Why Your School Doesn’t Care That Johnny Did Not Learn to Read This Year

Part 2- Don’t Blame His Teacher!!!

  • As I mentioned in Part 1, 35% of the children leaving first grade this year still cannot read.
  • These children have generally spent three years in school already in Junior Kindergarten, Senior Kindergarten and First Grade…. and they still have not been taught to read.
  • Now Hear This – It is not their teachers’ fault.
  • How do you know that?
  • Because the teachers have never been trained in programs that have been proven to work.
  • How do you know that?
  • Because I am a teacher and I have been working as a consultant to teachers to help them teach literacy skills to these kids for the past 40 years. These teachers have no effective tools to work with.
  • I hire teachers as tutors in my learning centre. When I ask them how they would teach me to read they give very superficial descriptions that have no plan and no sequence as to what they would actually do.
  • They simply do not know because they have never been given the tools.
  • They have also never been given the training in research-based programs that have a history of success.
  • Teachers don’t often get to pick their reading programs. These reading programs are often selected on a district or even a state level in order to get bulk purchasing discounts
  • The purchases are not necessarily made on the basis of hard, replicated outcome data.
  • Once again budget considerations trump teaching effectiveness.
  • So given no sure-fire programs and no training in these programs, what do you really expect a teacher to do?
  • If s/he enrolls in a specialized reading program, there is little likelihood that s/he will get any more information about effective programs, because the same fox that trained him or her is still running the hen house.
  • The only real solution is to find better information. Here’s a source. To hear the interview hold down Ctrl and click your mouse..  https://www.maloneymethod.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Book-Bits-Interview.mp3.

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