Dothan City Schools Reading Scores.
I wish those interested in creating a real difference in reading in Dothan would read Dr. Patrick Groff's book, Preventing Reading Failure: An Examination of the Myths of Reading Instruction.
It is 2022. About thirty years ago, a group of Dothan parents, black and white, brought John Winston to share the success of his school using the Spalding Writing Road to Reading in Nachitoches, Mississippi. He brought his school that served a couple of housing projects and was 90% black up from the 24th percentile to the 80th percentile, his identified dyslexics dwindled from 40 to one or two, and the violence in the school became negligible.
The Dothan City School Board rejected the proposal to at least have a pilot school using the Spalding Writing Road to Reading, the method for reading instruction used by John Winston to replace Whole Language in his school. They supported and should be held accountable for choosing, the Whole Language "Method", promoted by Dr. Fritchie at Troy State and the Whole Language Hootenanny of her students who attended the meeting. With that vote and others since, the Dothan City School Board, following the unquestioned guidance of our administrators, adopted the philosophy as quoted in the Whole Language Catalog, “We are not just asking for a change in the teaching of reading, but a radical change in the social and political structure of schooling and society." (Giroux and McLaren 1986)
These are the reading scores about the time Goals 2000 changed education to fit the political goals of the National Education Association, a Left Wing political action lobbying group that has commandeered the Department of Education, colleges of education, teacher certification, classroom management, even the school facilities, demanding payroll deduction for membership fees and political donations, use of the schools for meetings, payment for time off for professional activities, school access for correspondence between teachers and union, and free access for union representatives.
So what has happened 30 years later after the supposed "School Reform" of Goals 2000 and then the Common Core railroading?
Learning to read by the end of third grade is considered fundamental to school success. Children not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely than proficient readers to leave high school without a diploma. After third grade, teachers expect students to read in order to learn in later grades, students without adequate reading skills struggle and have limited opportunities to make up the deficit.
Dothan Compared to other area schools
https://parcalabama.org/category/education-workforce-development/
As you can see, there has been no improvement in Dothan City Schools since the 1990s yet we continue to listen to those who caused the problem to tell us how to fix it. I will guarantee you those professors at Troy and Dothan administrators have submitted a lifelong series of professional papers to journals using Dothan City Schools students to feather their professional resume. In academia, it is a you publish my paper and I'll publish yours and we will have like-minded (peer review) approval for whatever we chose to inflict on the children in our schools. Little wonder parents are choosing to go to the county schools or homeschool.
As a lifelong member of this community, I am appalled that we have fallen victim to the "need more money and then it will work" claims of our education establishment. With this trusting attitude we have let our children fall victim to what Dean Kunkel of Auburn called thirty years ago "current wisdom." As a consequence, an unbelievable number of our children graduate as functional illiterates. History has become Multiculturalism dividing our country into tribes. English has become "Transformational" and we are allowing Sex Education k-12 and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to "teach" topics that would have been considered child abuse thirty years ago.
Parents need to
1. Read the Resolutions for the National Education Association and determine for yourself whether this Left Wing (Marxist) organization should be controlling our schools. (How can this be legal?) https://calltowakeup.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-nea-is-leftist-political-lobbying.html
2. Stand up! The child belongs to you! If the school cannot do the job then the money for his/her education should be put in your hands so you can put him/her into the school that will.
3. Attend the School Board Meetings. And then do research on your own (not what they give out in their PR packets). See if it is another of the items on the Resolutions for the National Education Association.
https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/NEA%20Resolutions_2021-2022.pdf
I am a bit confused about Highlands. I find on another spot that their rating is as listed below. That would be 36% of children not proficient in reading. 27% in the third grade, 33 % in the fourth grade and 48 percent in the fifth grade. I really see irony here at these scores on a website called "great schools" and they report that at least one third of the students are not proficient readers. https://www.greatschools.org/alabama/dothan/1912-Highlands-Elementary-School/
The Alabama Literacy Act, passed in 2019, has sharpened the focus on early grades reading and directed coaching support and additional resources to support reading instruction based on the science of reading. The law now requires all schools to assess all students in reading from kindergarten through third grade. If a K-3 student is identified with a reading deficiency, the law requires the child’s parent or guardian to be notified of the deficiency within 15 days. The school is required to develop and implement an intervention plan for the student within 30 days. Identified students are to receive intensive support from specialists trained in the science of reading during school, before or after school, and over the summer until that student’s deficits are addressed.
“Each K-3 student who exhibits a reading deficiency or the characteristics of dyslexia,” the law reads, “shall be provided an appropriate reading intervention program to address his or her specific deficiencies. Additionally, students shall be evaluated after every grading period and, if a student is determined to have a reading deficiency, the school shall provide the student with additional tutorial support.”
“Each identified student,” the Act continues, “shall receive intensive reading intervention until the student no longer has a deficiency in reading.”
The 2022 results represent a slight improvement over 2021, when 23% of students scored below grade level on the reading portion of the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP), the statewide standardized test administered to students each spring.
The Literacy Act will eventually require that, to be promoted to fourth grade, students must demonstrate that they can read at grade level (some exceptions apply). That provision of the Act was delayed by the Alabama Legislature in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. The children entering third grade this fall will not face the retention requirement. However, the rest of the law is in force. Schools and systems must identify and provide intervention services to children in grades K-3, including summer learning camps. All parents of second and third graders who scored below grade level on the reading portion of the ACAP should have been notified and should enter school this fall with a plan for remediation in place.
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