KEEP CALLING (202-224-3121) AND EMAILING YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES!!!
S1177 (the Reauthorization of ESEA...the old No Child Left Behind Act) is a combination of Republican Congressman John Kline's HR5 Student Success Act and Republican Senator Lamar Alexander's Every Child Achieves Act 2015 (S1177)
You, members of Grassroots America, killed HR5 last February. You can kill its companion bill S1177, which is coming up for a full vote in the Senate any day now.
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READING NOW CONSIDERED CLASS WARFARE!
IS READING GOING THE WAY OF MATHEMATICS (deliberate dumbing down): 2+2=13?
The Reading Wars have succeeded in bringing our nation to a level where, for the moment, it is not fair for more privileged parents to read to their children at night. What's next? All children? Computers should take care of that. The following is proof "they" couldn't care less about the less privileged/minority children being able to read. Are the "privileged" ones next on their deliberate dumbing down list?
In a Washington Post article dated August 1, 1977, entitled “Competency Tests Set in 26 Schools,” Thomas Sticht—who was later named to U.S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole’s Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS)—was also mentioned as an associate director at the National Institute of Education (NIE) at the time mastery learning was implemented in the D.C. schools. The Post article quoted Sticht extensively, verifying that he and Spady were both deeply involved in the implementation of the new mastery learning curriculum. Later, in 1987, The Washington Post again paraphrased Sticht as follows:
Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained, not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low income families into the middle class.
The crazy Whole Language agenda, followed by the Skinnerian Direct Instruction dog training reading instruction methods, have brought the USA to a level where demographic groups of Americans will be labelled as elitist or deprived depending on whether they read to their children at night. What an insult to the millions of low income Americans who read to their children every night! It's not just in the wealthy white suburbs that parents read to their children.
Why was Samuel Blumenfeld's Alpha Phonics www.howtotutor.com, the traditional phonics way to
teach reading, NOT ever accepted, or even considered by the federal government for funding? Shame, shame!
Is "reading to your young children at bedtime" becoming part of a class warfare discussion? The bolded words below sound like THOUGHT POLICE!
Swift said parents should be mindful of the advantage provided by bedtime reading. “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” he said.
THE ABC HAS QUESTIONED WHETHER PARENTS SHOULD READ TO THEIR CHILDREN BEFORE BEDTIME, CLAIMING IT COULD GIVE YOUR KIDS AN "UNFAIR ADVANTAGE" OVER LESS FORTUNATE CHILDREN.
Reading to children at bedtime: ABC questions value of time-honoured practice
Reading at bedtime an unfair advantage?
www.humptydumpykids.com
ABC presenter Joe Gelonesi.
THE ABC has questioned whether parents should read to their children before bedtime, claiming it could give your kids an “unfair advantage” over less fortunate children.
“Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?” asks a story on the ABC’s website.
“Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?” The story was followed by a broadcast on the ABC’s Radio National that also tackled the apparently divisive issue of bedtime reading. “Evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t — the difference in their life chances — is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,” British academic Adam Swift told ABC presenter Joe Gelonesi.Gelonesi responded online: “This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps — in the interests of levelling the playing field — bedtime stories should also be restricted.”
Contacted by The Daily Telegraph, Gelonesi said the bedtime stories angle was highlighted by the ABC “as a way of getting attention”. Asked if it might be just as easy to level the playing field by encouraging other parents to read bedtime stories, Gelonesi said: “We didn’t discuss that.”
Swift said parents should be mindful of the advantage provided by bedtime reading. “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” he said.
