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.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION - THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS FOR LITERACY AND READING
9/2006 The Inspector General of the Department of Education says the Bush administration's $4.8 billion dollar a year Reading First program ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted and the conflicts of interest .
NCLB PUBLIC DEBATE Ask the Office of Communications and Outreach any questions:
Director, Intergovernmental Affairs -- Rogers Johnson, (202) 401-0026, mailto:Rogers.Johnson@ed.govDeputy Director -- Marcie Ridgway, (202) 401-6359, mailto:Marcie.Ridgway@ed.gov
Program Analyst -- Adam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, mailto:Adam.Honeysett@ed.gov
TWO-MINUTE DEBATE ON SCHOOLS FAIL CHILDREN & VOTERS
The slimy underside of the reading bu$ine$$ doesn't care about this country. This is why nothing changes. Four major issues that should alarm educators and taxpayers alike. Every survey of California voters shows that they rank education as one of the most important problems facing the state. It's constantly No. 1 or No. 2. The latest Times poll finds it No. 2 behind illegal immigration. Democrats place it No. 1. And why not? 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. Taxpayers are digging deep. 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. Therefore, when the question of how to improve public schools in an increasingly diverse state is allotted only two minutes in an hour-long televised candidates' debate -- the only debate of the gubernatorial campaign -- it's mind-boggling and irresponsible. Candidates were asked, "What kinds of policies would you support to improve the performance in California's public schools, in one minute?" Rather than two minutes on education, the candidates should have been required to spend 20. It might have enlightened voters and certainly would have forced the 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.
Richard Riley Former Secretary of Education
"54 percent of all teachers have limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet only one-fifth of teachers feel very prepared to serve them.
- 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 Three out of ten eighth graders read at or above grade level, National Assessment of Educational Progress.
- 2003, only three-fourths 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
- EXTENSIVE RESEARCH LOCATED IN THE LINGUISTICS AREA ABOUT AMERICAN ENGLISH CREOLE AND DIALECT SPEAKERS
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.
Jonathan Kozol contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Hear his 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
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
Improving Education for Every Child
"The need for action is desperate. Today, a stunning 40 percent 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 percent 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!
SCANDALOUS NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
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.
EVERY TEACHER, PROFESSOR, POLITICIAN, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR, and PARENT MUST
" 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.
60% of Urban School Children do not graduate from High School. Forty percent of those who do read at only a 4th grade level.
ISN'T IT CHEAPER JUST TO TEACH SOMEONE TO READ !?!
READ OR GO TO JAIL
Link between literacy and prison. "Read or go to jail."
Failing Reading Scores and Building Prison Cells is Big Busine$$
- STAT: 2007 One of America's top prison companys CCA Corrections Corporation of America made a 35 million dollar profit.
2008 - The Government spends 23,000 a year keeping one criminal behind bars. - Prison Population Projections and Simulation Models
- February 2007 -- Public Safety, Public Spending
Forecasting America's Prison Population 2007-2011 PDF
Project Director Adam Gelb at agelb@pewtrusts.org or (404) 848-0186.
Gross negligence - this doesn't mention reading! - Trading Textbooks for Prison Cells
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.
Things change 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.
I want this list published on the net for all to see what the factors are.
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 - California K-12 stats educational system (NAEP) report.
California will soon spend more on its prisons than on its public universities. PRISON VS. EDUCATION SPENDING REVEALS CALIFORNIA PRIORITIES 5/07 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.
- In Indiana prison information and they base it on 2nd grade scroll down to the
comments area #2 Investing in LiteracyThe 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. - In 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.)
ESL / DIALECT SPEAKERS
- Dialects, Teaching 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. - 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. - Jail Finds - View as a Slide Show - These are things I find abandoned in books or stuffed on the book cart at the jail where I volunteer
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.
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.
Literacy | Reading Statistics
RESEARCH BEHIND ALL THESE 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
Keeping an Eye on State Standards Johnny can’t read in South Carolina. But if his folks move to Texas, he’ll be reading up a storm. What’s going on?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. |
| 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. |