common core: kids must know how read to leave kindergarten

[prplchknz]

Report: Requiring kindergartners to read — as Common Core does — may harm some - The Washington Post

what do you think about this? me I don't like I didn't learn how to read til end of first grade or beginning of second but once I did I caught up with my peers and even surpassed them and I ended up being a child that would get in trouble for reading til 3/4 am when I was suppose to be sleeping on school nights. and first 6 months probably drove everyone in the cars nuts as i insisted on reading every sign we passed out loud especially to and from school so they probably heard the same ads from me at least 5 times a week

The Common Core State Standards call for kindergartners to learn how to read, but a new report by early childhood experts says that forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.

Two organizations that advocate for early childhood education — Defending the Early Years and Alliance for Childhood — issued the report titled “Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose.” It says there is no evidence to support a widespread belief in the United States that children must read in prekindergarten or kindergarten to become strong readers and achieve academic success.

The authors — Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon — found that:

Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that. This is leading to inappropriate classroom practices.
No research documents long-term gains from learning to read in kindergarten.
Research shows greater gains from play-based programs than from preschools and kindergartens with a more academic focus.
Children learn through playful, hands-on experiences with materials, the natural world, and engaging, caring adults.
Active, play-based experiences in language-rich environments help children develop their ideas about symbols, oral language and the printed word — all vital components of reading.
We are setting unrealistic reading goals and frequently using inappropriate methods to accomplish them.
In play-based kindergartens and preschools, teachers intentionally design language and literacy experiences which help prepare children to become fluent readers.
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.

The report says that kindergarten has since the 1980s become increasingly academic — with big pushes from President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top — and that today many children are being asked to do things they are not ready to do. It says:

Under the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) the snowball has escalated into an avalanche which threatens to destroy appropriate and effective approaches to early education. The kindergarten standards, in use in over 40 states, place huge emphasis on print literacy and state bluntly that, by the end of kindergarten, children are to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Large amounts of time and money are being devoted to this goal, and its impact is felt strongly in many preschools as well.

Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten. In addition, the pressure of implementing the standards leads many kindergarten teachers to resort to inappropriate didactic methods combined with frequent testing. Teacher-led instruction in kindergartens has almost entirely replaced the active, play-based, experiential learning that we know children need from decades of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and neuroscience.

When children have educational experiences that are not geared to their developmental level or in tune with their learning needs and cultures, it can cause them great harm, including feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion. A grandmother from Massachusetts told this story:

My 5-year-old grandson adored his play-based preschool, but it was a different story when he started an all-day, very academic, public kindergarten. From the first day he had mostly worksheets and table tasks, which he said were “hard.” On the fifth day of kindergarten he refused to go to school, locked himself in his bedroom, and hid under his bed!

Here from the report are some examples from the Core that the authors cite as inappropriate for many kindergartners:

The CCSS website states, “Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.” However, there is no evidence that mastering these standards in kindergarten rather than in first grade brings lasting gains. To achieve them usually calls for long hours of drill and worksheets — and reduces other vital areas of learning such as math, science, social
studies, art, music and creative play.

 

[Ene]

I think many, probably most, teachers I know would agree with the article.

Unfortunately, the ones setting these policies specialize in government, not brain, emotional or social development. And sadly, some of the writers of these standards have absolutely NO background in early childhood development. They know how to write policies, but not how to address the child as a "whole" person. They only take into consideration part of the variables that go into early childhood learning.

The policy makers' main concerns weren't really students or their families. Their concerns were far more political than that.

Thank you for sharing this article.

 

[kyuuei]

This one of the unfortunate situations where science has no say or claim. Science can say all day long play is the most important part of education in a child's life, and no one gives a hoot. Parents want their kids smart to the point they lack patience, and schools are trying to look like they're doing something instead of telling misguided people to fuck off and do things the way that actually works and let those people come back with real evidence otherwise.

Compound this issue with the absolutely ridiculous "after sept 1st they have to wait an entire extra year for school" rule and you've got a recipe for feelings of shame and inadequacy in the child. And people wonder why I'm all for private and charter schools now a days.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

(did not read article)

One of my smartest children did not read nor write until he was 9. We homeschooled.

I really think the days of the one room schoolhouse were better. When kids were in a class with all ages and they focused on the core things, like reading, writing, arithmetic, and history with a heavy emphasis on memorization, spelling, etc.

We live in a goal-oriented, power hungry, success-driven, sexual-minded society, so having unrealistic expectations for our kids is just a part of our culture perhaps. Thing is, I doubt teachers or parents really want it to be so demanding on the kids. It seems to be more of a bureaucratic issue?

 

[prplchknz]

I think many, probably most, teachers I know would agree with the article.

Unfortunately, the ones setting these policies specialize in government, not brain, emotional or social development. And sadly, some of the writers of these standards have absolutely NO background in early childhood development. They know how to write policies, but not how to address the child as a "whole" person. They only take into consideration part of the variables that go into early childhood learning.

The policy makers' main concerns weren't really students or their families. Their concerns were far more political than that.

Thank you for sharing this article.

yeah I had lot of shame in childhood cuz of expectations to be able to read and probably even more if i had been kept in kindergarten til almost 8

 

[prplchknz]

This one of the unfortunate situations where science has no say or claim. Science can say all day long play is the most important part of education in a child's life, and no one gives a hoot. Parents want their kids smart to the point they lack patience, and schools are trying to look like they're doing something instead of telling misguided people to fuck off and do things the way that actually works and let those people come back with real evidence otherwise.

Compound this issue with the absolutely ridiculous "after sept 1st they have to wait an entire extra year for school" rule and you've got a recipe for feelings of shame and inadequacy in the child. And people wonder why I'm all for private and charter schools now a days.

I get our education system sucks but you'd think policy makers would listen to the researchers and be like ok soooo lets listen to them. I think that would be better I mean work on improving the learning enviroments but instead of forcing everyone to learn stuff they're not ready for at 6 like i said didn't read til almost 8 now i have a higher vocabulary and a faster reader naturally than most people i know. i didn't fail highschool because i didn't learn how to read in kindergarten

 

[Cygnus]

We live in an SJ dominated, goal-oriented, power hungry, success-driven society, so having unrealistic expectations for our kids is just a part of our culture perhaps. Thing is, I doubt teachers or parents really want it to be so demanding on the kids. It seems to be more of a bureaucratic issue?

I have no intention of derailing into some shitstorm here, but this whole Keirseyen gerrymandered SJ category is fallacious. Se (and, to a lesser, more specified extent, Te) is the function more tightly associated with competition, striving for success, and power than is Si. Si is about being at a resting state, not "conformity" and certainly not physical power or ambition.

If you look into Socionics you'll see Se-dominants characterized by remarkable willpower and farsightedness while Si/Ne types tend to be more indolent and/or given to analysis paralysis.
There's even a Reinin dichotomy Decisive vs. Judicious defined expressly by Se/Ni vs. Ne/Si respectively; all Se/Ni types, SP or NJ, are Decisive: they waste little time making decisions and prefer to complete tasks from start to finish with little planning, their natural state is in motion (don't confuse this with Farsighted vs. Carefree which is about regard to future goals vs. focus on the present); SJ/NP types are Judicious and put much more emphasis on the planning stages before taking action, often dividing up tasks into segmented periods marked by intervals of rest.


If anything, "power-hungry, success-driven" culture is marked by Se, and in more extreme cases Se - Te (Gamma Quadra).

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Oh wow. Yes! Thanks for calling me out on that . That was a completely habitual and rote, and, as you pointed out, fallacious statement made by myself! I hate that I got drawn into that thinking at all.

You really know your stuff.

 

[Cygnus]

Oh wow. Yes! Thanks for calling me out on that . That was a completely habitual and rote, and, as you pointed out, fallacious statement made by myself! I hate that I got drawn into that thinking at all.

You really know your stuff.

Is this sarcasm? I had no intention of being insulting, if you'll forgive me.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

No.

And you were not insulting.

 

[Ene]

[MENTION=6336]AphroditeGoneAwry[/MENTION] yes, it is very bureaucratic.

 

[Mole]

Literacy and Spoken Culture

The printing press was invented in 1440 leading to dream of universal literacy.

Universal literacy was provided by free, compulsive and secular education for all children by State Law.

All children were taken from their homes and compelled to go to a special institution called a school with specially trained staff called teachers.

Learning to read is not natural, almost no one learns to learn to read naturally. Learning to read is counter-intuitive.

Universal literacy meant an end to the spoken culture we learn naturally at home, but in return universal literacy gave us the modern world of modern medicine, science, technology, liberal democracy, and modern economics. Universal literacy gave us the modern values of freedom and equality, evidence and reason.

Universal literacy gave us the ability, and the habit of mind , to think counter-intuitively.

By contrast spoken cultures, that is, illiterate cultures, think intuitively.

And today we see the clash between an old spoken culture and literate culture.

We read every day in our newspapers of the clash between barbarism and civilization.

 

[Mal12345]

Gubmint just needs to leave education alone.

 

[tkae.]

This is stupid. I have a BA in English and took AP English classes all through High School, and I knew I was a good reader in Elementary School. And I didn't start reading until the first grade.

This goes against all developmental and educational reason. Kids learn when they learn, and there isn't an actual science to teaching kids to read. You read along with them to show them which direction to read the letters, stick a book in front of them for a while each day, and eventually they'll start doing it. Expecting teachers or students to do that in some kind of insane time frame is just stupid.

This is why I'm a libertarian.

 

[prplchknz]

This is stupid. I have a BA in English and took AP English classes all through High School, and I knew I was a good reader in Elementary School. And I didn't start reading until the first grade.

This goes against all developmental and educational reason. Kids learn when they learn, and there isn't an actual science to teaching kids to read. You read along with them to show them which direction to read the letters, stick a book in front of them for a while each day, and eventually they'll start doing it. Expecting teachers or students to do that in some kind of insane time frame is just stupid.

This is why I'm a libertarian.

not true, completely, for me I wanted to read but couldn't it wasn't until I was taught how to sound out the words that I then was able to begin to learn to read. it was like i memorized books but i couldn't actually read them, then one day my brother taught me how to take each sylable and sound everything out. Once that happened it got a lot easier

 

[Mole]

This is stupid. I have a BA in English and took AP English classes all through High School, and I knew I was a good reader in Elementary School. And I didn't start reading until the first grade.

This goes against all developmental and educational reason. Kids learn when they learn, and there isn't an actual science to teaching kids to read. You read along with them to show them which direction to read the letters, stick a book in front of them for a while each day, and eventually they'll start doing it. Expecting teachers or students to do that in some kind of insane time frame is just stupid.

This is why I'm a libertarian.

The desire to read and the love of books can be fostered by our parents reading aloud to us as children.

So parents showing their love for us by reading to us, and buying books for us, and having a small library in the house, often leads to a lifelong love of books and reading.

My parents showed their love for me by reading Wind in the Willows below. And indeed an excellent way of showing our love for each other as grownups is to read to each other turn and turn about.

I have tried to set up a mutual reading of Wind in the Willows on Skype, but I have discovered it requires a receptiveness that is quite rare, so it seems to me.

We can of course show our love for others by reading to patients in hospital, or to the blind, or to those shut in. But most of all, how lovely it is to read to one another. We slow down to read aloud, we focus to read aloud, we take pleasure in the very sound of the words.

 

[á´…eparted]

The desire to read and the love of books can be fostered by our parents reading aloud to us as children.

Not everyone will get it though. Both of my parents love to read, and they read to me all the time as a child. Partly in the hopes and effort to pass this on to me as well. For the most part I enjoyed it as I'd sit back and listen, but it was something I never craved. Largely because I wasn't much of a listener, but more of a communicator. When I got to school and had to do the reading myself, I hated it. It was so incredibly boring to me. I either wanted to hear someone speak it out loud, or watch it. There were several points in elementary school that I was forced to read in silence with the class and I refused and so badly did not want that I threw a fit and just cried. It bored me to tears because I'd much rather talk about it or just interact with other people.

I am speaking of books and stories though. I am reading stuff all the time, but the vast majority of it is either news articles, or forums. Both of which are things I can either discuss online, or discuss later in person with friends. Reading has to have some sort of external purpose or use for me. Reading books for enjoyment is just... dull? To me anyway. I can enjoy reading fiction and non fiction books occasionally, but it's quite rare.

This is no fault of my parents, education, or upbringing though. I simply just don't enjoy it.

 

[INTP]

I dont think kids should be required anything more than participation on that sort of stuff at that age.

 

[tkae.]

not true, completely, for me I wanted to read but couldn't it wasn't until I was taught how to sound out the words that I then was able to begin to learn to read. it was like i memorized books but i couldn't actually read them, then one day my brother taught me how to take each sylable and sound everything out. Once that happened it got a lot easier

So what worked for everyone else didn't work for you, and it's not like your brother was a trained educator with a degree in how to teach you to read. Educators hedge their bets by exposing children to as many different styles of teaching and hoping one of them sticks. They do it visually, verbally, aurally, and a few of them even teach kids with letter blocks. There's no "method", just a bunch of methods you have to throw at a kid. The reason adults can't read is because they weren't taught properly or exposed to the method that works for them. That isn't the same as being unable to.

Reading is acquired through exposure. We know this as fact. There's been 50+ years of studies on why human children can learn to read and monkeys can't. At the end of the day it's because the human brain is structured to attain language like it's a sponge. And since the human brain is still in the beginning of its development at that age, it's not fair to expect them to do something they don't have the physical brain structures to do. I'm not even kidding, there were experiments with monkeys where we dressed them up and raised them from the day of their birth as human children to try and get them to acquire language. This is half a century of research in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics that I'm talking about. We've done the same with dolphins, which ended up involving the female assistant masturbating the dolphin. You can Google that for yourself. Spoiler: it still couldn't read. I digress.

Kids can't be "taught" language. It just happens. In fact, the only way to prevent a human from not having the cognitive ability to acquire the basics of language is to isolate them from human contact until the age of twelve. After seven they'll be hindered, but can still learn it.

So putting a timeframe on the cognitive development of children in their acquisition of language abilities like reading is as stupid as expecting them to speak at a certain age.

The desire to read and the love of books can be fostered by our parents reading aloud to us as children.

So parents showing their love for us by reading to us, and buying books for us, and having a small library in the house, often leads to a lifelong love of books and reading.

Fostering a love of reading isn't the same as teaching them to read. They could have bought you the entire New York Public Library and you wouldn't be able to read any better at two years old than if they didn't give you a single book at all.

We're talking about cognitive processes, not developing a lifestyle.

 

[prplchknz]

So what worked for everyone else didn't work for you, and it's not like your brother was a trained educator with a degree in how to teach you to read. Reading is acquired through exposure. We know this as fact. There's been 50+ years of studies on why human children can learn to read and monkeys can't. At the end of the day it's because the human brain is structured to attain language like it's a sponge. I'm not even kidding, there were experiments with monkeys where we dressed them up and raised them from the day of their birth as human children to try and get them to acquire language. We've done the same with dolphins, which ended up involving the female assistant masturbating the dolphin. You can Google that for yourself.

Kids can't be "taught" language. It just happens. In fact, the only way to prevent a human from not having the cognitive ability to acquire the basics of language is to isolate them from human contact until the age of twelve. After seven they'll be hindered, but can still learn it.

So putting a timeframe on the cognitive development of children in their acquisition of language abilities like reading is as stupid as expecting them to speak at a certain age.



Fostering a love of reading isn't the same as teaching them to read. They could have bought you the entire New York Public Library and you wouldn't be able to read any better at two years old than if they didn't give you a single book at all.

We're talking about cognitive processes, not developing a lifestyle.

I wasn't completely disagreeing with you, I'm just saying it wasn't 100% correct and if you're gonna be a dick about it then forget it. I was talking about reading not spoken language which I also had delays in. but I was talking about reading. and I'm telling you that I was read aloud to every night from the time i was an infant til about 8 and it was not until i was taught how to sound out the words that i began to learn how to read. and there is actually method to reading and they have adult literacy classes, it takes adults longer but they can learn to read. phoneix is a god damn fucking method. my brother was also 10 all he did was sat with me one night it was a book about a kitten, and he showed me how to sound out the words, i knew the alphabet quite well but it had never occured to me to sound them out.