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.
