You are here: Home / 2022 / December / 26 / Yay! We’re not #1 (or #50)

Yay! We’re not #1 (or #50)

Published on by

Did you see the news?

Well. For those of us in Mississippi who attend to such things, it’s not really news, as we’ve known this for a few years now. Nevertheless, it’s news to those who live elsewhere.

Schools of education can only prioritize ideology over literacy because states let them. Almost a decade ago, Mississippi decided to stop doing that. A study showed that not only were most prospective teachers not being taught the science of reading, many education professors and even deans had never even heard of it. So, Mississippi invested in workshops and coaching to make sure that teachers learned the basics of literacy instruction. From 2013 to 2019, we witnessed the “Mississippi Miracle” – fourth-grade scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress went up by about 10 points, bringing Mississippi from the bottom to the middle of the pack.

Max Eden, The Washington Examiner, December 26, 2022

“The science of reading” refers to that new-fangled way of teaching kids how to read that I’m pretty sure was discovered shortly after Gutenberg printed the first copy of Mother Goose. It’s called sounding words out.

More on this to come. The Christmas Ham has been deboned and appropriately dealt with. The first of the leftover Christmas Ham dinners is about to come out from the oven. So look forward this week to leftover ham recipes, and the story of Missy’s contribution to improved reading scores in the sovereign state of Mississippi. May throw some Lewis and Tolkien in for good measure. Liberally spiced with Andrew Lang.

5 Responses

  1. I learned to read phonetically. I could sound out words like a champ but the fact they were words didn’t connect for months. I’m remember the chapter “ Sally plays rabbit”. I was reading it out loud to my mom and suddenly it made sense. The picture of sally hopping and her hands on her head like ears…. All the previous books I was just making sounds with no clue they were words. My oldest son had to memorize lists of words. Maybe there is a blending of the 2 methods? My other 2 did a more phonetic method but ate terrible spellers. It was also done on computer. Called write to Read.

    1. Gestalt! Something like that happened to me with trigonometry and with statistics. I’m okay with numbers and could get by without understanding. But then BOOM! I get it now.

      I think you’re right about the blending. It should be what works for the individual kid. But the most important thing is being reading to, and reading with. Reading should be just part of life from the beginning.

      1. Being read to is key. Both sons and wives were big into reading to their kids. I worry a bit about my pregnant daughter and her husband. Hopefully baby will be bilingual in speaking and reading.

Comments are closed.