5 ms·

I enjoy a nice positive news story. One of the things briefly touched on in the article is that it seems these states have rediscovered teaching phonics.

Clubber 3y ago
>Alabama invested heavily in training on the science of reading, then known as phonics, in the early 2000s, and scores rose. When did the stop teaching that and why? I was thought that way in the 70s.
- polski-g 3y ago
  According to teachers, they hate teaching phonics because their method is better because they invented it. It's like programmers deciding to write a 3d game in Java instead of the known and functional method of c++.
  - earleybird 3y ago
    Was that a Minecraft reference?
    - polski-g 3y ago
      Indeed.
- csnover 3y ago
  The link in the article about emphasising phonics[0] vaguely answers that question in the reverse, in terms of what was being taught instead; a podcast series from 2022 called Sold a Story[1] (transcripts also available at the link) gives a much more detailed answer about why. [0] https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43f338f163715b01b83bb1066 https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43... [1] https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  They started teaching three cues instead.
usernew 3y ago
[flagged]
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  This is the most Reddit post I’ve seen on HN.
  - usernew 3y ago
    Wow. That is spot on, and a little disturbing that it's so obvious. I took a recent excursion to the royal throne, so I read reddit on my phone for about 20min. I then sat back down and edited my comment while waiting for a compile.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  What an awfully negative take on a positive story…I really don’t understand what people gain by being negative and cynical all the time. Does it make them feel smart or something?
  - usernew 3y ago
    You don't understand why a story about a bad thing that happened, misrepresenting the information as positive, is a negative story? Reality doesn't have a take. You don't need to feel positive or negative about a fact. It just is - the states in the article defunded public schools and worsened education. Or do you think it's a coincidence that when they give examples of improved scores, they only give them for newly opened private schools. Wouldn't the average or median reading level for the state, compared to the old level for the state, be the metric that shows.. reading level for the state? When they do give a number for the state, that number is not a score - it's a rank. Do you know how rank works? It's not a measure of how good you're doing compared to how you were doing before. It's a measure of how good you're doing now compared to someone else now. Yes, looking at a very basic fact and recognizing someone completely misrepresented that fact, makes them feel comparatively smarter than the person who does not recognize that even after it was explained to them. Now your comment - it did not make me smarter. It did increased my rank on that chart though.
bsder 3y ago
I am completely skeptical of this report. Occam's razor suggests that when states that are actively at war with their teachers "magically" buck the statistical learning trends from everywhere else, the statistics are more likely to be falsified than the students improved so dramatically. Especially when I see: "The states have consequences in place if schools don’t teach kids how to read, but also offer help to keep kids on track." The schools WILL pass those statistical measures someway, somehow if it means that the school loses funding or people lose their jobs.
- hengestone 3y ago
  What gets measured gets managed - Peter Drucker
- cmcaleer 3y ago
  There’s a narrative that fits this buck in the trend: the curriculum simply rejected teachings that didn’t work. Highly recommend reading about the ‘whole word’ v ‘phonics’ wars. Generations of children have been and continue to be left behind because an ineffective teaching style that doesn’t work became popular among America’s educators. Here’s an oped from a few years ago to get started with. It's honestly a bit depressing, but things have gotten better since and Mississippi is the proof of that. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... Some reading specifically on how Mississippi is responsible for their own success. It wasn’t magic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/mississippi-schools-literacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/missis...
  - markisus 3y ago
    I wonder how children learn to read Mandarin. There is no analogy to phonics. Rote memorization might be a plausible learning strategy.
  - mrangle 3y ago
    Institutional promotion of this "new style" of teaching reading is garbage cope and grift. Schools have been teaching reading successfully for decades to kids who are prepared to learn it, using a long-proven curriculum. Middle and lower-middle class kids arrive in primary school already pre-literate and prepared to further learn at primary school level. Due to parental habits. Statistically speaking, lower class kids arrive without the same number of years of preparation at the same level. They do not arrive pre-literate. They arrive illiterate. I agree that special attention and programs need to be implemented to make up for this state of affairs, but lets not reward grifters and their unqualified media lackeys with attention simply because the public doesn't understand how literacy development works, in general, and these people are willing to exploit that.

Clubber 3y ago

>Alabama invested heavily in training on the science of reading, then known as phonics, in the early 2000s, and scores rose. When did the stop teaching that and why? I was thought that way in the 70s.

polski-g 3y ago
According to teachers, they hate teaching phonics because their method is better because they invented it. It's like programmers deciding to write a 3d game in Java instead of the known and functional method of c++.
- earleybird 3y ago
  Was that a Minecraft reference?
  - polski-g 3y ago
    Indeed.
csnover 3y ago
The link in the article about emphasising phonics[0] vaguely answers that question in the reverse, in terms of what was being taught instead; a podcast series from 2022 called Sold a Story[1] (transcripts also available at the link) gives a much more detailed answer about why. [0] https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43f338f163715b01b83bb1066 https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43... [1] https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
ChoGGi 3y ago
They started teaching three cues instead.

usernew 3y ago

[flagged]

hombre_fatal 3y ago
This is the most Reddit post I’ve seen on HN.
- usernew 3y ago
  Wow. That is spot on, and a little disturbing that it's so obvious. I took a recent excursion to the royal throne, so I read reddit on my phone for about 20min. I then sat back down and edited my comment while waiting for a compile.
boeingUH60 3y ago
What an awfully negative take on a positive story…I really don’t understand what people gain by being negative and cynical all the time. Does it make them feel smart or something?
- usernew 3y ago
  You don't understand why a story about a bad thing that happened, misrepresenting the information as positive, is a negative story? Reality doesn't have a take. You don't need to feel positive or negative about a fact. It just is - the states in the article defunded public schools and worsened education. Or do you think it's a coincidence that when they give examples of improved scores, they only give them for newly opened private schools. Wouldn't the average or median reading level for the state, compared to the old level for the state, be the metric that shows.. reading level for the state? When they do give a number for the state, that number is not a score - it's a rank. Do you know how rank works? It's not a measure of how good you're doing compared to how you were doing before. It's a measure of how good you're doing now compared to someone else now. Yes, looking at a very basic fact and recognizing someone completely misrepresented that fact, makes them feel comparatively smarter than the person who does not recognize that even after it was explained to them. Now your comment - it did not make me smarter. It did increased my rank on that chart though.

bsder 3y ago

I am completely skeptical of this report. Occam's razor suggests that when states that are actively at war with their teachers "magically" buck the statistical learning trends from everywhere else, the statistics are more likely to be falsified than the students improved so dramatically. Especially when I see: "The states have consequences in place if schools don’t teach kids how to read, but also offer help to keep kids on track." The schools WILL pass those statistical measures someway, somehow if it means that the school loses funding or people lose their jobs.

hengestone 3y ago
What gets measured gets managed - Peter Drucker
cmcaleer 3y ago
There’s a narrative that fits this buck in the trend: the curriculum simply rejected teachings that didn’t work. Highly recommend reading about the ‘whole word’ v ‘phonics’ wars. Generations of children have been and continue to be left behind because an ineffective teaching style that doesn’t work became popular among America’s educators. Here’s an oped from a few years ago to get started with. It's honestly a bit depressing, but things have gotten better since and Mississippi is the proof of that. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... Some reading specifically on how Mississippi is responsible for their own success. It wasn’t magic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/mississippi-schools-literacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/missis...
- markisus 3y ago
  I wonder how children learn to read Mandarin. There is no analogy to phonics. Rote memorization might be a plausible learning strategy.
- mrangle 3y ago
  Institutional promotion of this "new style" of teaching reading is garbage cope and grift. Schools have been teaching reading successfully for decades to kids who are prepared to learn it, using a long-proven curriculum. Middle and lower-middle class kids arrive in primary school already pre-literate and prepared to further learn at primary school level. Due to parental habits. Statistically speaking, lower class kids arrive without the same number of years of preparation at the same level. They do not arrive pre-literate. They arrive illiterate. I agree that special attention and programs need to be implemented to make up for this state of affairs, but lets not reward grifters and their unqualified media lackeys with attention simply because the public doesn't understand how literacy development works, in general, and these people are willing to exploit that.