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The one and only goal right now for New Mexico schools
Michael Swickard
August is roasting time in New Mexico: fresh-picked green chile and the New Mexico public schools for their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) numbers. We take green chile most seriously – Big Jim or Sandia? Two sacks, will that be enough? Make it three, no four…
Meanwhile, most New Mexicans shrug at the AYP numbers indicating three of four New Mexico schools are not making the prescribed annual yearly progress.
When I look at the numbers I see something far more ominous in that half of all New Mexico students are not reading at or above their own grade level. Reading is THE core educational activity in schools. Any dysfunction in reading has broad long-term implications for students.
At the very least they do not get all of the instruction since 80 percent of instruction is in written form. At the worst they become turned off to education and form the nucleus of the drop out problem, which is sometimes framed to be about half of the students. Hmmm, half do not read to grade level and in some districts half of the students drop out.
While half the students are not reading at least at grade level their textbooks are carefully written for their grade reading level. Further, tests are first a test of reading level and then a test of the subject matter. So half of the students are not reading at the level of the material being presented or of the tests they are taking.
Time for action
It is time for action. New Mexico must focus on one and only one goal: Making all students able to read at the level of their grade. OK, I would set a realistic goal of 90 percent of New Mexico students reading on grade level.
Remember, the one and only goal is reading on grade level, not reading 10 percent better or using phonics or using some program approach since these are only strategies. The goal, the one and only goal, is that they read on grade level.
This fix for New Mexico schools is in two parts: First, students must start kindergarten on or above grade reading level and keep making one year of reading level progress each year. Or, second, if students start kindergarten behind in reading level then they must make catch up reading level progress while also making one year of reading level progress, which is very hard to do.
Special attention should be focused on no student starting third grade without the ability to read at the third-grade reading level. Period.
A cultural change
This is an educational goal, not a political goal like No Child Left Behind. How New Mexico students got behind is very important. For many students it is their first day in school when it is obvious they lack the literate and numerate skills of a five-year old. There is no way the schools can be blamed when students arrive at school their first day with the literate skills of a three-year old, while some have the literate skills of a four-year old. They go into the classroom with the rest of the students who arrive with at- or above-the-required literate skills. Those who start two years behind rarely can catch up and are always a dropout risk.
To really address the central problem in schools does require a cultural change in the society so that all children ages one to five get read to 20 minutes every day and spend at least five minutes each day in letter/number games. This reading to children each and every day must take on the specter of buckling them into their car seat each and every time.
Failure to read to children has the potential to damage them like not buckling them into a car seat. Each and every family, each and every child care provider must take the sacred 20 minutes seriously. Then all students will start on the correct reading level their first day in school.
To improve, New Mexico’s public schools should forget everything else and concentrate on making reading at grade level THE GOAL. Any attention to anything else is wasted if the core competency of reading on grade level is not achieved by all students.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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PenPal,
Right PP, I jump right on that, right after I run out of worthwhile things to do and am bored nearly to death.
Reading is important, it should be taught in school, and it should not be the only path to learning, in particular if the learner has no other choice. That is my opinion, and your opinion of my opinion is of even less interest to me than the authority of publication for Richard Johnson’s “Tom a Lincoln”; if that is even possible.
CM, did not understand my comments, so he/she misconstrues them in defense. But I let that lie.
The challenge is “to point to even one thing that can be learned only by “reading” about it.” I am going for the obscure, I admit, but you set the terms of “even one thing”: the authority of publication for Richard Johnson’s “Tom a LIncoln.” My counter-challenge to CD: find a non-textual source of this information. My more general point is that except for conventional material in the common culture, anything out of the way is going to require reading. And the amount of material outside the narrow confines of the common culture is enormous.
I sympathize with the few who,for neurological reasons, cannot read. I am not prepared to suggest that public education should do anything which de-emphasizes reading with fluency.
Re PenPal’s comment.
Apparently, s/he did not read and understand my comment before rushing to criticism.
I’m not sure that I ever suggested that illiterates should, would, or could read my comment.
I am sorry that s/he cannot make sense of a simple construct; Reading is clearly of monumental importance and should be treated as such. But. there are other ways to learn. One can read about history, or one can watch video presentations about history, or one can listen to audio presentations about history and learn just the same. Blind people learn from audio sources regularly.
I never suggested that anyone be excused from learning to read, only that those who cannot read, need to have that disability recognized and then be taught according to some method beside reading, until they do acquire the reading skill set. Even at that point, reading about something may still not be the best way to learn it. As but one example; one can learn any number of things from watching YouTube videos and never be able to read at all. There are better venues than You Tube of course, lots of them. There will be more as education moves into
One does not “learn” from street signs, billboards. And I would argue that anything that could be learned from newspapers, books, and computer screens can be learned in other ways. I would ask him or her, to point to even one thing that can be learned only by “reading” about it.
I am happy that s/he can “imagine” optical scanners that read aloud, as they are in fact, a reality.
Finally, the learning that takes place at school, takes place at school, s/he needn’t “wonder” how it might take place in other venues which are not germane to the discussion of learning in public schools.
I never said reading was not important or worthy of emphasis. All I pointed out was that there are other ways to learn than reading, and that people can under some circumstances be educated without reading at all.
ched macquigg’s comment is virtually self-refuting: the illiterate cannot read it! But this reader cannot make sense of it. I fail to see how flaws in textbooks justify excusing non-readers from learning to read them; or how such non-readers are then going to learn to read on the way to “independent lifelong learning.” Possibly, CM thinks that such learning can proceed without regard to text, in street signs, billboards, newspapers, books, computer screens, etc.. If so, he or she has a lot to do to explain how such learning can take place. I can imagine optical scanners with audio outputs, but I wonder how they will work in the world outside the living room, dorm room, or library.
Michael has it absolutely right; reading is important, from grade level to grade level. My only criticism is that, once past a statement of importance, he should have offered some suggestions for improving upon an educational system which nets only 50% proficiency, and some discussion of the culture needing change, with ideas for initiating it.
I find it easy to agree with Michael because, in Sun-News columns under my name (Michael L. Hays), I have been pushing the same point for several years now, and I have urged two approaches in some detail: better (“aligned”) training in schools of education for would-be elementary teachers in what the curriculum, such as it is, requires them to teach; and a defined and enforced curriculum which features literacy. Archived Sun-News columns going back two years specifically address these and related issues.
Michael,
You write that 80% of instruction comes in written form. There in lies a problem created by choice.
There are examples of people who can never read, dyslexics for example, who are successfully educated by either having a reader or another venue.
Will I agree that reading is vitally important to independent lifelong learning (the real goal of education), we don’t have to insist that non-readers for any reason, must suffer from our insistence on continuing to use textbooks as the central tool, despite their many short comings.
It is time to revisit the fundamental model of education; cemetery seating, and revamp it to fold in advances in information gathering and distribution.
I actually agree with Michael Swickard – reading is so important!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As Henry David Thoreau said: “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book”. Enjoyed this commentary!