expectations. Basically warehoused.
Some were inadequately homeschooled.
Usually, the answer it poor kids in poor schools, with parents who were poor kids in poor schools.
So to me, the question is how do we fix it?
That's what your local literacy council does.
So! Support your local literacy council.
Thanks.
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....at a higher level....
...which they see as punishment
. Parents want them CHALLENGED not used to teach slower students. 
Now that computers can read for you reading is becoming passé. 
