Gadfly Bites 11/11/22—“We can’t just dive in and teach kids how to read”

1. Here’s another angle on a story we talked about earlier this week: Changing the way students are taught to read in Dayton-area schools. These changes, as stated again and again, are in response to very low third grade reading proficiency scores in those schools. (And once again, only the lowest-performers are interviewed on how to do the job better.) Unfortunately, I can’t shake the feeling that while those teachers are talking about implementing new and better ways to do their jobs, there is some level of denial that the old way was responsible for the low proficiency scores in the first place. (Dayton Daily News, 11/11/22) And indeed not everyone is sold on the new ways being the best ways anyways. Here is a sour-grapes-level op-ed written by two Kent State profs who try to make the case that their own locally-produced reading curriculum would be a better deal for Akron City Schools than the one the district  is already in the midst of implementing. (Akron Beacon Journal, 11/8/22)
   
   

2. Staying on topic for a moment, here’s a look at an old “new approach” to education which is celebrating 50 years of implementation at a handful of schools in central Ohio. It’s known as a “progressive” or “informal” model—think drums and dancing and multi-age classrooms and teachers staying with students up the grade levels—and has some enthusiastic adherents among its district-run schools of choice. It sounds a little like Montessori-lite, but I once knew a fellow parent who opted into and then opted quickly out of the Upper Arlington flavor of progressive education who called it “the hippie school”. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/8/22)
   
   

3. Back in the real world, the elected board of Reynoldsburg City Schools told cranky parents—who are trying to come to grips with a return to hybrid remote/in-person operation—that the busing woes causing the problem will hopefully be fixed “in the next few weeks”. (10TV News, Columbus, 11/11/22)

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