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“We are not OK – for only 11% of Black children [in Illinois] to be proficient in reading is not OK,” Tinaya York, the founder of the group Literacy for Life, reading coach and a former Chicago teacher and principal, told a meeting of Illinois literacy advocates. “I can walk into any classroom full of Black children and hear the same struggles with reading I heard 20 years ago.”
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Rather than worry about whether they are black or White, worry about the fact such low scores are not a matter of utmost urgency to fix. Results this bad have to cut across all races when 11% can read at grade level. black and White parents should be concerned.
All of this for some of the highest costs in the nation. Money well spent????
It only took our educators decades to realize the reading curriculum has not worked. Well now they need more tax dollars to change it. But the reading results never get better. Remember it’s all about the children! Right!
There are many successful ways to teach reading, and the best way will be different for each individual. There is no one best way.
One of the primary responsibilities of education is teaching kids to read. Without that foundation, further learning is almost impossible.
Since we cannot have individual tutors for each child in public schools, it is incumbent on educators to find a method to teach reading that works on almost all kids (and certainly more than 20%). Somehow we managed to do that in past decades, now it’s some big mystery.
The best way will be different for each individual is just an evasion of responsibility.
“Somehow we managed to do that in past decades,”
Millennia…
Yes, absolutely!
Civilization has been teaching people to read and write since the Sumerians first used a straight reed to press cuneiform into clay tablets. The ‘each student learns different’ nonsense is racist nonsense. It’s no secret to teach people to learn to read, you do phonics, and memorization of words, and practice, practice practice, and by the time they are 8 or 9 they are reading Harry Potter. Even 5 year olds in antiquity were learning to read and write Attic Greek. Today’s schools aren’t doing that. My son tells me all the time they waste on SEL, learning about ‘feelings’… Read more »
People with strong social-emotional skills are better able to cope with everyday challenges and benefit socially…they just don’t know jackchit.
Nuns + phonics. There I fixed without a consulting fee. Please make a donation to the Catholic charity of your choice.
Ron – I don’t think you could be more wrong. We have known for quite some time now that phonics is the best approach for most to learn reading. See this NIH paper, particularly Chapter 2: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf The NAACP (yes the NAACP) in Oakland California is petitioning the school system to teach phonics in reading, California – remember – the leader in K-12 education in the 60’s and now one of the worst stated in the nation – was appalled to learn of the decline in reading in the early 2000’s. They attempted to re-establish phonics, but like most bureaucracies… Read more »
They want to reduce the alphabet to the only 7 letters that matter: LGBTQIA
Don’t worry, they’ll be adding a few more letters soon for some marginalized freak show groups.
There’s nothing wrong with Illinois education that a few thousand nuns couldn’t fix.
Exactly, I had nuns and Christian brothers teach me and low and behold you did learn.
Nuns were truly an underappreciated group of women – genuine women.
AND, they knew how to teach. CTU could take a few lessons from them.
I’m a survivor. Of ruler whacks on the knuckles. But they did teach me how to write.
Same here. Don’t forget the paddles with holes in them. Sometimes I think the nuns were somewhat sadistic. Imagine if they did that now. What I miss most are the desks and the hydrogen bomb drills. Wish I had one now in case of the next world war which should be soon. They were built to withstand a 20 megaton nuke.High quality workmanship..
They were kinder to girls – I was only head-whacked once and had only once had to kneel for hours on broken floor tiles.
Other than that, unscathed. BUT, I can still diagram a sentence and offer a fairly cogent argument to support a point.
Seems a good many of us Wirepoints regulars were educated by nuns. Both elementary and high school for me.
Establish all the criteria-n-standards-n-curriculum you like. Unless all that whatever-it-might-be results in children being able to read, and until children are required to achieve them before they ‘graduate,’ nothing changes.
Other than more more millions of taxpayer dollars spent on illiterate kids ‘graduating’ from nanny-state daycare.
Another attempt by the unionized tenured teachers to find another new avenue to blame for their failures in the classrooms. Naturally the Illinois politicians fall in line with this as they know poorly educated people make good future Democrat party voters.
Can you say, “Democrats”.