Posted on NMPolitics.net - by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. - *note - at left - my daughter Kimberly "sweetface" being read to in 1985. She attended Hillrise Elementary in Las Cruces.August is roasting time in New Mexico: fresh-picked green chile and the New Mexico public schools for their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) numbers. We take green chile most seriously – Big Jim or Sandia? Two sacks, will that be enough? Make it three, no four… Meanwhile, most New Mexicans shrug at the AYP numbers indicating three of four New Mexico schools are not making the prescribed annual yearly progress. When I look at the numbers I see something far more ominous in that half of all New Mexico students are not reading at or above their own grade level. Reading is THE core educational activity in schools. Any dysfunction in reading has broad long-term implications for students. At the very least they do not get all of the instruction since 80 percent of instruction is in written form. At the worst they become turned off to education and form the nucleus of the drop out problem, which is sometimes framed to be about half of the students. Hmmm, half do not read to grade level and in some districts half of the students drop out. While half the students are not reading at least at grade level their textbooks are carefully written for their grade reading level. Further, tests are first a test of reading level and then a test of the subject matter. So half of the students are not reading at the level of the material being presented or of the tests they are taking. Read more
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1 comments:
The AYP crap is bogus garbage instituted by ignorant people. Nothing in what the numbers portray holds any meaning. Those who imposed this garbage on the system had no concept of education. In fact, most of them are uneducated boobs themselves even with their degrees.
The system is not about education. The NEA, the state and local boards, and most of the government bureaucrats involved in education are concerned with brainwashing the children in order to form a society that those in control desire.
The programs in use under NCLB are garbage. There is constant change with "new" ideas being bantered about. But as someone familiar with the past 100 years of education, I recognize that, as always, the "new" ideas are rehashes of old ideas with new names to make them sound different/better/fresh.
Public education should be done away with and all education should return to the pay for service kind. Corrupt individuals are doing everything they can to destroy family and the independence of mind that created the greatness of our Union. Most teachers are mere pawns in the game, lacking the intellect to judge what is going on. They too have been brainwashed in the educational system.
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