This ranks right up there with when I went to look at the books up for approval for Dothan City Schools and the series they chose was the one that came with the most remedial materials!
Duh! As my grandchildren would say. Does that not indicate that the series is a FAILURE and therefore they need more remedial materials. Not that it is effective, let's buy this one!
I forgot to tell him that nearly one out of three 9th graders give up by the 12th grade and drop out.
I am not the only one driven crazy by this lunacy! Dr. Patrick Groff wrote of it in his book, Preventing Reading Failure.
He writes:
A final reason why the myths of reading instruction have found favor among reading professionals rests in the nature of the financial makeup of the public school system. First, the public schools of the nation obviously dominate the educational scene. They have achieved this position of eminence and authority because they receive most of the monies that are allocated for education. None of these funds can be directly spent for the support of nonpublic schools.
As a consequence, the public school has become an educational monopoly. As such, it faces no serious competition from any other system of education in our society. It is normal for monopolies to stifle competition. Monopolies which face no competition, also do not have to be accountable for the quality of their product. These conditions are reflected in the current school system.
I emailed the principals of the three lowest scoring schools, Springfield, Lucille Moore, and Oscar Patterson Elementary and told them of the program that was so successful in Parks Elementary in Natchitoches, Louisiana. John Winston's school served three housing projects and was predominantly minority. Look up above at the "special" status listed above the schools, Title I, Percent of Minority students, Percent of Economically Disadvantaged Students. For the school system, these are excuses for poor performance, a continuation of the BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS AND THE CRUELTY OF CONDESCENSION -- and the source of a LOT OF MONEY to come into the system.
You see John Winston IS A BLACK MAN. He knew the potential of those children in the housing projects, labeled disadvantaged, and refused to accept those excuses. He found a program that worked! Unfortunately, it was VERY INEXPENSIVE (meaning not expensive) AND, IT ONLY TOOK A TEACHER WITH A PIECE OF CHALK AND A BLACKBOARD. He brought those students from the 25th percentile in reading to the 80th, from 40 identified dyslexics to one or two, and discipline problems diminished. THEY COULD READ! Oh, then, of course, they gave them something worth reading.
Whoa! No computers? No laptops? No Pearson Online books? No testing by Bill Gates?
Who's going to make any money off of this? (I'll never forget that Principal in Dothan telling me "We have too much invested in this to change now!" And another said, "Let's not let anybody get hurt here.")
Do you hear that gagging reflex? Pardon me, that is just my reaction to their words and true feelings! Do you see the children anywhere in that response? Effective education?
Oh no, let's not let Administrators look bad! Let's continue failing our children because it might cost us some of those dollars coming in from Washington and elsewhere! If we succeed, what will happen to the Yes We Can Movements? All of those supporters and cheerleaders that continue to raise money for the projects we have in our schools. Then we cannot produce those situations that need those social projects if our curriculum were actually to produce educated students! Where would we be on the social rankings of those most helpful to our community! No awards for using our students to raise money for .... whatever. How about Homeless, since illiteracy has already produced such a large number of them.
Why our children might actually be successful and be able to read manuals for those jobs that the Economic Development committees work so hard to bring here.
By the way, only one principal, emailed me back. A very nice response. She said she would look into it. They were beginning to work on writing, however, not reading. (Beginning to work on writing before the child can read? Well, fortunately, the Spalding WRITING ROAD TO READING actually addresses all of the above.)
Please look at the favorable twist the News Herald gave the scores. More than half passed! (53%) That also means that nearly half (47%) DID NOT!
Look at the independent scores and then ask yourself how those scores added up to the score at the end.
Dr. Samuel Orton began noticing school induced dyslexia in the 1920s. The Lincoln School in New York was a leader in Progressive education. The Rockefeller children attended there. Remember now, they only slap another name on the methods that failed. For example, Look-say/Sight Method/Whole Word/Whole Language has evolved into the "We Do Teach Phonics" Eclecticism that sounds so erudite, but is actually teachers falling back on the Whole Language Method rather than doing the drill and repetition for a good phonics program.
One of the great ironies of the Progressive Education Movement is that its leaders were able to convince John D. Rockefeller, Jr. that he ought to give his sons a good progressive education and donate $3 million to the Lincoln School, a new experiment in social education in accordance with John Dewey’s radical new ideas. So he put Nelson, Laurence, Winthrop, and David in the school, which turned them all into dyslexics, proving that progressive reading programs can cause dyslexia.
According to Education Encyclopedia, StateUniversity.com:
The Lincoln School (1917–1940) of Teachers College, Columbia University, was a university laboratory school set up to test and develop and ultimately to promulgate nationwide curriculum materials reflecting the most progressive teaching methods and ideas of the time. Originally located at 646 Park Avenue in New York, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city, the Lincoln School was also a training ground for New York City's elite, including the sons of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who provided the funding for the school. Among the school's chief architects were Charles W. Eliot, a former president of Harvard University and an influential member of the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools; his protégé Abraham Flexner, a member of the controversial Rockefeller philanthropy, the General Education Board; Otis W. Caldwell, a professor of science education at Teachers College and the school's first director; and the dean of Teachers College, James E. Russell.
Unfortunately, Rockefeller’s four sons were some of the earliest victims of school-induced dyslexia, a condition they had to deal with for the rest of their lives.
Jules Abel, in his 1965 book, The Rockefeller Billions, wrote:
The influence of the Lincoln School, which, as a progressive school, encouraged students to explore their own interests and taught them to live in society has been a dominant one in their lives. ... Yet Lawrence gives startling confirmation as to "Why Johnny Can't Read." He says that the Lincoln School did not teach him to read and write as he wishes he now could. Nelson, today, admits that reading for him is a "slow and tortuous process" that he does not enjoy doing but compels himself to do it. This is significant evidence in the debate that has raged about modern educational techniques.
David Rockefeller writes of his experience at the Lincoln School in his Memoirs, published in 2002:
It was Lincoln's experimental curriculum and method of instruction that distinguished it from all other New York schools of the time. Father was an ardent and generous supporter of John Dewey's educational methods and school reform efforts. ... Teacher's College of Columbia University operated Lincoln, with considerable financial assistance in the early years from the General Education Board, as an experimental school designed to put Dewey's philosophy into practice.
Dewey’s educational methods were conceived and calculated to dumb down the nation, and he started out by dumbing down the four Rockefeller boys. Nelson, of course, was in later years able to hire Henry Kissinger to do his reading for him.
David Rockefeller writes further:
Lincoln stressed freedom for children to learn and to play an active role in their own education. ... But there were some drawbacks. In my case, I had trouble with reading and spelling, which my teachers, drawing upon "progressive" educational theory, did not consider significant. They believed I was simply a slow reader and that I would develop at my own pace. In reality I have dyslexia, which was never diagnosed, and I never received remedial attention. As a result my reading ability, as well as my proficiency in spelling, improved only marginally as I grew older. All my siblings, except Babs and John, had dyslexia to a degree.
Apparently, David Rockefeller still doesn’t understand that he was made dyslexic by the teaching methods at the Lincoln School. He says, “I have dyslexia,” as if he were born with it, and that is why he had such a difficult time learning to read.
The reason why David’s older brother, John D. Rockefeller III, did not become dyslexic is because he attended the traditional Browning School in New York and the Loomis Institute in Windsor, Connecticut. He then went on to Princeton, where he received high honors in economics.
Winthrop Rockefeller, born in 1912, attended the Lincoln School. He later found formal education difficult, suffering from dyslexia. He entered Yale in 1931 but was expelled in 1934 for misbehavior. He had a successful military career, after which he moved to Arkansas and became its first Republican Governor. What is most significant in all this is that the experience of the four Rockefeller boys provides confirmation that the sight method of teaching reading, used at the Lincoln School, caused dyslexia. Of course, we were not able to know this until years later when their memoirs and biographies were published.
Yet, the progressive educators were well aware of this harmful phenomenon as early as February 1929, when Dr. Samuel T. Orton — a neuropathologist who had made a survey in the 1920s of children with reading problems in Iowa, where the sight method was being used — wrote an article for the Journal of Educational Psychology. Its title was quite explicit: “The ‘Sight Reading’ Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability.” He wrote, as diplomatically as possible:
I wish to emphasize at the beginning that the strictures which I have to offer here do not apply to the use of the sight method of teaching reading as a whole but only to its effects on a restricted group of children for whom, as I think we can show, this technique is not only not adapted but often proves an actual obstacle to reading progress, and moreover I believe that this group is one of considerable educational importance both because of its size and because here faulty teaching methods may not only prevent the acquisition of academic education by children of average capacity but may also give rise to far reaching damage to their emotional life.
Orton’s article was written for the very educators who were in the process of launching their sight-reading programs in all the public schools of America. And of course they rejected his warning. But it wasn’t until 1955 that American parents became aware of what was being done to their children in the schools. It was that year in which Rudolf Flesch’s famous book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, was published, and it created quite a storm among educators and parents. The educators rejected Flesch’s assertion that it was the sight or look-say method that was causing the problem, but parents read the book and many started to teach their children to read with phonics at home.
My own book on the reading problem, The New Illiterates, was published in 1973, some 18 years after Why Johnny Can’t Read. Indeed, in 1973 Johnny still couldn’t read! In The New Illiterates I revealed that the sight method had been invented by the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, the teacher of the deaf and dumb at his asylum in Hartford, Connecticut, as a means of teaching the deaf both language and reading. He thought the method could also be used to teach normal children to read. So he wrote The Mother’s Primer, which was published in 1836 and adopted by the Boston primary schools as a new, easier way to teach reading. Instead, it produced a literacy disaster. In 1844, the Boston School Masters wrote a devastating critique of this new way of teaching reading. The schools then quickly went back to the phonetic method.
In my book, I also did a line-by-line analysis of the Dick and Jane reading program and came to the conclusion that anyone taught to read by this method could become dyslexic. But nothing I’ve written on the subject has had the slightest influence on the professors in America’s colleges of education or changed the prevailing sight methods of teaching reading in the public schools.
And that is why I then developed the Alpha-Phonics reading program, so that parents could easily teach their children to read at home in the proper phonetic manner. Since its first publication in 1983, thousands of homeschooling parents have used the program to teach their children to read. Of course, I have tried to get the public schools to adopt the program, but with no success. However, one high school teacher in Florida, who heard about my work and has actually used Alpha-Phonics to help potential dropouts learn to read, claims that it works miracles. He wrote in a letter to me:
I once was explaining to a student why children have reading problems. When I finished, a girl from the other side of the class, who I thought was not listening, said, “This is what happened to my brother. He is in the fourth grade, hates to read and gets stomach aches and headaches.” I told her that his troubles were over and gave her a copy of Alpha-Phonics. Four months later, I asked how was her brother doing. She said he completed the book and reads just fine.
I had the same success with students in special education, who were labeled as
learning disabled or educatably mentally retarded. I have 100% success with every student. The only variable is the speed at which students progress. You must follow Dr. Blumenfeld’s advice and be patient. Do not pressure the child.
learning disabled or educatably mentally retarded. I have 100% success with every student. The only variable is the speed at which students progress. You must follow Dr. Blumenfeld’s advice and be patient. Do not pressure the child.
I have many other heartbreaking stories about children who have quit school because they did not know how to read, and no one will teach them. I have had children take a copy of Alpha-Phonics and keep it to teach friends they know, how to read. I encouraged everyone to try Alpha-Phonics. The results you see in the child are truly miraculous. It must be seen to be believed.
So if America wants to reclaim its preeminence as the most literate nation on earth, they can do so by simply using Alpha-Phonics in all the schools across the country. Not very difficult to do, and not at all expensive. In other words, we don’t need No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top to pretend that we are helping the kids. But a dysfunctional federal government is simply incapable of doing what can be done easily and cheaply. There is neither the will, nor the intelligence, nor the open-mindedness to make it happen. And so if you, a parent, want true education reform, you can have it instantly — at home.
Samuel Blumenfeld
(Alpha Phonics is indeed a good Phonics program. Marva Collins' Great Expectations is also an excellent program. She used Sister Monica Frasier's Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice and Open Court Readers.)
Samuel Blumenfeld
(Alpha Phonics is indeed a good Phonics program. Marva Collins' Great Expectations is also an excellent program. She used Sister Monica Frasier's Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice and Open Court Readers.)
I wanted to share all of that with you because so often illiteracy is blamed on HOMELESS, DISADVANTAGED, MINORITY, SOCIOECONOMIC SITUATION, SINGLE FAMILY, ETC. when in fact it is simply POOR CURRICULUM CHOICES.
I believe it was in Rudolph Flesch's book Why Johnny Can't Read or Why Johnny Still Can't Read that I read that one excuse in the 1900s was bad tonsils. They refuse to go back down that road to where the choice in the road of education led down THE WRONG PATH! They will continue to blame you, your children, climate change, your family's economic situation, marital status, etc. rather than the wrong choices made by career educators and those in the colleges of education. Why their whole career would be a sham! Better to blame the children and parents!
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AROUND AND MOVE AHEAD. WITHOUT IT AN INDIVIDUAL IS VIRTUALLY DOOMED TO A LIFE OF POVERTY AND IGNORANCE.
Who will dare buck the system, say no more COMMON CORE, and actually teach children to read? And then teach them to write, spell, calculate, empower them with cultural literacy, make them more than community organizers!
Notice above. The US is below the average score for other nations. Bay District Schools ranks pretty far below that. What does that tell you about an international competitive advantage?
Yes We Can
Parents have rights Against Intrusive Surveys PROTECTION OF PUPIL RIGHTS AMENDMENT and SEL (Social Emotional Learning)
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2018/01/parents-have-rights-against-intrusive.html
The Growing Irrelevance of Colleges and Universities
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-growing-irrelevance-of-colleges-and.html
SAAIL SAVE ADMINISTRATORS ACCEPT ILLITERACY
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2018/01/saail-save-administrators-accept.html
The Growing Irrelevance of Colleges and Universities
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-growing-irrelevance-of-colleges-and.html
SAAIL SAVE ADMINISTRATORS ACCEPT ILLITERACY
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2018/01/saail-save-administrators-accept.html
If I Ruled the Schools
THE BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: PROFITS, POSITION, POWER, POLITICS PRODUCE A CIVIL WAR IN EDUCATION
FREE OUR CHILDREN FROM THE OPPRESSION OF COLLEGES OF EDUCATION. CHICAGO. TWO DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHIES.
Common Core, Sylvia Plath, and Death Education
Tales from the Crypt. True stories of our Dead Schools.
The Truth about Phonics that will Help You Help Your Child! Whole Language: A Fraud Perpetrated upon Our Students. One of Many?
The Tragedy of the Math Mess and Another Way
MATH WARS. ONCE AGAIN INTO THE FRAY
COMMON CORE MATH
The Reality of Bay District Schools. Only Fifty Percent Read Proficiently. Is there hope?
The Four Period Day: Students as Guinea Pigs and Professional advancement for "innovators"
The Tale of Last Hope for Local Control
DEMONIC ROOTS TO COMMON CORE? VISIT YOUR CHILD'S THERAPEUTIC CLASSROOM.
THE GENEALOGY OF COMMON CORE: BILL GATES/UNESCO/ROBERT MULLER//ALICE BAILEY/LUCIS TRUST
THE CHICAGO CONNECTION TO COMMON CORE
does anybody really believe anymore? does anybody really care?https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/12/does-anybody-really-believe-anymore.html
Sounding the Alarm! Today's Therapeutic Classroom. What are you going to do about it?
Spalding Writing Road to Reading and John Winston of Parks Elementary Natchitoches, Louisiana
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/12/spalding-writing-road-to-reading-and.html
RETARDING AMERICA THE IMPRISONMENT OF POTENTIAL
NOTE FROM ROBERT SWEET OF THE NATIONAL RIGHT TO READ FOUNDATION
The DARE PROGRAM 20 years later.
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-dare-program-20-years-later-more.html
Merry Christmas! Meet Alliwishus, The Elf Mother Met at the Battle of the Bulge
My Mother. My hero who won a Battle Ribbon at the Battle of the Bulge. December 16, 1944. A SCRAPBOOK LOOK FROM JEAN BRONSON GILLIS BURSON.
LEONARD COHEN HALLELUJAH PROJECT AT BAY HIGH SCHOOL AND ESTABLISHMENT RELIGION, SECULAR HUMANISM, IN OUR SCHOOLS
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/12/leonard-cohen-hallelujah-project-at-bay.html
WHY SHOULD CONSERVATIVES, CHRISTIANS AND THE THE FAITH COMMUNITY BE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS? SUBSCRIBE TO THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD AND GET WASHINGTON POST FREE
PEACE EDUCATION? CONFLICT RESOLUTION? TEACHING TOLERANCE? COMMON CORE
TRADITIONAL OR PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION. DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE? HAS POLITICS AFFECTED YOUR CHILD'S MATH EDUCATION?
RETARDING AMERICA THE IMPRISONMENT OF POTENTIAL
NOTE FROM ROBERT SWEET OF THE NATIONAL RIGHT TO READ FOUNDATION
DELPHI TECHNIQUE, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT CONVINCED A GULLIBLE PUBLIC TO BUY INTO COMMON CORE
COMMON CORE: PORNOGRAPHY 101
MIDDLE SCHOOL AGENDA FOR SEXUAL ORIENTATION AS A PART OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
BEHAVIOR MODELS ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS
CULTURE WAR AND COMMON CORE
SOCIAL STUDIES AND COMMON CORE
TEACHERS AS LIBERATORS PRODUCE STUDENTS AS REVOLUTIONARIES: Whole Language Live On!
RADICAL POSSIBILITIES: YOUR CHILDREN
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/radical-possibilities-your-children.html
Response to AL.Com article "Alabama Superintendent Proposal to Raise Academic Standards."
SECULAR HUMANISM IS NOW THE RELIGION OF OUR SCHOOLS
COMMON CORE: THE EMPEROR IS WEARING NO CLOTHES
COMMON CORE=PETRI DISH FOR RADICALS
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/common-core-petri-dish-for-radicals.html
REVOLUTIONARY PEDAGOGY
Revolutionary Pedagogy: Or, so you thought reading, writing and calculating were why you sent your child to school?
EDUCATION TODAY:
Politics, Profits, Position, Power, and Prejudice published 1995
CAPSTONE EDUCATION (UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA) AND MY CONCERNS
CONFLICT RESOLUTION OR POLITICAL INDOCTRINATION?
DELPHI TECHNIQUE, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, AND THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT CONVINCED THE GULLIBLE NATION TO BUY INTO COMMON CORE
WHO DO WE HOLD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE FAILURE OF OUR SCHOOLS?
PUBLIC EDUCATION SHOULD EMPOWER PARENTS
CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN EDUCATION
THE CIVIL WAR IN EDUCATION
SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
TAKE A KNEE
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