Why Do You Think Alabama Ranks Last in Reading and Math
Alabama students lost ground in math against the rest of the country according to the latest results on the nation’s report card. Those scores, released this morning, dropped Alabama to dead last, 52nd in the nation, behind school systems run by 49 other states, Washington DC and the Department of Defense.
That’s down from 2017, when Alabama’s fourth-grade scores ranked 47th and eighth-graders ranked 50th. This year Alabama students in both grades finished last in math. (Al.com Nov. 02, 2019, 10:55 a.m. | Published: Nov. 01, 2019, 7:00 a.m.)
So what about 2021?
Alabama’s math scores are the lowest in the country, and state Sen. Arthur Orr is working on proposed math legislation to raise the scores.
“When you’re 52nd in the country, you’ve got to make radical changes,” said Orr. “And some people say, ‘Well, there are only 50 states,’ but we were behind the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense schools. So you can’t get much lower than we are today.” https://www.wsfa.com/.../math-counterpart-alabama.../
And who will they listen to on how to fix this debacle? I am a graduate of the University of Alabama (BSE) and Troy University Dothan (MSE). I will never donate to the College of Education of either university. Though I actually blame the Department of Education as the source of our decline, our Colleges of Education are its carriers. And the more we buy the argument that curriculum should be the same nationwide, we will continue to destroy effective school systems with a killer curriculum. (Remember national uniformity was the goal of Common Core --creating an Education Pandemic). Do not believe anyone that its deadly tentacles have been uprooted from the books and internet courses, or the minds of those teachers infected (by the Colleges of Education).
Dothan paid its former Superintendent of Schools big bucks to kill alumni support for Dothan's high school alma maters. I was a DHS cheerleader 1966 -68 and it breaks my heart to see what has happened. Who actually bought the claim that once again rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (Dothan City Schools) by having one new Dothan High School and making the old DHS a "Preparatory" Academy" would improve Reading and Math skills? (Anyone ever hear of lipstick on a pig? Not the children but the curriculum and using that fancy word to make it appear advanced.) Those 8th graders afflicted now with the consequences of the failing reading and math (52nd in the nation) find their curriculum substituted by Social and Emotional Learning, blaming the child and parent for the failure of the schools.
When I graduated from Dothan High School in 1968, our schools were highly regarded. You may say, if you are so critical of our schools, why don't you try to do something about it? I did run for the Dothan School Board. Twice. I was defeated once by an obstetrician "with a heart for education." His campaign was run out of the central office. Another candidate posted a letter to the editor accusing me of being a member of the Klan. Incredible since our Black children suffer most from the Whole Language reading method that I fought so hard against. That is according to the billion dollar Project Follow Through conducted by the Department of Education and the research of Dr. Jeanne Chall of Harvard. Someone else called me a Flat Earther because I proposed going back to the curricula that actually enabled those wonderful Black female Mathematicians to help us get our astronauts to the moon.
I attended a meeting of the Alabama Senate at that time considering Goals 2000, the first step toward Common Core. That was where I heard the Director of Instruction for the State of Alabama boast of having written her dissertation on Whole Language. Needless to say, my heart clenched because that "expert with a clean shirt and a briefcase" was now carrying that failed method system to system.
Now you ask, what would you have done? I would have put SIDE phonics (Systematic, Intensive, Direct and Early Phonics) in the classrooms to teach our children to read. Instead she promoted the newest version of the failed Look/Say, Whole Word guessing. If you see this in your child's classroom run.
1. Look at the picture.
2. Say the beginning sound.
3. Think of a word that begins with the same letter.
4. Does it make sense? Try both vowel sounds.
5. Skip over the word and go on.
6. Go back to the beginning.
7. Ask for help.
What I saw when I taught 8th grade history and English was too many children who could not tell you the meaning of a sentence by the time they got to the end of it because they guessed wrong on too many words and could not get meaning from the sentence.
Fundraising organizations (called Foundations --like the A Plus Foundation) arose to raise money--because money was their answer to the problem. And then they demanded more money. To support more foolish ideas. And Dothan City Schools sank lower and lower in its rankings. Amazingly grades (GPA) got higher. (But, perhaps that is simply refers back to the fact that those with the lowest SATs enter Education and graduate with the highest GPAs).
So called "grass roots" organizations popped up like poison mushrooms -- like the A Plus Foundation. They are regarded as experts and yet, by listening to them our state is now 52nd in the country behind Washington DC and Puerto Rico. I would hope a lawyer with such a record would be disbarred, or a doctor have his license pulled. Why do experts that have used our children as guinea pigs and produced these results get rewarded and even more appalling treated with respect!
Senator Arthur Orr will no doubt listen to the "experts" on how to fix the condition of our schools (and I am speaking specifically of what is going in our children's minds, not whether they are in modular buildings). I have no doubt that the liberation pedagogy of Harvard hero and defrocked Jesuit priest, Paolo Freire, will dominate the conversation.
Read what Wikipedia has to say about his now approved form of mathematics. (Wikipedia: Critical mathematics pedagogy is an approach to mathematics education that includes a practical and philosophical commitment to liberation.)
So why do you think Alabama ranks last?