Important Losses in Reading
I want to set the stage for this discussion, because it's important to keep your focus on things that are important, and not to get distracted by things that are not important.
The left likes to distract people from things that are important with things that are not important, especially when their policies are leading to failures on those important things.
So, let's work backwards.
The left leaning think tank, The Brookings Institute published a study back in 2013. According to this study, there are three simple steps you can take to stay out of poverty for your entire life.
1 - Graduate High school.
2 - Get a job and keep a job.
3 - Wait until you're 21 years old to get married and have children (making sure you have children after you get married, and not before).
"Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class."
Alright, what was the first thing you had to do to stay out of poverty?
Graduate high school.
Ok, so what's the most important thing you need to know how to do in order to graduate high school?
There's another report that's been out for a while from the Anne E. Casey foundation, again, a left leaning organization. It’s called, “Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters.”
“’Academic success’ as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone's reading skill at the end of third grade. A person who is not at least a moderately skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school."
The reason for that is, according to the study, "up until the end of third grade, most children are learning to read. Beginning in the fourth grade, however, they are reading to learn."
If you can’t read by the fourth grade, you aren’t going to be able to learn the things you need to advance to the next grade, and eventually to graduation.
So, why do I bring this up? Because there have been several studies that show our students are between a year and a half to two years behind schedule on their academic achievement. That's the average student!
The average third grade student in America right now is reading on a first grade level. Maybe a second grade level. But, they aren't ready to start reading to learn. They are still in the learning to read phase.
This means, the average third grader right now is not likely to be able to graduate from high school later simply because they don't currently know how to read.
And, what happens if you don't graduate from high school? You end up in poverty.
The average third grader in America right now is on track to end up in poverty as an adult.
Again, that's the average third grader!
I would say that's pretty important, wouldn't you?
But, the left is trying to distract you from that important thing by bringing up some very unimportant things.
From the New York Times…
Jesse Hagopian, a Seattle high school teacher and writer, said testing to measure the impact of the pandemic misses what students have learned outside of physical classrooms during a year of overlapping crises in health, politics and police violence.
“They are learning about how our society works, how racism is used to divide,” he said. “They are learning about the failure of government to respond to the pandemic.”
It's ok that they're not learning how to read, because we're indoctrinating them about systemic racism that doesn't really exist.
Also from the New York Times…
“It is especially kids of color who are presumed to be harmed by being at home,” said Dr. Ishimaru, who said her conversations with families of color suggested that some children preferred learning remotely, because they did not have to deal with micro and macroaggressions and other challenges they encounter in school.
She argued that many children learned plenty in the past year and a half — about loss and grief, about racism and resistance, about cooking and family traditions at home. “What if we were to focus on the learning found, and then we rebuild our education systems from that learning?” she said.
Now, first of all, it's kids in lower income families who are being hurt the most. This isn't a race thing. It's an economics thing, but the left wants to make it a race thing to distract from their economic failures.
Second, it's not ok that kids learned how to cook but still can't read a recipe. Learning to cook traditional family meals is a nice thing to pass from one generation to another, but it won’t necessarily keep you out of poverty. Learning to read so that you can graduate from high school will!
From the San Francisco Chronicle...
School board President Gabriela López did not specifically address the problem of learning loss, but she said that parents are doing an amazing job helping their students and that learning has not stopped during the pandemic — rather, it is just different.
“They are learning more about their families and their cultures, spending more time with each other,” López said. “They’re just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure, and the loss is a comparison to a time when we were in a different space.”
Lopez was just recently recalled by San Francisco parents, and based on these comments, that's a good thing. Just because we’re in a different space due to COVID paranoia doesn’t make reading any less important.
LA Magazine did an interview with the head of the LA Teachers union, Cecily Myart-Cruz. She told them,
“There is no such thing as learning loss. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”
No, they don't know those words, and even if they did know them, they can't read them!
The learning loss is real, and it's dangerous for the future of our country and for millions of Americans. If you believe the children are our future, then our future lives in poverty because we haven't spent the last two years teaching our future how to read! And, don't you forget that the reason the kids weren't in schools is because of leftist Democrats and socialist bullies who insisted that your kids do school over zoom. Or, if they were in school, that they had to wear masks, even though the science said kids were never at serious risk of death or hospitalization from this disease.
There's a quote on my wall from Ben Franklin.
"Sell not Virtue to purchase Wealth, nor Liberty to purchase Power."
The left sold your freedom to buy their power. And, in the process, the mortgaged your children's future, and indeed the future of America.
Never forget that. And, don't let the left distract you from that very important truth.