READ OR GO TO JAIL
Literacy and National Reading Statistics, Teaching Reading: Educational CyberPlayGround
EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND
If you are using MLA citing, here is an example using the
"Educational CyberPlayGround" site.
Ellis, Karen: "Educational CyberPlayGround" Internet.
Database available online. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com.
Date accessed Month day, year.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CULTURE OF CORRUPTION
K12 READING PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO PUMP THE PRISON SUPPLY CHAIN PIPELINE THAT PROVIDES SLAVE LABOR FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.
By 2011 one in every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison, by 2011 America will have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison.
READ OR GO TO JAIL PRISON
HOW TO EMPLOY A CONVICT THAT TAKES JOBS AWAY FROM AMERICANS
When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade (Arizona Republic (9-15-2004)). Evidence shows that children who do not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, take drugs, or go to prison. So many nonreaders wind up in jail that Arizona officials have found they can use the rate of illiteracy to help calculate future prison needs.
Low literacy is strongly related to crime. 70% of prisoners fall into the lowest two levels of reading proficiency (National Institute for Literacy, 1998).
Low literacy is strongly related to unemployment. More than 20% of adults read as or below a fifth grade level – far below the level needed to earn a living wage.
Literacy statistics and juvenile court
- 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate.
- More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate.
- Penal institution records show that inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help. This equates to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders.
- Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The Department of Justice states, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.” Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. (Begintoread.com)
So, the moral of this story is that mentoring and tutoring kids (especially in reading) can directly lead to a decrease in crime over time. This is all so interwoven into poverty, which beckons me to realize even more that poverty is a vicious cycle that is multi-layered. Read or go to jail. Sorry for the lousy early 90′s graphic look on this wallpaper, but I think it's effective.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
the
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION
THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS FOR LITERACY AND READING
The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, including the far more populous nation of China. At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults.
Kids Ready to learn by 3rd grade Monitor and respond to chronic absenteeism in pre-K and kindergarten. The Kids most at risk are the ones missing 25 to 30 days a year. If we don't intervene, those are our future dropouts.
Department of Education Rhetoric Where is the Money
Grade-Level Reading: Reading birth-through-8 years as a crucial underpinning to a goal that has consumed a large swath of the administration's rhetoric on education: college and career readiness.
The Farming Model School Calendar
Summer Learning Loss Summer off for Working the Farm an agrarian calendar when children no longer need to work the fields.
9/2006 The Inspector General of the Department of Education says the Bush administration's $4.8 billion dollar a year Reading First program ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted and the conflicts of interest .
TWO-MINUTE DEBATE
ON SCHOOLS FAIL CHILDREN & VOTERS
The slimy underside of the reading bu$ine$$ which
doesn't care about this country. This is why nothing changes.
Four major issues that should alarm educators and taxpayers alike. Roughly 6.3 million kids attend 9,553 oft-maligned K-12 public schools in California. Plus, 2.5 million students are enrolled at community colleges, writes George Skelton. Counting universities, half the state general fund ($102 billion) is consumed by education. ($50 billion). In all, kindergartens through community colleges are spending $55 billion -- 75% of it from the state, 25% from local property taxes -- under Proposition 98. So a lot is at stake: tax money and children's minds. Forced candidates to think more about how to better spend the taxpayers' billions. [1]
National Assessments of Educational Progress
(NAEP) figures show that the minority differential in reading achievement is a persistent problem that has not changed in the least since 1979 (NAEP1998)
Department of Education recent findings indicate that U.S. schools show little “significant difference” in the performance of kids in the early grades since 1992 and literally no differences in the math and reading scores of 17-year-olds over the past 34 years.
- BUSH'S FAMILY PROFITS FROM "NO CHILD" ACT
- 2006 More than 8 million U.S. students in grades 4-12 struggle to read, write, and comprehend adequately.
- 2004 3 out of 10 8th graders read at or above grade level
- 2003, only 3/4 of high school students graduated in four years, the National Center for Education Statistics reports
- 2002 just over half of African American and Hispanic students graduated at all. Source
Improving Education for Every Child
"The need for action is desperate. Today, a stunning 40 % of America's 4th graders continue to read below the basic level on national reading assessments. On international tests, America's 12th graders rank last in advanced physics compared with students in 18 other countries. And one-third of all incoming college freshmen enroll in a remedial reading, writing, or mathematics class. These numbers are even bleaker in the inner cities and poor rural areas, where 68% of low-income 4th graders cannot read at a basic level. In fact, despite $120 billion in federal spending since 1965 to raise the achievement of poor children, a wide educational attainment gap remains between rich and poor students.
The deepest down turn in the educational process occurs in the fourth grade.
THIS MEANS if YOU HAVE FAILED to give children confidence that they can learn to read by the time they are 8 or 9 years old you will have lost them for life. They cannot recover.
Perspective:
Parents and educators only have a relatively few days - a fraction of the child's whole life to get them set up for success.
A school year is approximately 30 weeks and that equals around 150 days in a year, minus about 10 days for holidays or sickness and all that is left is 140. Kindergarten through the end of third grade is 4 years x 140 days = 560 days total. Your average life span is around 70 years = 25,550 days.
All we have is the .02 percent of a child's lifetime to give them reading skills that will have an impact on them for the remaining 98% of their lives!
" Think 22nd Century Linguistic Rights"
What language should a nation officially call its own?
The "standard" is the variety of language used in business and academic writing and the mass media - the variety you need if you want to get a college education or a high-paying job. It is the variety of the powerful, unmarked by any features associated with a particularly powerless group. But people have come to believe the standard variety is inherently better for effective communication than other varieties - more logical, more precise, even more beautiful. The result is that society at large has stigmatized these other, nonstandard varieties rather than considering their contributions to effective communication, including their use in the teaching of standard English.
AMERICAN ENGLISH CREOLE AND DIALECT SPEAKERS EXTENSIVE RESEARCH LOCATED IN THE LINGUISTICS AREA
PBS's 'Frontline', First aired the show 'A Class Divided'
twenty years ago, its about a teacher in a small Iowa town who decided to modify her lesson plan the morning after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, and what later ensued. See for yourself why this universal lesson about racial discrimination is so unforgettable. The producers of 'Frontline' have made available new material about the show by way of an modern day interview with the teacher, Jane Elliot, who discusses the effects of the incident on her life.
Jonathan Kozol Explanation of Modern US Education 2005 (MP3) Kozol's purpose; to strive for a public call for social change, and to guide the cause once it has arisen. White Supremacy Is Not Color Blind
READ OR GO TO JAIL
1 IN 1OO PEOPLE ARE IN JAIL 2008
The Prison Industrial Complex: Putting Inmates to Work: 1930s - the 2010's Factories with Fences: Slave Labor that produces products the U.S. Government and private companies.
Failing Reading Scores - Building Prison Cells is Big Busine$$
replacing jobs lost to US citizens.
EMPLOYMENT SITUATION
IT IS CHEAPER TO TEACH SOMEONE TO READ
Link between literacy and prison. "Read or go to jail."
Building Prison Cells is Big Busine$$
Failing Reading Scores
Colbert's comment on private prisons. The Word - The Green Mile
Why privatize just prisons, he asks, when we can privatize the whole criminal justice system? What's more "efficient" than a cop working on commission?
CCA Corrections Corporation of America Investors Relations http://ir.correctionscorp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=117983&p=irol-irhome
Arizona outsourced it's entire Corrections system to CCA.
- 2010 - GOVERNMENT SPENDS 45,000 A YEAR KEEPING ONE CRIMINAL BEHIND BARS
- How Testing Feeds the School-to-Prison Pipeline
- How 9th-Grade Gridlock Keeps Boys Out of College
- % Total Population in Prison
- Number of Prisoners call the U.S. Census Bureau toll-free at 1–800–253–2078, or e-mail govs.jails@census.gov
- High School Graduation vs. Guns in Household
- 2007 One of America's top prison companys CCA Corrections Corporation of America made a 35 million dollar profit.
- Prison Population Projections and Simulation Models
- Trading Textbooks for Prison Cells
Forecasting America's Prison Population 2007-2011 PDF
February 2007 -- Public Safety, Public Spending Project Director Adam Gelb at agelb@pewtrusts.org or (404) 848-0186
Slave Labor -
Koch Links to Greenberg Traurig, Palin and the theft of our jobs!
Gross negligence doesn't mention reading!
By 2011 one in every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison.
By 2011 America will have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison, an increase of more than 192,000 from 2006. That increase could cost taxpayers as much as $27.5 billion over the next five years BEYOND what they currently spend on prisons.
- The State Correctional Education Coordinator predicts the number of beds needed in future budget planning.
Business contracts with the prison system to underpay inmates for jobs like answering the company phone. It is very very cheap labor. For the first time ever, in five states, more is spent on prisons than on colleges, according to a new report from the Pew Project on the States. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion spent 20 years earlier. However, the recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. A close examination of the most recent U.S. Department of Justice data found that while one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is incarcerated, the figure is one in nine for black males. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate has hit the one-in-100 mark. Pew also found that in the last 20 years, inflation-adjusted general fund spending on corrections rose 127 percent while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent. Most Unusual Prisons.
Imprisonment authority is given to a private-prison company
Public Private Prison Complex Staggering Profits
Illegal immigrants and even noncitizen permanent residents may be jailed and deported for committing crimes or other offenses, whether violent or not. DHS and the Justice Department are not only combing the criminal justice system for legal and illegal immigrants to be detained and deported, but the departments are also working together to transfer illegal immigrants into federal courts and prisons.
"Local governments typically do not have anyone to keep track of the complex prison business—a high-finance enterprise involving tens of millions of dollars in bonds (more than $130 million in Reeves County) and millions of dollars in annual federal payments. Not only had contracts seemingly disappeared in the counties I visited, none could locate a full accounting of prison-related expenses and income." Public-private prisons are being built to hold immigrants both legal and illegal. These prisons are publicly owned by local governments, privately operated by corporations, publicly financed by tax-exempt bonds, and located in depressed communities, says journalist Tom Barry, who reported on a new trend in dealing with immigrants in a recent issue of the Boston Review. Project revenues are the per diems paid by the feds—BOP, USMS, or ICE—or by the corrections departments of the state governments. In the case of ICE, these per diems now average $87 for every “man day.” But since the bondholders own the prison, the payments go not to the county but to a trustee established to manage the payments to the bondholders and all other parties in the prison project—county, consultants, builders, and prison operator. County governments see a new revenue stream from the federal per diem—usually a mere $1-2 a day per inmate, depending on the terms of the agreement with the prison operator—but only after the bondholders and private operator have been paid. The privates receive hefty operating fees (normally $500,000-$750,000 a month) and salaries for their administrative team of wardens and assistants, while assuming none of the capital, operating, or maintenance costs. Because the prisons are public facilities, communities receive no property or sales tax revenue (from construction and maintenance) but are expected to provide the water and sewage services. The immigrants held at these prisons are dubbed "criminal aliens" by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection Agencys have teamed with local police to target immigrants — legal and illegal — who have criminal records for deportation. NPR Story
In Hudspeth County, Texas Judge Becky Dean-Walker signs the agreements and contracts that have, since 2003, made Sierra Blanca an immigrant prison-town. Situated 90 miles from El Paso, Sierra Blanca, population 650, hosts the West Texas Detention Facility, a 500-bed immigrant prison with another 500 still-unoccupied beds in three adjoining structures awaiting overflow. The prison, a public-private complex, is owned by bondholders until 2025. In establishing the prison on the edge of town, Hudspeth, where one in three families survives under the poverty line, incurred a $23.5 million debt in revenue bonds. Six years after the prison opened for business, the county still has a debt of $21.8 million. According to the Texas Bond Review Board, the remaining principal on the prison bonds translates into a per capita debt ratio—debt divided by population—higher than the county's annual per capita income of $9,549, which is one of the lowest in the nation.
Emerald Corrections, a Shreveport, Louisiana-based corrections management company, and its intermediaries promoted the prison as an economic-development project, promising jobs and income growth. But only a few locals work at the facility, with most employees bused every morning from El Paso. When the bonds mature in 2025, the facility will be a badly depreciated investment, a community eyesore, and a reminder of the delusional dreams of prison-based economic development. This is true in many parts of Texas, such as Encinal, a town even poorer than Sierra Blanca, with its very own Emerald-operated prison thanks to an identical arrangement of consultancies, bond brokers, contractors, and county officials. IGS walked away with a reported $700,000 in consultancy fees.
Almost 10 Percent of Prisoners Are Serving Life Terms NYT May 12, 2004 By FOX BUTTERFIELD http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/national/12prison.html
Almost 10 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons are serving life sentences, an increase of 83 percent from 1992, according to a report released yesterday by the Sentencing Project, a prison research and advocacy group. In two states, New York and California, almost 20 percent of inmates are serving life sentences, the report found.The increase is not the result of a growth in crime, which actually fell 35 percent from 1992 to 2002, the report pointed out. Instead, it is the result of more punitive laws adopted by Congress and state legislatures as part of the movement to get tough on crime, the report said. The jump in the number of inmates serving life sentences imposes large costs on states, about $1 million for each inmate who serves out his full sentence behind bars, said Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project and an author of the study. This is a heavy burden on taxpayers at a time when most states are facing record budget deficits and many states are searching for ways to cut prison costs. The great majority of prisoners serving life sentences, now totaling 127,677, have been convicted of a violent offense, with 68.9 percent convicted of murder, the report found. In six states plus the federal system, a life sentence now automatically means life without parole, the report said. They are Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.
America's lost boys - {source} A new study from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry argues that the conditions that contribute to a high representation of African American males among incarcerated youth (60%) begin early in life, and are often exacerbated by experiences in school. The report projects that by 2029, prisons will house almost 30,000 of the 600,000 African American four-year-olds now living in the country. According to study author Oscar Barbarin, African American males come to school with fewer skills than their Caucasian or female counterparts at this age, who generally have better developed language, literacy, and self-regulation. Boys' limitations are often not properly recognized or addressed as they progress though school, and this is can be compounded by behavioral issues, as well as by racial segregation within schools. Barbarin agrees that programs such as Head Start, Boys and Girls Clubs, and state-funded early childhood programs have tried to address these issues. However, Barbarin feels that the principle of the "three Xs" -- "Expose, Explain, Expand" -- can go a long way toward engaging children and encouraging pride by way of a caring, responsible, and ethical philosophy. Barbarin writes, "Once the juveniles enter the justice system, the repeat offender rate is 60%. This research calls for optimism in spite of a vicious downward cycle experienced by many young males, which marginalizes them at school, at work, at home, and in their communities."
STATES
In California "if the child isn't reading on 4th grade level when tested they will plan to budget building another jail cell. “Based on this year's fourth-grade reading scores,” observes Paul Schwartz, a Coalition "Principal in Residence" at the U. S. Department of Education, said “California is already planning the number of new prison cells it will need in the next century.” from Democracy and Equity:
CES's Tenth Common Principle 1998 by Kathleen Cushman
Dr. Lynell Burmark, MultiMedia Schools January/February 2001: But the reality is that, in California at least, if you don't know how to read by the end of fourth grade, the state is building you a prison cell.
Terry Thornton with the California Department of Corrections (916-445-4950) says they have about 100 factors they use in determining how many prisons they will build and 3rd-4th grade reading levels are not on the list.
REALLY? CALL TERRY AND ASK WHAT THEY ARE.
THEY ARE NOT PUBLISHED ON THE NET FOR US TO SEE.
California will soon spend more on its prisons than on its public universities.
The Budget Crisis and the Prison Budget: the prison budget is slated for a 1.7% increase. Between 1978 and today, California's prison population has grown over 800% from 21,325 to 170,746. During that period California has built 23 new prisons & 16 community corrections facilities and expanded the state's 11 older prisons. California Prison Mandates
PRISON VS. EDUCATION SPENDING REVEALS CALIFORNIA PRIORITIES 5/29/07 It has been projected that over the next five years, the state's budget for locking up people will rise by nine percent annually, compared with its spending on higher education, which will rise only by five percent. By the 2012-2013 fiscal year, writes Maya Harris in the San Francisco Chronicle, $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared with $15.3 billion spent on educating the states citizens.
Indiana prison information and they base it on 2nd grade The former governor of Indiana has stated that determining the number of new prisons to build is based, in part, on the number of second graders not reading at second-grade level. Low literacy is the socio-economic factor prison inmates have most in common.
Arizona officials have found they can use the rate of illiteracy to help calculate future prison needs. Evidence shows that children who do not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, take drugs, or go to prison. So many nonreaders wind up in jail that (These statistics were provided by The Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Every Person a Reader by Stephen D. Krashen.)
LOUISIANA - More than 40 percent of public school kids were illiterate, and half would drop out before graduation. Federal auditors found that $70 million of the school budget couldn't be accounted for. The budget shortfall, graft and mismanagement resulted in the elimination of nearly 1,000 school jobs and the forced closing of five schools.
New Jersey
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report Education and Correctional Populations January 2003, NCJ 195670
By Caroline Wolf Harlow, Ph.D. BJS Statistician http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/ecp.txt
68% of State prison inmates did not receive a high school diploma.
About 26% of State prison inmates said they had completed the GED while serving time in a correctional facility.
For a quarter of State prison inmates, 1/5 of Federal inmates, 1/7 of jail inmates, and 1/10 of probationers as for about 4% of the general population,
** National Center for Education Statistics, National Adult Literacy Survey, 1992, "Adult Literacy in America, "table 1.1, page 18.
** passing the GED testing process was the highest level of education they attained.
About 41% of inmates in the Nation's State and Federal prisons and local jails in 1997 and 31% of probationers had not completed high school or its equivalent. In comparison, 18% of the general population age 18 or older had not finished the 12th grade.
An estimated 420,600 State prison inmates in 1997 and 293,000 in 1991 did not have a high school education or a GED -- over a third more in 1997 compared to 1991. In Federal prisons, almost twice as many, 23,500 in 1997 and 12,600 in 1991, fit that category.
Approximately 1 in 6 jail inmates dropped out of school because they were convicted of a crime, sent to a correctional facility, or otherwise involved in illegal activities.
Over a third of jail inmates and a sixth of the general population said the main reason they quit school was because of academic problems, behavior problems, or lost interest. About a fifth of jail inmates and two-fifths of the general population gave economic reasons for leaving school, primarily going to work, joining the military, or needing money. Three-quarters of State prison inmates did not earn a high school diploma.
Over 8 in 10 State prisons, almost all Federal prisons, about 7 in 10 private prisons, and over half of jails offered high school level classes. Next most common were classes in basic arithmetic and reading, with 8 in 10 State prisons, almost all Federal prisons, 6 in 10 private prisons, and 1 in 4 local jails offering basic education programs.
ESL / DIALECT SPEAKERS
Teach Reading and Literacy to Dialect Speakers
English-Language Learners Paper From Pew Center
On June 6, 2007, The Pew Hispanic Center announced the publication of a new report based on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the "Nation's Report Card." The report, “How Far Behind in Math and Reading are English Language Learners” is authored by Rick Fry. The report illustrates that nearly half (46%) of 4th grade students in the English language learner (ELL) category scored "below basic" in mathematics in 2005 – the lowest level possible. No Child Left Behind is due for congressional reauthorization in 2007 and in its current form the law requires that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014 according to standards and testing programs developed individually by each state. Specific categories of students, including ELL students, must meet proficiency standards as a group.
A few key findings of the report include:
- 73% of 4th grade ELL students scored below basic in reading
- 71% of 8th grade ELL students scoring below basic in mathematics
- 71% of 8th grade ELL students scored below basic in reading
- 51% of 8th grade ELL students are behind whites in reading and math
- 47% of 4th grade ELL students are behind whites in math
- 35% of 4th grade ELL students are behind whites in reading
analysis shows that important changes in the composition of the limited English speaking population take place between the 4th and 8th grades, which help explain the decline in achievement from elementary to middle school.
Evidence Based Education Science and Learning to Read
David Boulton: We were interviewing Lesley Morrow, the Past-President of the International Reading Association, and she made a statement which flabbergasted me. She said this was a fact: that there are some states that determine how many prison cells to build based on reading scores.
Dr. Grover (Russ) Whitehurst: Yes. Again, the predictability of reading for life success is so strong, that if you look at the proportion of middle schoolers who are not at the basic level, who are really behind in reading, it is a very strong predictor of problems with the law and the need for jails down the line. Literacy for societies, literacy for states, literacy for individuals is a powerful determinate of success. The opposite of success is failure and clearly, being in jail is a sign of failure. People who don't read well have trouble earning a living. It becomes attractive to, in some cases the only alternative in terms of gaining funds, to violate the law and steal, to do things that get you in trouble. Few options in some cases other than to pursue that life. Of course reading opens doors.
Brookings Institution -Hugh Price examines the successful tactics the U.S. military uses to engage and train young people -- and offers provocative new strategies for schools. The United States military enjoys a well-deserved reputation for its ability to reach, teach, and develop young people who are rudderless, and for setting the pace among American institutions in advancing minorities. Young people receive military-style education and training in an array of settings, most typically in a branch of the military. Various branches also partner with public schools to operate programs that emulate the military atmosphere and methods. These military and quasi-military programs exhibit many attributes that appear to contribute to the young people's success and therefore might be appropriate to incorporate in a new approach to educating youngsters who are performing way below par, disengaged from school, or dropping out. Patterning the education of civilian youngsters after the military does raise legitimate anxieties and worrisome issues. The key is to embrace and customize those attributes that strengthen the education and development of adolescents, while eschewing the characteristics and methods that do not belong in a civilian enterprise.
'A Class Divided' PBS FRONTLINE 1980'S about a teacher in a small Iowa town who decided to modify her lesson plan the morning after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, and what later ensued. See for yourself why this universal lesson about racial discrimination is so unforgettable. The producers of 'Frontline' have made available new material about the show by way of an modern day interview with the teacher, Jane Elliot, who discusses the effects of the incident on her life.
RESEARCH BEHIND ALL THESE STATISTICS
Literacy | Reading Statistics
SEE THE RESEARCH DATA BEHIND THE STATS
Learn your states grade and how it was graded. Find out the Strength of Each States Proficiency Standards 2005
Literacy Research and Best Practices - Government Agenda
NEW INTERNATIONAL STUDY COMPARES FOURTH-GRADE READING LITERACY IN U.S. AND 34 OTHER COUNTRIES For further information on International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy: Findings from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001, please visit NCES' web site at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls.
The PIRLS Report can be
ordered by calling toll-free
(1-877-433-7827), TTY/TTD 1-877-576-7734; customerservice@edpubs.org;
http://www.edpubs.org.
A new international study of reading literacy, International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy: Findings from the Progress In International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2001, was released today by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This report compares findings about U.S. fourth-grade reading literacy with those from the 34 other countries that participated in PIRLS.
"The results from this study indicate that U.S. fourth-graders performed well on many reading tasks, but there is room for improvement," said Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. "In the United States there are significant gaps in reading literacy achievement between racial / ethnic groups, between students in high poverty schools and other public schools, and also between girls and boys."
International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy provides information on a variety of reading topics, but with an emphasis on U.S. results: comparisons of average scores across the 35 countries on two reading subscales and a combined reading scale; and achievement broken out by sex internationally, and by race/ethnicity, by public and private schools, and by poverty levels of the school within the United States. The report also presents information on reading and instruction in the classroom and explores the reading habits of fourth-graders outside of school.
Key findings:
- U.S. fourth-graders outperform their counterparts in 23 of the 34 other countries participating in PIRLS, but they score lower than students in Sweden, the Netherlands and England.
- Fourth-grade girls outperform boys in reading literacy in every participating country, including the United States.
- Fourth-graders in U.S. public schools with the highest poverty levels score lower on reading literacy compared to their counterparts in schools with lower poverty levels.
- Almost all (95 percent) of U.S. fourth-graders attend schools with a curricular emphasis on reading. This is greater than the international average of 78 percent.
- Sixty-five percent of U.S. fourth-graders receive more than six hours of reading instruction per week, a higher percentage than the international average of 28 percent.
The 2003 Nation's Report Card
2002 - 68% of the nation's 4th graders are reading below proficiency. The same reports show that the problem extends throughout education: 64% of 12th graders never make it to the proficiency level.
BELOW BASIC 2002 African American 36% 4TH Graders |
BELOW PROFICIENT 2002 African American 68 % 4TH Graders |
Pa. ranks 49th of 50 in public school aid Private report gives state D-minus grade 1/6/04 By Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A number of indicators of literacy were used, including educational attainment, library resources, newspaper circulation, the presence of bookstores.
EXAMPLE:
SNAPSHOT
The School District of Philadelphia is the seventh largest in the nation serving 208,170 as of 9/20/2000 including early childhood programs.
African-American 65.1%
Asian 4.8%
Hispanic 12.6%
Native American .2%
White 17.3%
Philadelphia Pennsylvania Education Empowerment Plan
To improve the learning performance of Philadelphia's public school students by June 30, 2004, to ensure increased achievement of our students, such that the Philadelphia School District will be removed from the Education Empowerment List. Eleven school districts in Pennsylvania have been placed on the Empowerment List because of low average student performance. If District-wide student performance does not improve, a new team led by Pennsylvania's Secretary of Education can take control of Philadelphia's public schools. The District will provide extended time or summer programming to all students requiring additional support.
By June 2002, enroll 90% .
$16,390,200. Million Dollar School Improvement Grant for this year to partially fund certain programs identified in the Plan. Acting through the Secretary of Education, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has placed the District on the Education Empowerment List as a result of a combined average of 50 percent or more of the students in the District scoring in the bottom quartile in math and reading on the Pennsylvania System of Schools Assessment Test in the most recent two years. To be removed from the List and to qualify for the base annual grant provided for in the Act, the District must transmit to the Department an Improvement Plan that sets forth the manner in which the District, will, within three to four years, improve PSSA scores such that it can be removed from the List. Within 30 days after the Secretary placed the District on the List, the District, in accordance with the Act, established an 11-member Education Empowerment Team, which was formed to draft the Plan and furnish it to the District's Board of Education within the 120-day period required under the Act. The Empowerment Team is comprised of eleven members.
Literacy Statistics, Reading Statistics
Statistics PDF FILE
According to the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), 85 million adults in the United States - almost 35% . . . . etc.
National Research Council Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow etal., 1998) Describes problem does not offer solutions addressing minority differential in reading achievement.
Computer Technology and Instructional Reform
This site distributes research information from the national survey, Teaching, Learning, and Computing--1998, a study of teachers' use of computer technology, their pedagogies, and their school context. More than 4,000 teachers and related technology coordinators and school principals participated in the study. The study included schools and teachers from a national probability sample and also included purposive samples of schools and teachers because of their participation in major school reform programs or their unusually high amounts of computer technologies available.
| US | vs. CUBA |
| o | Impressive history of eradicating illiteracy.They've had nearly 100% literacy in their nation since 1961. |
| o | The whole education system very impressive,no racial or economic achievement gap and that they score among the top countries in the world in math and reading. |
| o | Every Cuban child gets free preschool education |
| o | Training thousands of new art and music teachers to meet their goals that every school in the country has qualified teachers of the arts. |
| o | Assiduously maintain low class sizes—20 in the elementary, 15 in the secondary grades |
| o | Gives universal access and free tuition to all citizens for university level education. |
| o | Actually achieved No Child Left Behind |
Extremely Rich Country |
Extremely poor country, hardly any consumer goods and some foods were rationed. |
|Financial Literacy| Problem 1 in 8 New Yorkers have diabetes |Financial-Literacy| Problems - Children all over the US are too fat. |
They still eat well and are very healthy people. Have a lower infant mortality rate and a longer life span than in the US. Free health care and great medical schools. |