teach1st
08-06-2005, 07:40 AM
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/OPINION/508060488/1015
(Opinion)
Florida schools are right to insist that middle- and high-schoolers meet reading standards. Reading is fundamental to learning and to success in life, and our schools must teach it and demand that it be learned.
Statewide, half the state's middle- and high-school students will have to take crash courses in reading this fall to catch up. This is being described as a crisis in learning, and it sure sounds like one.
The middle- and high-school scores should improve in the future, provided we stick with the tougher elementary school standards and hold back students who haven't met them.
Elementary reading scores are generally climbing, the result of drawing a line at third grade several years ago and holding students back at least for a while — until they are ready to move on.
For example, Lee County saw increases in the numbers of fifth-graders passing reading and math tests in Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, results released in May. That was despite last school year's disruptions from Hurricane Charley.
On the other hand, the passing rate among sophomores dropped three percentage points in reading and two in math. Only 30 percent earned a passing score of 3 or better on reading. Sixty-two percent passed math.
This drop in scores among the higher grades is very discouraging. The reading habit seems never to have developed among many such students. By the time they are in middle and high school, they make tough cases for reading teachers.
How did we ever get in this mess? It's simple: we failed our students by relaxing standards, easing kids up through the grades to avoid the educational challenges and political and family flak that would result from keeping them back and making them learn. We used race and ethnicity as excuses for failure and social promotion.
It got to be a habit, breakable only with the sometimes crude hammer of state standards testing such as the FCAT. Opposition to testing still is very much alive, if politically impotent at the moment.
Read more (http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/OPINION/508060488/1015)
(Opinion)
Florida schools are right to insist that middle- and high-schoolers meet reading standards. Reading is fundamental to learning and to success in life, and our schools must teach it and demand that it be learned.
Statewide, half the state's middle- and high-school students will have to take crash courses in reading this fall to catch up. This is being described as a crisis in learning, and it sure sounds like one.
The middle- and high-school scores should improve in the future, provided we stick with the tougher elementary school standards and hold back students who haven't met them.
Elementary reading scores are generally climbing, the result of drawing a line at third grade several years ago and holding students back at least for a while — until they are ready to move on.
For example, Lee County saw increases in the numbers of fifth-graders passing reading and math tests in Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, results released in May. That was despite last school year's disruptions from Hurricane Charley.
On the other hand, the passing rate among sophomores dropped three percentage points in reading and two in math. Only 30 percent earned a passing score of 3 or better on reading. Sixty-two percent passed math.
This drop in scores among the higher grades is very discouraging. The reading habit seems never to have developed among many such students. By the time they are in middle and high school, they make tough cases for reading teachers.
How did we ever get in this mess? It's simple: we failed our students by relaxing standards, easing kids up through the grades to avoid the educational challenges and political and family flak that would result from keeping them back and making them learn. We used race and ethnicity as excuses for failure and social promotion.
It got to be a habit, breakable only with the sometimes crude hammer of state standards testing such as the FCAT. Opposition to testing still is very much alive, if politically impotent at the moment.
Read more (http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/OPINION/508060488/1015)