I suppose it's no shock in this wired generation, but fewer than one in five eighth-graders in Charlotte and nationwide say they read for fun almost every day. And about one-third say they never read when they don't have to.
That's a tidbit from the latest "nation's report card" report on reading and math results for students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and 20 other large urban districts. The sampling of students who took the 2011 eighth-grade reading test were asked some background questions , including how often they read for fun on their own time. Eighteen percent of CMS students said "almost every day," matching the national average. Only Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Louisville, Ky., were higher, at 19 percent. Dallas had the fewest daily readers at 9 percent.
Non-readers made up 33 percent of the national test-takers and 30 percent in CMS. Other cities ranged from 40 percent choosing "almost never" in Fresno, Calif., to 17 percent in Chicago.
Not surprisingly, the report says students who read more frequently for pleasure scored higher on the reading tests.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Eighth-graders: Phooey on reading!
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Ann, here is another interesting tidbit from the report. Students who had teachers who held Masters degrees scored higher than students who teachers heald only bachelor degrees.
http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2011/
Put that in your Gorman pipe and smoke it!
To the previous poster - thank you...every teacher with a master's should send this to every state legislator and board member in this state!
Yes, if students would only read more, then they could grow up to be highly-paid teachers! Oh, wait...
9:08, the problem is with Broad and other surperfluous recognitions, politicans rarely question educrats. That is most of the problem with our BOE. Rarely do we have anyone with a "Missouri" attitude who can challenge the superintendent without the Charlotte Observer looking for naysayers to denigrate the person.
But some guy from Hah-vaad did a study that said that for one particular classroom containing a small sample of students advanced degrees did not matter. You mean this might not actually be extrapolated across entire districts?? CMS wasted money on this study because it's not valid?? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
"...fewer than one in five eighth-graders in Charlotte and nationwide say they read for fun almost every day. And about one-third say they never read when they don't have to."
It might not be a shock, but it sure is sad. How can you make your way in the world without an appreciation and love for the written word? There's so much wisdom to be gained, not to mention learning the English language.
I'm sure I wasn't an exception, but by the time I was in the fourth grade, I was reading everything I could get my grubby little hands on, whether I understood it or not...and even trying to write my own short stories.
I feel sorry for these kids.
A Masters degree without that teaching license will get you a part-time job at a community college.
9:42, yes you have to watch out for these people from Haa-vard, Yale, etc. They will lead you down a wrong path a good bit of the time. They have their own agenda but I do not waste my time trying to figure it out. It looks too much like white elitist guilt.
It might not be a shock, but it sure is sad. How can you make your way in the world without an appreciation and love for the written word?
I understand the need for reading early in life, no question about it.
But as I got older, into high school, I despised reading books. It was a waste of time to me.
I read, but I read what I wanted to. Unless it was a how-to book, mechanical oriented, about space or science, I could have cared less.
In my adult life, I've read three books, only because they greatly peaked my interest; A Team of Rivals, The Davinci Code and Eric Clapton's autobiography.
I've done pretty well in life without constantly reading a book.
I think their black vs. white and high vs. low income comparisons are misleading.
They make it look like the two are interchangeable. I think a lot of liberal misinformation about "spreading the wealth" is based on this assumption as well
Why don't they separate the results to show how the low-income whites compare to low-income blacks and do the same for the high-income races as well?
I think that might expose a flaw in their thinking about the effects of "poverty" on performance.
So why don't they present those numbers?
Are they trying to hide something?
Yes WC, I was not as big of a reading fan as I should have been. I think my writing would have been much better. I loved Highlights, Boys Life, Hardy Boys and Issac Asimov. I could not get into Tolkien as many of my friends did.
Now, I do like reading more but could not during graduate school and a couple of years after that. I got back to reading with Tom Clancey and now read more regularly than before probably 12 to 15 books a year. I do have more opportunity since I ride the bus to work most of the time.
To the restofthestory- You can draw any number of conclusions, I am sure students with at least one Caucasian parent scored higher than those that did not....
Sanitizer, I think you confused me with 10:17. But 10:17 and you are correct that they really did not supply enough data to draw valid conclusions although the libs will grab onto something and the CO will endorse any big spending program they can dream up next. For example, since all this interest is highened in dealing with the "high poverty" students, no left wing politican or community activist cared about poor white children. They did not care about the high poverty kids till blacks became a voting block you could manipulate with giverment handouts.
I weep for the future.
OK, an experiment: As regular readers know, I tend to let almost anything stand on comments. But this is starting to look like the online articles, where the comments degenerate into people thumbing their virtual noses at each other. And I wonder how many people who would like to discuss the topic get discouraged. So ... I assume you had a chance to see each other's jibes, and now I'm taking them down to clear the room for others.
I think we only need to examine the Detroit situation to see what a big difference "poverty" makes in the schools.
In their district there are negligible whites, as admitted in the report.
In Detroit, the reading scores are:
Higher Income Blacks - 241
Lower Income Blacks -235
Hispanics - 244
That says a lot about poverty not being as great of a factor as something else with the Blacks.
After all, people who allegedly struggle with English are beating both Higher and Lower Income blacks.
Whites, of course, do not exist enough in the system to be of any real significance so are not counted.
Maybe poverty is not the problem.
Wiley!?
Please return to your seat!
Yes Mrs. Helms...
Very good, Wiley! Now I don't need to crack your knuckles with a ruler.
Correction to 2:00
Higher Income Blacks - 241
Lower Income Blacks -235
Should be
High Income (Black & Hisp) - 241
Lower Income (Black & Hisp) - 235
All Hispanic - 244.
All Black - 235.
The fact that whites are negligible in the population means that those income figures include both Black and Hispanic mixed.
They're still not coming out and breaking this down properly, but I can see the general trend is against poverty being the biggest influence.
There is no way to tease the exact picture out of the data we are given, so I still suspect they're trying to hide this.
Haaa, something other than poverty?
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2003/10/29/09gap.h23.html?print=1
Ann, where will be the best show tonight, Vance or North Meck?
Be sure to note that the Parents of close to 45 thousand, majority of which are gifted or well above the standard, Children, will not be at these meetings tonight.
All are Parents of those in Charter, Home and the like schooling environments.
CMS has already cemented the non-attending, successful futures of these students, by not listening, or providing even a minimal education opportunity at the public schools for their children.
They still will be paying taxes on their homes and other tax oriented payments, and that is not the most important part of the whole mess?
Trots 2:38pm,
If someone really wants to improve education, why do they try so hard to hide the problems?
To me, these NAEP reports are deceitful at best.
Only a quick glance at their data gets my mathematical spidey sense tingling...
Are they depending on Americans to be innumerate to protect their agenda?
And what exactly is the agenda?
Surely they aren't being deceitful for fun.
Do not forget that many low income high achieving students have left CMS via the Children's Scholarship Fund. And it does not pay ALL required. The parents still sacrifice to get these kids out of CMS.
Fortunately, most North Meck area students have good public (may not be CMS) choices. I am sure any more seats provided could be filled.
Anon 3:09
I think the original purpose NAEP originated as, is much different than what we think the value of it is now. For one, it has long been viewed that students coming from Midwest and maybe some Northern states were 1 to 2 years ahead of their same age peers in our public schools. I think that was the original purpose.
Now, we tend to look at it as a standardized test to compare subgroups within our state and with same subgroups in other states. Many contend that if the PISA results were broken out in subgroups, USA would not look so bad. I tend to argue that with the high per pupil expenditure we have, most every child should be just short of Einstein. However all this "civil rights" stuff these politicans and community organzers scream about is really nothing but getting elected, re-elected, acquisition of media exposure, 15 minutes of fame, etc. by simply stealing money from hard working people and redistribution of income. We have quit making people suffer consequences of (bad) decisions.
The additional point I would make too, is lok at the growth in these peripheral education industries like testing, consulting, since all of this has come to pass which all siphon money away from the schoolhouse.
It is simply how much bigger and how many more friends, colleages, etc. can you as a politican or educrat make the taxpayer funded feeding trough.
TROTS, my crystal ball is pretty foggy on this; I guesstimated in advance they'd be pulling like 100 people per forum. On the first two, the ones I attended had more people than the ones Elisabeth attended. So based on that ... I'll be at North, so that's the place to be!
To every U.S. State Department of Education (or U.S. Department of Public Instruction):
Thank you for requiring me to take "Cultural Understanding and Diversity in Education" in order to be deemed "qualified" to teach high school students my specialized subject area after teaching undergraduates at four different four-year universities. Couldn't have possibly done it without ya'!
Next up? "Issues and Trends in Education"! Woo-hoo!
I tuned in late and missed the jibes.
However, I'm glad they were taken down since "regulars" are generally intelligent enough to engage in lively differences of opinion that don't degenerate into the doggie doo-doo realm of public opinion. Check out the Observer Opinion/Viewpoint pages if you want to go here.
TROTS, I think if they gave more of that money to the higher performing schools we'd see a lot more "Einsteins".
Only in academics would they give less resources to their best players and think they are doing "good".
therestofthestory says:
Students who had teachers who held Masters degrees scored higher than students who teachers heald only bachelor degrees.
And this proves what exactly? That masters degrees and other teaching credentials are the silver bullet? Or does it just prove that teachers with masters degrees tend to work in communities with lower poverty rates, on average?
Besides, are you not on of the people that argues you can't draw conclusions on teaching quality from test scores anyway?
Anon 8:44 PM
Read the rest of my entry. The wording o mine you noted is straight folrm the NAEP site, not my words. But in case you did not follow my point, it was a jab at Dr. Gorman's new found philosophy that a teacher's credentials meant nothing in teaching effectiveness. He simply rode the coattails of some Haa-vard guy who wrote an opinion piece. And I looked hard to find evidence to support his assertion and there was none. So my point was Dr. Gorman would come up with these "nuggets" and questioning and challenging was not tolerated by him or the Charlotte Observer.
My position was, whatever he came up with using students' scores on those "new" tests was doomed with "unintended consequences" that would be far worse than the system we have now. I'd love to have a system that better rewarded the good teachers but this one was not it. I have used performance compensation systems before.
Anon 8:44pm.
Don't you mean those with Masters tend to work work in communities with less Blacks and Hispanics?
The evidence for a connection between poverty and low performance has not been presented separately from the racial data.
Except, perhaps, by omission of statistics on Whites in Detroit, esposing the fact that Blacks of all incomes perform exactly the same as all "low income" students.
Surely you aren't just swallowing the liberal assumption that poverty is the source of low performance on these tests without conclusive evidence?
And apparently NAEP doesn't want us to have that.
To Ann Doss Helms....in my grade school years (many moons ago),it was either getting your knuckles rapped with a ruler,or get paddled with a paddle that had holes drilled in it!
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