A great deal of
time and fortune are expended in federal, state, and school district efforts to
address struggling readers, yet our reading woes continue. Second-language
learners in Latino communities, in particular, consistently report high rates
reading deficiencies. James Popham, an emeritus professor of education at UCLA
and authority on assessment research, contends that standardized assessments do
not bring relevant information to the site where change can take place:
Teachers in the classroom.
Students in
Latino communities have a dual challenge. In addition to learning a second
language, there is the problem of a low level of literacy, or illiteracy, in
their primary language. This deficiency, which stems from the home environment,
begins the achievement gap in early learners. This gap widens through the
grades.
Teachers need
better understanding of illiteracy, along with better training and cognitive
development tutorials that address basic literacy skills. A child speaking only
Spanish, and with low literacy skills in his own language, arrives in first
grade and is handed a text in English. This doesn’t make sense….To Read More…..
My Take – I have some personal
experience with this sort of problem. My
grandmother came here as a young child and my great grandparents were
apparently unaware school attendance was mandatory. She started school in the third grade and
didn’t speak a word of English. She
couldn’t even tell the teacher what her name was in English so the teacher
called her Annie. My grandmother learned
to read, write and speak English to the point she had little or no accent later
in life. This wasn’t an uncommon story
in my youth. There were many children
who only spoke the language spoken at home and it wasn’t English and so many of
them lived in neighborhoods of like ethnicity, all speaking non-English
languages. So what did they do? Well, first of all, they didn’t demand that
the world change to accommodate them.
They changed to meet the requirements necessary to become
Americans. As an example; when I call a
company and get a computer answering system instead of a real live human being;
not once in my entire life did the computer say; punch two for Serbian. That’s the real problem! My great grandparents and grandparents didn’t
come here to be Serbians or Croatians who happened to live in American. They wanted to become Americans who happened
to be Serbians and Croatians. If that
dynamic isn’t met then no amount of planning, spending or training will fix the
overall problem. The real problem is two fold. First and formost,it's all
about attitude, and secondly,I think the education system is all out of whack,
and it started back in the 60’s and hasn’t gotten better. More central planning, more funding and few
results! I would love to know how many Hispanic
parents home school and what the results are.
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