WFAA: "75% of the seniors...can't read above an 8th grade level, and others can't add/subtract"

[El Pinko]

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080509_jh_disdcollege.e5ca60c9.html


Some DISD students not ready for college
06:02 PM CDT on Saturday, May 10, 2008
By CYNTHIA IZAGUIRRE / WFAA-TV

DALLAS — It's May, which means thousands of high school seniors across North Texas can almost taste it: their diploma. This month 7,500 Dallas ISD seniors are expected to walk across the stage and make their families proud. But what if we told you that 75 percent of the seniors headed to Dallas community colleges can't read above an 8th grade level, and others can't add or subtract?

....

“This percentage is much too high," said Dr. Joan Rodriguez, who teaches developmental reading at El Centro. In her upper level course, where we met Hollis, most students read at an 8th to 10th grade level, struggling to comprehend what’s in some newspaper articles.

“I get so frustrated," Hollis said. "Don't know why I wasn't taught those skills before coming here and having to be at this point in my life and start all over. It’s been very challenging." ”It's very frustrating ... for the students who come in here who say: ‘Wait a minute, you're asking me to do all this? I don't know how to do this. I don't have enough time to do this. I'm not used to doing this. I don't want to do it,'" Dr. Rodriguez said.

[RB TexLa]

1. Isn't that fine since most TeeVee is written at an 8th grade level?

[Mojorabbit]

2. A sobering article

I hope we have not put a whole subset of kids at a disadvantage these past eight years.

[JeanGrey]

9. This has been a steady increasing problem, not just the

past eight years. I have a friend who teaches college, freshman English, and he says fully 60% of his students need remedial reading courses and it's been that way for at least 15 years. My sis owns her own business with about 400 employees and she says it is really hard to find an employee who can pass a basic reading, english, math comprehension test. They hire about one in twenty five. If they pass they usually have DUI's, a felony, or other stuff.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. I was a TA 20 years ago

and we saw these problems then.

It was kids who didn't know how to study, or how to take tets or read

One in particular was heart breaking. This kid was bright... she made straight As all across high school, but I had to give her an F, the first in her life, when in a midterm she only answered one of the two questions. She ran out of time to answer the second one.

If this was a single question test she'd have gotten an A... but nobody had told her in her HS career how to take an essay test

It was heart breaking and a hell of a lesson to teach...

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

22. This is *not* just the past eight years

I taught engineering labs for spare money when I was at university. twenty freshman at least 6 of which were taking, with the exception of this intro lab, remedial classes.. This was 1998

[Hannah Bell]

3. The history of our leaders telling us our children are inadequate

goes back to the dawn of the 20th century.

Usually in the run-up to some rearrangement of public education.

In this case, I believe it is to support the move to vouchers & privatization.

How many times do you have to see it before you get it?

They're conning you.

To the extent there are real problems, they're not specific to schooling.

The solutions they propose, being specific to schooling, won't fix the problems.

The solutions that could fix the problems won't be discussed, let alone instituted.

[El Pinko]

5. I couldn't be more vehemently opposed to privatization and vouchers...

...but I don't doubt the validity of the story - I see these young people with woefully inadequate verbal and math skills all around me, all the time.

[Hannah Bell]

6. twas ever thus.

a nation at risk, 1983.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nation_at_Risk

sputnik scare, 1960s

http://www.nas.edu/sputnik/bybee2.htm


when i was young, it was my generation that was inadequate. when you see the scam a few times, you stop buying it.

[Fumesucker]

10. Ronald Reagan, GHW Bush, GW Bush..

Evidence that our nation is ignorant..

All you have to do is look at the choices the people have made over the last thirty years and it becomes evident that something is wrong with our educational system.

A truly educated public would not have made the glaring obvious mistake of electing GW Bush ...... TWICE!

And don't tell me the elections were stolen, they shouldn't have been anywhere near close enough to be stolen.

[seabeyond]

12. if the parent is NOT a part of childrens life, public, privte, vouchers or not wont matter

the school is there to teach. the children and parents have to be part of the equation. to give the vouchers will empty the schools of the children who parents actually care... and all the rest will be stuck in an underfunded, decaying environment. no, voucher is not the way to go.

[Bandit]

13. What is different with the public school system now than in Abe Lincoln's time?

People that went to school in those days actually got an education. What is the school system doing now that is so radically different than back then? :shrug:

[Mike Daniels]

26. Social "promotion" may be part of the problem

Who cares that Johnny won't be able to hang with his "buds" in class next year? Who cares if it damages Johnny's self-esteem.

If one person isn't passing a class then perhaps the fault lies in the person. Admittedly, if a person fails consistently there may be something on a physical/developmental level causing the problem. Either way, by holding them back the problem may get identified and hopefully given a chance to be corrected.

If several people are failing a class that could mean there's a problem with the way the class is being taught. However, if those people are promoted anyway then how is the problem identified and corrected?

I had a couple of friends who were held back for a year in elementary school. Being held back the one time didn't seem to damage them in the short or long term and perhaps it motivated them to be better students so they wouldn't be held back again.

I know that's not the end all, be all to the educational problem but it may help in some small way.

[mcctatas]

4. Doh...

I was thinking senior citizens...
I was just about to bash you for bagging on the old folks :dunce:

[ColbertWatcher]

7. LOL Me too!

I thought this was going to be about how John McCain can't understand economics because he can't add or subtract!

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Four words: Leave No Child Behind.

Way to go fellas!

[seabeyond]

11. fuck that shit.... dont know why i wasnt taught those skills.

kid didnt want to learn. so much easier blaming the teacher as he made her life hell trying to teach them.

i see what my children are learning and it is beyond what we learned in school

btw: one kids reading adult level and my fourth grader is just shy of 8th grade reading. they have had book hour before bed all their lives. some things are encouraged at home

[Ronnie]

14. Most newspapers are written at a fifth-grade level.

That was what I was told when I was taking journalism. I was also told, if you want to know all the language basics you need for everyday life (whatever that is), get a fifth-grade language text. As for the college-bound, I've been hearing these horror stories since I was in college.

Teachers I know have told me that at any given time most students are not paying attention. Think about it: large classes, complicated lives, the I-pods and cell phones in their pockets. I'm surprised they learn as much as they do.

Eighth-grade reading level? Maybe before we judge we should read an eighth-grade text book.

[seabeyond]

15. Maybe before we judge we should read an eighth-grade text book.

you know.... i stopped tutoring my 7th grade son on math. my husband that has a masters in statistics is having the damnest time with his math. then again, the kid is in preAP, lol.

[Occulus]

16. "Reading? Dude, that's lame."

"Reading isn't cool."

"I don't read anything."

"Bookworm! Geek!"

"Loser!"

"Get your nose out of a book. There's a game on."

"Why do you read so much? That's stupid."

"What are ya gonna read next- the dictionary?"

I heard all these things from my peers until I graduated. By the time I graduated, I had what was considered to be well beyond college-level reading comprehension. But, my parents read to me every night before I started reading on my own, and when I did, I started out by reading well beyond what my level "should" have been. At age 13, I read my very first adult novel- the unabridged Les Miserables, which incidentally helped shape a great deal of my worldview re: the poor and disaffected/disadvantaged. Javert/Jean Valjean/Fantine/Cosette had a huge impact on me at that age.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. Exactly: not studying, not caring, and then blaming the teacher or the school

is the oldest trick in the (pardon the expression) book.

When I was a college professor, I once had a class that was a reverse bell curve: about ten really good students with high A averages and about twenty who were headed toward midterm grades of C or less, no real B students. I was hearing a lot of third-hand complaints that my class was "too hard" or that I "didn't motivate" the students.

After one test in which the A students did their usual sterling job and most of the rest failed, I asked the A students to write a brief anonymous paragraph about how they had studied for the test. When I read the paragraphs I was impressed at how much time some of them had put in.

I copied all the paragraphs onto one sheet and handed it out to the whole class.

The students started reading it, and finally one of the F students blurted out, "But that's a lot of work!"

Yes, believe it or not, it requires a lot of work to learn something thoroughly.

[AngryAmish]

30. At that age I was reading Conan books

You must have been a weird little kid.

[seabeyond]

31. my sons first adult book at 8 was "black like me". he read thru real boys by ten

has been reading adult books and any other material since the youngest of age.

from 1 on i would tell inlaws to get kid books for christmas and bday. they hated doing it. but he wanted books (kis encyclopedias) as much as toys. his santa present at 11 were 5 books.

but hey...... weird little kid

whatever

[conflictgirl]

44. I absolutely agree with this

We've had nightly story time with our kids from birth, and it continued even after they could read on their own. My first child read at age 5 (after requesting that we teach him how), my second taught himself at age 4 with no help whatsoever because that's the kind of kid he is. Reading has just now started to "click" for my youngest, who's 5 and a half - he saw reading as something that was what the "big people" do and couldn't wait until he was big enough himself to do it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that my oldest two kids were all reading books way above their grade level from an early age - both read Harry Potter in first grade, in fact. Of course I'm proud, but I don't think it's exceptional...I think it's something that happens naturally (assuming no learning disabilities) when you give a child a love of reading from an early age.

Unfortunately if the parents have never developed a love of reading on their own, and particularly if they're working schedules where they can't be home to read to the child, it's going to be a lot more challenging to create that.

[leftofthedial]

18. Isn't that wonderful?

These kids were in fourth or fifth grade when the bush cabal seized power in the coup of 2000 and implemented No Child Left Unscrewed. Yet *despite* that, these kids were able to advance three grade levels in reading over the last seven-plus years.

That's almost as remarkable (and unexpected) as someone getting well in the American medical industry.

[sinkingfeeling]

19. Doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen and been around our freshmen here. About 30% are from

Texas.

[seabeyond]

29. my son is in program for top 10% in nation. took test narrowing him to top 5% in nation

that is ALL the states. he is being schooled in texas. does that mean texas students are top 5%...........

my kids have gone to 4 different schools. the teachers and adm have been excellent. the students are learning more than we did in our days. the students whose families stress and place academics and education as a priority are kicking ass. the students that do not get that from tehir home go to school without a desire to learn

who is to blame?

[hyphenate]

20. While I think the students are having their

share of bad news in the respect of the traditional courses, I have a few things to consider.

Kids now work on computers, something I certainly never had in my youth. In fact, when I was in high school, I went to a special night class (voluntary, mind you!) to learn touch-type typing. With the ability to understand and work on computers, kids have already surpassed many adults in that department!

When I was in high school, calculators cost more than $50 and were mostly sold to people with advanced degrees. They were certainly not for students, did not come in business card sizes, and were often more complex than slide rules.

Kids today are wrangling with a lot of other things on their plate--I doubt that I ever felt apprehension or panic or worry that a fellow student was going to kill me.

In addition, attacks on teachers was never an issue. We might have secretly despised certain teachers, but there was a level of respect for them that was universally held in general.


The NCLB law was an abomination, certainly, but at the same time, it opened our eyes to some of the shit that is going on in our schools. Could the law make more parents pro-active? We can only hope.

Children are not going to take the hard lessons when their minds are filled with so much. The avergae student nowadays is involved with multiple distractions, from their cell phones, to their iPods, to their gaming system, to the internet. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with all of that, but unless children are taught very young to have some sense of discipline in their lives, i.e., reading, writing and other scholarly tasks, they will never sit down voluntarily and perform these tasks. That's why we need to provide some tools of persuasion to them to show them what they're missing.

We can offer some guidelines to our local schools if they need some, but the first plan is to eliminate anything that reeks of snobbery, such as privatization and vouchers. We need to make our high schools institutions of learning again, and find ways to bring the student body back to the basic goals most of us went through. Make the students hand over their iPods, their cell phones, and any and all other distractions when they enter the school, and let them be taught a curriculum that could have been similar to that many of us went through, 20, 30 years ago.


"Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year." ~ Horace Mann

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

21. The legacy of social promotion

If little billy cant read at the 3rd grade level you should not pass him along to the 4th. Better for someone to read and write at the 10th or 11th grade level and not have a diploma than to have a mass of kids who are functionally illiterate..

Education needs to be done in a completely different manner in the US.

1) Rather than being tied to a grade level there needs to be a set of achievement marks kids need to meet to obtain a middle and then high school degree. The marks need to be independent of each other so you have marks for science, social studies, math, language, and foreign language.

2) If a kid falls behind in one area they are put with kids as close to their age as possible in that subject meanwhile they can continue on in the areas for which they have shown proficiency.

[coriolis]

23. Lowest Common Denominator.

No rocket science involved.

[Elspeth]

24. OP misleading. What percentage of seniors are actually headed to community colleges

and what percentage went to universities?

[El Pinko]

25. It's incomplete - but not intentionally misleading.

I paraphrased the story because I felt that it would better convey the story than the title used for the piece, which was hopelessly vague.

It's quite clear by the first couple of sentences that they are referring strictly to community-college-bound high school seniors.

The fact that they are CC-bound doesn't make the problem any less a cause for concern. These are not dropouts. They are supposed to become high school graduates.

[Elspeth]

27. You may not have meant to mislead. But it's misleading until we know it's about CC bound students

Community Colleges are known for taking in everyone or close to everyone. Here in CA the price per credit hour is still under $20, I believe, making the CC an incredible bargain. And they are open to almost anyone. CCs have LOTS of remedial courses and ESL.

I agree that even CC-bound students should have basic skills like reading at a high school level and the ability to do elementary math. This is a tragedy, but it needs to be placed in context. I would like to know:

1. What percentage of these grads are going to 4-year university/college, and what were their scores on the basics?
2. What percentage of these grads are going to CCs?
3. What percentage went to vocational schools, the military, and what were their scores?

[sinkingfeeling]

34. The latest report from the National Center for Education Statistics says that :

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2004/section5/indicator31.asp

"Postsecondary institutions provided remedial coursework for 28 percent of entering freshmen in fall 2000; public 2-year colleges provided such coursework for 42 percent of their entering students.

Remedial education provides opportunities for students who lack the academic skills to succeed in postsecondary education. Recent studies have addressed which types of institutions provide remedial courses, how much remediation institutions allow students to take, and whether they offer credit for remedial coursework (NCES 2004–010).1 According to these institutions, 28 percent of entering freshmen enrolled in any remedial coursework (reading, writing, or mathematics) in fall 2000. Twenty-two percent undertook remediation in mathematics, 14 percent in writing, and 11 percent in reading. Freshmen at public 2-year colleges were the most likely group to enroll in a remedial course (42 vs. 12 to 24 percent of freshmen at other types of institutions). At the 4-year level, freshmen at public institutions were more likely than those at private institutions to do so.

[Elspeth]

35. This is a really good post. Thank you, sinkingfeeling.

Scary though: 24% of 4year colleges having to offer remedial skills?

That's really bad.

Thanks for the information.

[Fireweed247]

28. There is a positive in all of this

When the police state finally takes over, the idiots whose job it is to enforce it will be so stupid they will fail. They won't have the technological know how to get the spy cameras and remote control machine guns working.(see idiocracy)
:rofl:
Then it is up to the intelligent people to stop taking jobs working for the 'man' and start homeschooling their kids.

[Bethesda Home]

32. I'm over seventy...

and I know that there are only THREE kinds of seniors:

Those that can count and those that can't.

[knitter4democracy]

33. Two points: 1) not everyone's meant for college, and 2) it's not the teachers' fault.

I tutored remedial students in college, and I've taught high school. Not everyone's meant for college, and the problem with our system now is that everyone is required to have some sort of college credits to get anywhere. That's insane. Not everyone has the criticial thinking skills to make it into college, let alone pass classes and graduate.

If someone is motivated, though, nothing can him or her back. I had a horrible Spanish teacher in high school, and yet, because I fell in love with the language, I did what I needed to learn as much as I could. I did extra work out of the book, I got a Spanish Bible to read for my church classes and such, I listened to tapes in the car, and I worked hard, even though the teacher didn't require it or hold us accountable much in any way. Those who weren't motivated got their easy grades and learned nothing.

I've had college kids start ranting about how awful their teachers were, but when I asked them what books they'd read for fun over the break, they laughed and said they didn't read. I asked them what they did to own their own education, which grammar texts they used to make sure they learned what they needed to do well in school and get high ACT/SAT scores. They laughed, and then they started blaming the teachers for not making grammar fun. At that point, I saw it wasn't their teachers' fault--you can't motivate someone with no drive or motivation in there. You can't fix someone who doesn't want to do the work it takes to get fixed, who wants to lie there passively and make you do everything.

Fifty years ago, no one would've batted an eye at kids only having an 8th grade level education. It was normal. Those who wanted to succeed worked hard enough to do it. Those who didn't, didn't, and they had jobs they could do. Maybe it's time to re-think this whole Information Revolution and see what we can do for those in our society who aren't cut out for college.

[Juche]

36. The average adult reads at a 7-8th grade level

http://www.informatics-review.com/FAQ/reading.html

So its not just kids.

[seabeyond]

38. good on you. they were fuckin with us. 8th grade reading is not illiterate

anyway, tired of the bashing of the kids and the schools when i am watching schools, teachers and adm work very hard for ALL the children.

[Fumesucker]

40. That's the *average* adult

Which means that approximately half of adults read *below* eighth grade level..

ISTR that ~20% of adults are functionally illiterate.

[seabeyond]

41. ok. at what point in history have we had universal literacy. at what point have we had a 100%

over the average iq...

i am saying, at least more than 50% are average or below average in iq and are not going ot meet all our expectations regardless. then throw in the way one is raised and character and personality and you have those reasons a person is not going to excel.

i bet we put more effort into teaching all to read than ever before. and that there are lower percentage of illiterate than ever before, a guess. maybe the number peaked a decade ago with the push against adult illiteracy

8th reading is just fine for many many people

but i have children in system and have been a part of the system. i see the children that learn and the children that do not, and embrace not reading and being stupid. it has to do with parent, not the school that my kids have been going to anyway. i cannot imagine i am just THAT lucky to have the only "good" school.

[Fumesucker]

42. I'm talking about literacy

With someone who will not even properly use capital letters. :)

There are numerous other countries that have a far better literacy rate than the USA.

If you cannot read and write, how do you fill out a job application?

These days a huge number of jobs require you to apply online, if you go into the store for an application, they tell you to apply online.

[seabeyond]

43. BIG difference between not being able to read and write and 8th grade level

you might want to check out 8th grade level. not a bunch of dummies, yet......

you are suggesting i cannot intellectually converse with you because i am too lazy or opposed to hitting a shift key?

i would much rather talk with a person of 8th grade reading skills that has a flexible and open mind knowing that a damn shift key isn't indicative of intellegence....

geeeeesh

[dkf]

39. The add/subtract thing is because they are used to using a calculator or computer.

I can relate to that...