{"id":1201,"date":"2020-10-22T12:02:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakeramitchell.com\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2020-10-22T12:02:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:02:16","slug":"why-johnny-still-cant-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/22\/why-johnny-still-cant-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Johnny Still Can\u2019t Read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Why Johnny Still Can\u2019t Read<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By BAKER A. MITCHELL JR.     October 10, 2020 6:30 AM<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Public schools are passing students who can\u2019t read at any level \u2014 all to avoid blaming teachers, lawmakers, and bureaucrats.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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 <\/a><\/strong>Public schools from coast to coast are failing to teach young students the most basic skill they need to succeed in school and life: reading. This failure is widespread, tragic, and mostly unnecessary. We know how to teach reading, but many school administrators refuse to use the proven methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The extent of this self-inflicted catastrophe, which has\nruined countless lives, was driven home to me again when the new school year\nbegan several weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some 20 years ago I founded the Roger Bacon Academy (RBA),\nwhich manages a family of four charter schools in southeastern North Carolina.\nThis year, for the first time in RBA\u2019s history, the schools enrolled large\nnumbers of students who transferred from the traditional county public schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 168 first- and second-grade transfer students, 75\n(approx. 45 percent) could not pass the basic readiness assessment to begin<\/em> kindergarten-level\nreading instruction. Not only could they not read at any level, but their\nspoken vocabularies were insufficient to understand reading instruction if it\nwere taught to them. Therefore, the 51 first-graders and 24 second-graders are\nnow taking a kindergarten preparatory course called Language for Learning (L4L)\nthat must be mastered before effective reading instruction can begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the prevalence of nonreaders moving through\nour public-school systems is widespread. Here in North Carolina, in a typical\nyear such as 2017\u201318, 55.7 percent of public-school students in grades three\nthrough eight fail North Carolina\u2019s end-of-grade reading test. On the most\nrecent reading tests administered by the National Assessment of Education\nProgress (NAEP), our so-called Nation\u2019s Report Card, just 36 percent of North\nCarolina fourth-graders \u201cperformed at or above the NAEP proficient level.\u201d\nSixty-seven percent performed at the basic level \u2014 meaning that a third of all\nstudents did not. Lest you think this is a North Carolina problem alone, both\nmeasures were on par with, and in fact a little above, the national average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The significance of this can\u2019t be overstated. If students\nhaven\u2019t learned how to read proficiently (or in some cases read at all) by the\ntime they enter fourth grade, it may be all over for them. As the National\nConference of State Legislatures pointed out in a report<\/strong><\/a> at the end of last year, citing research\nby the Annie E. Casey Foundation<\/strong><\/a>, \u201cthird grade has been\nidentified as important to reading literacy because it is the final year children\nare learning to read, after which students are \u2018reading to learn.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Carolina Superior Court Judge Howard Manning<\/strong><\/a>, in the course of his oversight\nof a 20-year education lawsuit (Leandro v. State of North Carolina<\/em>),\nmade a determination that such failures amount to \u201ccommitting academic\ngenocide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody seems to agree if you are not reading by the\nthird grade, you\u2019re screwed,\u201d Judge Manning told TV news anchor David Crabtree\non WRAL in Raleigh on August 26. \u201cFrom the evidence, there is no reason in\nthe world \u2014 if teachers and principals follow the assessments as they are\nsupposed to \u2014 that a child should not be reading by third grade. . . . I get\nmad about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Know How to Teach Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is not as if teaching reading has been ignored in the\nUnited States. Teaching reading successfully is a straightforward,\nwell-documented process, and most children, given proper instruction, should be\nsuccessful readers by the end of kindergarten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal government began a ten-year, billion-dollar\neffort called Project\nFollow Through<\/strong><\/a> in 1968 that tested various methods for teaching\nreading to at-risk children in grades K\u20133. It compared 22 curriculum models in\n178 communities with 200,000 children. The Direct Instruction (DI) model, the\nstudy found, \u201cproduced the best results in all areas: basic skills, problem\nsolving, and self-esteem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1997, after 20 years of ignoring Project Follow Though\nresults, Congress asked the director of the National Institute of Child Health\nand Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the secretary of education,\nto convene a national panel to evaluate existing research and evidence to find\nthe best ways of teaching children to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel was chaired by the late Dr. Donald N. Langenberg, then chancellor of the University of Maryland and a renowned nuclear physicist. The resulting\u00a0National Reading Panel<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0report of 2000 identified the five key skills that must be taught for reading, all of which are integral to the Reading Mastery (RM)\/L4L curriculum our schools use \u2014 which, it should be noted, has been widely available since the 1970s: phonemic awareness; phonics; fluency; vocabulary; and comprehension. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of embracing these methods, most of the education\nestablishment \u2014 superintendents, principals, schools of education, and, as they\nare taught, the teachers \u2014 snub them. The result: Year after year, significant\nnumbers of nonreaders advance through the public schools. I\u2019m not talking about\nstudents who aren\u2019t reading at grade level; I\u2019m talking about students who\ncan\u2019t read at any level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading Mastery provides a carefully sequenced series of 160\nlessons that teach beginning nonreading kindergarten students to read connected\ntext fluently. Each fifth lesson has a built-in assessment to ensure that the\nstudent has mastered the material before moving on. Before beginning the series\nat RM-1, Lesson 1, Language for Learning is sometimes required to teach young\nchildren the basic vocabulary, concepts, and sentence forms used in typical\nclassroom instruction. L4L also is carefully sequenced to introduce simple\nconcepts at the beginning, building up to more advanced concepts later. Because\nchildren come in with widely differing levels of oral vocabulary, L4L has a\nplacement test that allows teachers to start the program at a lesson matching each\nstudent\u2019s readiness level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The placement test uses 45 simple verbal instructions, such\nas \u201cShow me your nose\u201d or \u201cPoint to the wall\u201d or \u201cPut your hand on your head.\u201d\nSome refer to pictures the student is shown and ask such questions as, \u201cWhat is\nthe person doing?\u201d If a student can correctly answer at least 73 percent of the\nsimple questions (33 of the 45 questions) the student is allowed to proceed to\nReading Mastery 1, Lesson 1. Scoring below 73 percent requires the child to\nstart L4L before reading instruction begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that 24 second-grade transfer students \u2014 students\nwho already had spent two years in local public schools \u2014 were unable to pass\n(that is, score 73 percent or better) the kindergarten L4L Placement Test\nshould raise profound concerns among parents, public officials, taxpayers, and\nthe media. What are North Carolina citizens getting for their investments in\neducation?  How can school-district officials tolerate such outcomes? And\nremember, North Carolina fourth-graders scored slightly above the national average\nin the most recent NAEP national reading exam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that the Language for Learning\/Reading\nMastery curriculum and other available direct instruction programs provide a\nmagic bullet. Some students, although fluent readers, still struggle with comprehension.\nAt our four schools, for example, the overall percentage of students in third\ngrade and above whose reading comprehension is at or above their grade level\nare 74.4 percent, 67.3 percent, 75.2 percent, and 56 percent. The statewide\naverage is 57.2 percent. But I\u2019ll add a defensive footnote: Even in our\npoorest-performing school, Wilmington\u2019s inner-city Douglass Academy, the\npercentage was 73.3 percent among students who have been with us since\nkindergarten, while neighboring inner-city schools had passing percentages in\nthe 20s and 30s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became involved in education by accident. I\u2019m an\nelectrical engineer by profession. After establishing and leading the\nbioengineering section at the University of Texas\u2019s M.D. Anderson Cancer\nCenter, and later starting (and selling) a business, I retired and volunteered\nas a science teacher at Wesley Elementary School, a low-income, predominantly\nAfrican-American school in Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wesley\u2019s then principal, the late Thaddeus Lott, taught me\nwhat works in education: the proper curriculum executed with discipline, order,\nhigh expectations, and committed teachers and administrators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I later moved to Wilmington, N.C., where \u2014 inspired by Dr.\nLott \u2014 I helped establish the four Roger Bacon Academy schools, which currently\nhave 2,500 students. All four are Title 1 schools, meaning 40 percent or more\nof their students are economically disadvantaged. Three of the four schools are\namong the top-ranked in their respective counties \u2014 despite the fact that the\nstate tests our students are required to take are based on the Common Core\nstandards used in most traditional public schools, not the classical,\ndirect-instruction curriculum our schools use. Douglass Academy \u2014 named for\n19th-century civil-rights icon Frederick Douglass \u2014 has been outperforming\nneighboring public schools, and I\u2019m confident it\u2019s on the way to becoming a\ntop-ranked school as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before writing the application for Charter Day School, the\nfirst school we opened, a colleague and I visited two other charter schools\nusing direct-instruction methods and the Reading Mastery program: Franklin\nAcademy, in Wake Forest, and Rocky Mount Charter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rocky Mount was, and is, an inner-city minority school, and\nthe board was very gracious in hosting a tour for us. During the tour, our\nescort was called away, and we were left by ourselves in a hallway. We stopped\na passing teacher and introduced ourselves and asked about her experiences at\nRocky Mount with direct instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She seemed flustered at the question. She took a breath and,\npointing toward a window, said she had taught first and second grade for 14\nyears at a nearby public elementary school. Every year, she said, many students\nwould be promoted to the next grade though they couldn\u2019t read. She always had\nassumed it was a developmental issue about which she couldn\u2019t do anything. At\nRocky Mount, where direct instruction is used, she said every child was\nreading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She began to tear up and, barely managing to talk while\nweeping, explained that these were just like the children she had passed along\nas nonreaders at her previous school. She told us how guilty she felt when she\nrealized that she\u2019d needlessly failed to teach so many students to read those\nmany years. She hurried away down the hall as our escort returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Are the Successful Methods Ignored?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The establishment ignores Language for Learning (L4L),\nReading Mastery (RM), and other proven reading curricula because to do\notherwise would shift blame for nonreaders to teachers, administrators, the\nschools of education, and the lawmakers who ignore or make excuses for the\npublic schools\u2019 failings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the depth of the problem, look no further than\nthe fate of a law passed here in North Carolina in 1996, General Statute\n115C-81.2., \u201cComprehensive Plan for Reading Achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan shall be based on reading instructional practices for which there is strong evidence of effectiveness in existing empirical scientific research studies on reading development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It states further:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The General Assembly believes that the first, essential step in the complex process of learning to read is the accurate pronunciation of written words and that phonics, which is the knowledge of relationships of the symbols of the written language and the sounds of the spoken language, is the most reliable approach to arriving at the accurate pronunciation of a printed word. Therefore, these programs shall include early and systematic phonics instruction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The law directed the State Board of Education to modify \u201cthe\nstandard course of study and to emphasize balanced, integrated, and effective\nprograms of reading instruction that include early and systematic phonics\ninstruction\u201d and to \u201creview, evaluate, and revise current teacher certification\nstandards and teacher education programs within the institutions of higher\neducation that provide coursework in reading instruction.\u201d The law contained no\npenalties or sanctions for noncompliance and after being ignored by the State\nBoard of Education for ten years was repealed in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll rescue the 75 nonreaders who escaped from the local\ndistrict schools this fall. Millions of others around the country aren\u2019t so\nlucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BAKER A. MITCHELL JR.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, founder of <\/em>THE ROGER BACON ACADEMY<\/em><\/strong><\/a> in Leland, N.C., is a former member of the North Carolina Public Charter School Advisory Council, the state Charter School Advisory Board, and past chairman of the North Carolina Alliance for Public Charter Schools.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Johnny Still Can\u2019t Read By BAKER A. MITCHELL JR.     October 10, 2020 6:30 AM Public schools are passing students who can\u2019t read at any level \u2014 all to avoid blaming teachers, lawmakers, and bureaucrats.  Public schools from coast to coast are failing to teach young students the most basic skill they need to succeed in school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,7,8,9,1],"tags":[33,51,63,69,75],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-k-12","category-learning-and-education","category-politics","category-politics-nc","category-politics-us","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-literacy","tag-reading","tag-science-of-reading","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}