Today I Learned

The uneducated don't ask questions or suspect they're being taken advantage of. This is by design.

Fun fact on why Missisipi, of all the places, improved: they introduced a law that a child cannot be promoted to next year if they do not pass reading proficiency test.

Who knew the shame of repeating a year can be motivator enough for kids and parents.

You'd probably knows this was old news if you read more.

COVID stole a year or two of schooling for students in poorer families.

I suspect a big reason for this can be blamed on the US no longer teaching kids to read with the phonics method (learning how yo sound out words by individual letters), and instead have been teaching a method to figure out what a word means with context clues, but many kids cannot sound out an unfamiliar word since they weren't taught the phonics method.

Only now are states beginning to reverse that in an attempt to reverse reduced literacy rates, which will take some time to have a noticeable effect.

A big part of the issue is a lot of states abandoning “phonic” based teaching for “whole language”. In phonics the focus is on teaching how letters come together to form the sound of a word, while whole language is based on just memorizing the pronunciation of words. kids being taught how to sound out words will take longer to get to a point of being able to read out short simple text, but whole language can get them reading simple stuff with all the words they’ve already been taught very quickly.

The problem is that when you move past simple stuff only using words they’ve memorized, a kid taught to sound out words will be able to figure out words they haven’t seen before, meaning that they can start to learn new words passively just by reading more complex books. The whole language taught kids need to learn every new word by instruction or by just guessing based on context, making it much harder and slower. It gets frustrating quickly and kids taught this way rarely develop a real interest in reading due to that difficulty.

Damnit NYT, states have an abbreviation standard!

The GOP welcomes their future voters. The dumber they are, the better for Republican votes.

Sometimes I wonder if we should have a “learn to read” community where we post an article or short stories or excerpts of longer works with some comprehension questions and discuss in the comments. Where discussing what you think about a headline or article is forbidden and only discussion about what it actually says is allowed.

Some states are missing?

Also in Europe. It's obviously related to unrestricted internet use and smart phone proliferation.

For the first time in a long time, we're having generations that are dumber than their parents.

Something I've also noticed lately. Basic fucking math. I more often than not pay in cash, and recently I've had more than one person at more than one place give me incorrect change. And just not like a few cents, but dollars amount wrong. And when I try correcting them they're so adamant they're right even when I'm like... dude, you owe me 50 cents, not 3 dollars.

Regular readers of /r/teachers are not surprised. Teachers have been sounding the alarm for decades, as they still are.

Also, if you love your kid, you'll teach them to read. I mean books, real books, long books, no pictures, "chapter books" (which was a term I'd never heard till recently. Because, of course, books have chapters, why would one need to differentiate between... oh.) Read to them, read with them, talk about books with them, take them to the library, and take them to the book store. Give them books as presents.

Soon in the red states, it will be a badge of honor to be illiterate. Tr*mp loves the poorly educated bigly.

Not a single mention of food insecurity or nutrition in student outcomes, despite the fact that BEFORE the economy went sideways due to this stupid ass war 20% of homes with children were food-insecure. Only the deepest level of reporting from the NYT 🙄

Less education funding. Inflation. Schools closing. Low teacher pay. Large class sizes. National funding being tied to standardized testing.

Whenever school funding is on the ballot in my state, it rarely passes. Kids and teachers do not have the resources they need to be successful and it will continue to get worse until the president makes it a point to improve it. This is far from a new problem though. The government wants our nation to be full of people with below average intellect. I don't see any other reason not to invest in everyone's future.

The US is working its way toward illiteracy. Republicans need this to install a permanent set of oligarchs in the government.

When I was in junior high they decided we weren't reading enough. So for 40 minutes or so after lunch we had a reading period where everyone just read novels. Might be a good idea again.

"Video is the future. If it's not on youtube, people don't care."

Reaping what the internet has been sowing for the past decade.

Screens. Its screens. Dont give them a device. Give them a book and have the teacher teach them how to read. Slow them down and remove distractions.

I feel like thats not all the states?

New Mexico didn't even need to defend their position, but they did anyway. True goat right there

Did you mean across the U.S.?