DiscussMormonism.com

No, this isn't about Mormonism except for the fact that there are Mormon students enrolled in the public school system. If this get's jettisoned into the Old Testament, I can live with it.

In an article in the local newspaper last week, there was discussions about 3rd graders not reading at grade level, administrators wanting to "grow faster", and a criticism that children entering kindergarten are not reading at grade level.

I ask you, what does that mean?

Children entering kindergarten (that means walking through the door, folks) not reading at grade level?

Grow faster? Can you force children to grow faster?

Are our expectations of children too high in reference to their development?

[/blathering]

This thread is for the educators and parents on the board. I should have stated so at the outset. That said, I have more questions to put out there.

In the early years, we expose children to literacy/reading in a variety of ways based on a developmental continuum. We engage in a process to assist children in developing phonemic awareness. Under this heading, we can include letter recognition, letter sounds, beginning and ending sounds of words, rhyming, aliteration, segmenting syllables.

Let me say this, too. The practice of engaging children in phonemic awareness fits in line with the development of symbolic thinking that occurs on or around age 4-4 1/2 or there abouts. When children develop the ability to think symbolically, they are generally ready to learn about letters. Not all, of course, but generally speaking. You can see the ability in their interactions, play, drawing and emergent writing. Emergent writing also follows a continuum. Random scribbles, intentional scribbles, imitating writing until letter-like forms and finally, letters emerge.

Writing development also parallels drawing development, but let's not worry about that for this thread.

Question:

Is there a strong need for preschool children to be taught the full range of phonograms? Isn't this pushing it at least a year earlier than one might expect?

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? :-)

Do I need to go on summer break or what?

More questions. I need to get this out of my gut some way.

Is anyone else here worried about the future reading success of our children in that we are setting the bar (benchmarks) so high they are beyond the developmental capabilities of our children, thus causing them to pseudo-fail to meet unrealistic expectations and in the process, are we failing miserably to make reading a meaningful experience for children and one that they look forward to instead of dreading it?

Our current educational climate is developmentally inappropriate in many ways. You have clearly outlined one. We are trying to get bang without more buck, and it doesn't work. When an educator talks about children entering kindergarten not being "on grade level", they are likely indicating that the child does not demonstrate the reading readiness skills that a child who has been regularly exposed to literacy demonstrates.

Having said that, I am immersed in this nearly 24 hours a day, and I'm not sure I want to talk about it here. This board is a way for me to escape the pressures of my job, and this is exactly what my job is.

Our society talks the talk about truly caring about children, but doesn't walk the walk at all. Talking about it only frustrates me more.

Jersey Girl wrote:More questions. I need to get this out of my gut some way.

Is anyone else here worried about the future reading success of our children in that we are setting the bar (benchmarks) so high they are beyond the developmental capabilities of our children, thus causing them to pseudo-fail to meet unrealistic expectations and in the process, are we failing miserably to make reading a meaningful experience for children and one that they look forward to instead of dreading it?

Absolutely. It is one of the greatest tragedies and examples of unintended consequences that I've seen in my entire career.

High stakes tests are educationally inappropriate in the first place, and now our entire system is driven by them.

Teachers...I haven't worked in the elem. classroom for a good dozen years. I hestitate to comment and yet, I'm reading that our local public school system is fast approaching teaching contracts that are based on a teacher's success over a period of three years. That is to say he/she must PRODUCE children reading at grade level, every year in order to meet the conditions of their contracts.

Does anyone else see that this forces teachers to "teach to the test" instead of teaching to the child?

Does anyone see that as a healthy situation for children or their teachers?

How much more stress do our educators and our children need thrust on them?

Whatever stress you place on the educator, you automatically place on the child.

Makes me want to run away from education and run fast.

Our communities want good education for our children. We want to know that children are learning and so we measure it by test scores. Good test scores=funding.

Money.

Our society thinks money is the answer to everything. What about TIME? What about quality and meaningful interaction between teacher/child? Are we going back to the educational stone age where children are required to perform on demand and kick out meaningless facts instead of understanding the curriculum content?

Nevermind, I'm ranting.

I know that beastie is responding, yet I'm too strongly immersed in rant mode to read right now.

I want to say that, thankfully, no one is forcing me, personally, to teach beyond the developmental stages of children. I'm worried about the children who leave me. Who go to kindergarten filled with good self esteem and then on account of stressors placed on educators by their school districts, fall flat on their faces due to too high expectations.

We are playing a game with our children's well being that they can never win. We are setting them up for failure, not success.

What is wrong with us? Have we abandon the needs of children entirely?

Would it kill parents to attend a class in child development and learn about the human beings they are attempting to raise and shove through a school experience that is COUNTER to what their development requires?

If more parents would educate themselves and more educators would stand up and advocate for children, perhaps this could change.

But we're all worried. Parents are worried that their child will not measure up and educators are worried about losing their jobs.

Is anyone worried about the children?

Some of us are and I have to say, it makes me want to run as fast and as far away from the field as possible.

beastie

Having said that, I am immersed in this nearly 24 hours a day, and I'm not sure I want to talk about it here. This board is a way for me to escape the pressures of my job, and this is exactly what my job is.

I know it's your job and you're exactly the one that I wanted to comment on this thread. Today, I needed to know that someone out there is hearing me and I elected you, beastie.

What I get on my end of the educational spectrum is a few parents each year who think we early educators failed to teach their children what they think we should have. I have spent 24 years educating parents regarding child development, presenting evidences of their children's development to them and interpreting them developmentally.

Parents are being sold a bill of goods in the name of the almighty buck.

Here's the advertising drill on the bill of goods:

Come to our schoool! We're an academic program for 4 year olds! We'll teach your child everything they need to know in order to meet the benchmarks for kindergarten.

Okay...first of all, a 4 year old is in a PRE-academic stage of development. Hello? Secondly, in my school district there ARE NO benchmarks for kindergarten. This was confirmed by a school district administrator.

Parents need to become responsible consumer advocates of their own children's education. They need to educate themselves about child development and in order to distinguish fact from spin.

We are playing hell with our children's future.

I don’t know what else to say, Jersey Girl. It’s true. Everything you’ve said is sadly true, and experienced educators know it. But we don’t have the power to change it. The power is in the hands of politicians and state-level administrators. Politicians normally have zero experience in education, and state-level administrators normally have little experience from decades past.

And there is no doubt it is driving good educators out of the field. I’m going to hang on for a while longer, and then retire and either open a private clinic or just do private tutoring. I worry about my grandchildren’s education. I may opt for home-schooling them myself.

Oh, and speaking of money, this article goes into some interesting details about who benefited financially from NCLB.

http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL ... 4-EPRU.pdf

To me, it looks like someone placed a buisness model into the education system that allows higher ups to easily quantify results. When test scores are up, it allows high level administrators and politicans so point to the numbers and say, " See? Look at what my educational policy does!" and if the numbers are not whats expected, they can blame the actual teachers.

The whole scheme is enforced by people who like to compare test scores of American kids to kids in Taiwan and marvel about how far our children are behind. It seems that the only method used to gauge the quality of education is via standardized tests and the ends always justify the means when it comes to making those numbers.

I think the whole thing will change once enough people get mad about it and it becomes a political boon to be the one to do so.