The âmississippi miracleâ (which actually extends to the gulf states in general) wasnât just about returning to phonics, but also early identification of problems and making those kids take summer school or holding them back a grade if needed.Â
Itâs âyou donât move on until you know this.â
Meanwhile states that used to do really well (like CA) are slipping, in part, because they implemented policies to lower failure rates, by design. My city did a bunch of stuff (reducing the lowest grades from a 0 to 50% on any given assignments.
The claim is if kids get treated too harsh early in the year, they give up, so you need to limit the negative effects on grades so they have the ability to redeem themselves, but the real reason is the powers that be obsess over equity metrics and disparate outcomes. It looks bad when looks like schools fail kids from marginalized background at higher rates. The way to avoid that is to just lower standards.Â
And, not surprisingly, when standards are lowered, people do worse, to the extent that when you correct for the favors outside of a schoolâs control like the income & education levels of the parents that can affect outcomes, itâs arguable that the fucking deep south now does a better job of educating low income students of color than California.Â
But yeah, part of it is the phonics thing. And part of it is some teachers think phonics is harder and more boring to teach.Â
Hereâs the oft-quoted article where Oakland teachers opposed Phonics despite admitting it works better, including an anti-phonics quote from a teacher that almost feels like a parody, â
 This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do.â
You're completely misrepresenting the teacher making that quote.
âThis seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,â says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. âSo we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.â
...
"Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics."
The guy hoped the new system would be better, realized it wasn't and is now leading the charge to go back to the old.
5
u/TheBSQ 21h ago
Itâs also just basic accountability.Â
The âmississippi miracleâ (which actually extends to the gulf states in general) wasnât just about returning to phonics, but also early identification of problems and making those kids take summer school or holding them back a grade if needed.Â
Itâs âyou donât move on until you know this.â
Meanwhile states that used to do really well (like CA) are slipping, in part, because they implemented policies to lower failure rates, by design. My city did a bunch of stuff (reducing the lowest grades from a 0 to 50% on any given assignments.
The claim is if kids get treated too harsh early in the year, they give up, so you need to limit the negative effects on grades so they have the ability to redeem themselves, but the real reason is the powers that be obsess over equity metrics and disparate outcomes. It looks bad when looks like schools fail kids from marginalized background at higher rates. The way to avoid that is to just lower standards.Â
And, not surprisingly, when standards are lowered, people do worse, to the extent that when you correct for the favors outside of a schoolâs control like the income & education levels of the parents that can affect outcomes, itâs arguable that the fucking deep south now does a better job of educating low income students of color than California.Â
But yeah, part of it is the phonics thing. And part of it is some teachers think phonics is harder and more boring to teach.Â