Some years ago, I read Dr. Benjamin Bloom’s Developing Talent in Young People, a book that chronicles world famous,  high achieving mathematicians, scientists, writers, musicians and athletes. I was stunned to discover the number of white males who recounted NOT fully learning to read/comprehend until fifth grade. Unfortunately, an  African-American male who is not reading by that time has most likely been written off by family, school, and/or by society. (A prison bed is being planned for him.)

            However, three factors saved the future achievers in Bloom’s study: 1) a mentor, 2) a hobby, and 3) strong family support that boosted their self-esteem until their reading skills developed. All fruit DOES NOT ripen on the vine at once.

Technology: Holding Readers Back?

                   There is research demonstrating that a child’s brain continues to evolve for up to eight years after birth, weeding out neural connections that don’t get used. Early exposure to screens has been linked to diminished deductive reasoning and reduction of other cognitive skills. What are the implications for a generation of students whose brains are acclimated to a blur of videos, color, sounds, images, logos and therefore, find it difficult to concentrate on the  printed  words that represent the cognition of the textbooks, the workplace and an information-based economy? .(www.brainconnections.com )  State-mandated exams, the ACT, and SAT employ a small print, paper-driven format.

In addition, channel  and Internet  surfing provide little time for the reflection and concentration on ideas crucial to improving the reading process.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP) fifty-five per cent (55%) of the children of college-educated parents read BELOW proficiency levels by the time they reach 8^th grade.

Reading is...

            Reading is a social AND cognitive process dependent upon a number of skills: decoding, concentration, memory, reflection. The hallmark of an effective reader is to be able to decode AND to comprehend simultaneously, at the same time. Comprehension is building bridges between the known and the unknown.

What to Do?

Intensive Instruction - The wiring for language may be laid down but it has not been or is not being appropriately activated through proper instructional strategies that address the four learning channels: 1)visual (seeing) 2) ear (hearing),  3) verbal (saying), AND 4) kinesthetic (writing/touching) Workbook instruction favors visual readers. However,  if students lack auditory (hearing/listening) discrimination, they can’t distinguish sounds such as think –thank or charge – sharp. Intensive instruction is necessary especially by third grade because up until that time, the brain is much more malleable, plastic. What to do! Make sure your child’s teacher is providing the instruction needed for your child to succeed. Gently, ask questions.

Crawl Baby Crawl - Some research indicates that early motor stimulation (such a jumping and crawling) is important to development of the language center of the brain that promotes reading skills; yet the average child spends hundreds of hours sitting in a car seat and/or swing seat by age two. Many Headstart/Early Start  programs introduce crawling as part of their curriculum. What to do!  Make certain your child or grandchild crawls while learning to walk.

Dyslexics Need More Time     Students who have intellectual equipment necessary for reading yet they cannot despite motivation and their socio-economic background are dyslexic (word blind).There is  a  problem within the language system of the brain. These students have difficulty transforming letters into sounds and need accommodations (more time) for testing and for completing assignments. What to do! Make certain that there is documentation for this condition so that students receive more accommodations during standardized and other timed tests. To keep students’ spirits up and self-esteem intact, tutor, mentor, and provide a nonacademic outlet.(Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz).

More Exposure to Print – Too often the home does not permit enough exposure for the brain to begin to analyze and to decode words, especially true for low-income families. There is not enough practice or role models who read. Multiple exposure to print is necessary for the brain to begin to analyze words, to decode words, and to obtain an awareness of word patterns. What to do! Buy books, newspapers, and subscribe to magazines. Read with and to children.

The Race and the War We Dare Not Lose!

            Though educators know more than in previous decades about the teaching and learning of reading, still it may be in danger of becoming an elitist activity. When we were an industrial economy, prosperity did not require highly proficient literacy levels. However, fierce global competition and the constant need for innovation demand  higher degrees of cognitive and problem solving skills than ever. Some students catch on to the reading process without any instruction or prodding, while others need all the support schools and the home can provide.

            During the 1960’s, President Lyndon Johnson, through his Great Society Program, waged a war on poverty that garnered great opportunities for the underprivileged. In the Race for the Future, American families and schools must follow suit. Wage a war on mindless TV and Internet surfing, and on video games, especially during the critical first eight years of life. Schools, wage a war on indiscriminate use of technology that crowds out funding for libraries and the arts.

            “The Foundation of every State is the Education of its Youth!” Diogenes

                          Recently the New York Times ran an extensive front page article: In Classrooms of the Future: Stagnant Test Scores. As I read, I began to wonder:  Is technology a bandwagon that schools are blindly jumping on without any solid proof that it improves learning, improves test scores? Reformers see technology as an opportunity to reshape education for the poor, the children of color, as well as for the economically privileged. Districts spend tens of millions of dollars on smart boards, media tools, laptops, clickers, and  software that is often obsolete before it is unwrapped or installed. For some districts it has become the latest status symbol. But is technology moving students forward or holding them back? How important is technology in preparing students for the new boundaries of prosperity redrawn by globalization?

Way Cool

“Give me your tired your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore;
Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me.
I life my light besides the golden door”.

_{Words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty,
written by Emma Lazarus}

             According to Mass Insight’s The Turnaround Challenge (research funded by the Gates Foundation) up to one-third of America’s children will live in poverty by 2012.
            How do we achieve a task educators have never been previously REQUIRED to do – teach problem solving and problem seeking to ALL of our children, especially those housed in decaying schools and failing neighborhoods?
             Who can and will teach the children who come to school with wounded souls and must suddenly measure up no matter what specific deficits they bring?

            Who will cry out “Give me your tired, your poor; I can and will prepare them to be contributing members of the new world order”?

Attrition in At-Risk Schools

            It is common knowledge that most high poverty schools encounter difficulty attracting and retaining capable and experienced educators. Rates of attrition in at-risk schools are higher than attrition levels in more affluent schools. Nearly 50 percent of new teachers in high poverty schools leave the profession during the first three years vs the national average of 50 per cent during the first five years.  (National Partnership of Teaching in At-Risk Schools Research Statistics).    
        Research furthermore indicates that children assigned to effective teachers for three consecutive years in a row score an average of 49 percentile higher on standardized tests than children assigned to ineffective teachers three years in a row.

Patchwork Approaches to Closing the Achievement Gap

            As one solution, teachers are recruited to urban schools through a patchwork of alternative programs or approaches: Teach for America, Troops to Teachers, the New Teacher Project, Ivy League schools, and mid-career (downsized) path changers. Too many recruits teach for two or three years before moving on to other pursuits, just as they begin to hit their stride. Some research suggests to become expert in a field takes at least four to seven years. The years gained learning the textbook, learning to fairly assess students, and learning motivational strategies to successfully engage and discipline them are lost when new teachers abandon the job.  Building a reputation within a school with students, with parents, and with peers is also a multi-year process.

Permanent and Constant 
            How do we successfully educate all of our children if teaching develops into a means  of resume building, evolves into saving enough for graduate school, or becomes a pit stop on the journey of life? “I’m just here until the economy improves, or until I figure out what I really want to do,” won’t close the achievement gap. 
         We need long-term answers and not interim solutions or band-aids. Teaching is an occupation that demands dedication, commitment, and constancy.
            Whether through attrition or through layoffs, repeated turnover disrupts the stability, continuity, and cohesiveness of a school and negatively impacts student achievement. Institutional memory for the content pedagogy, testing programs, and extracurricular activities is an illusion when schools and classrooms become a revolving door.
         How do we address the “turnaround challenge” if every time we turn around a school  rebuilding its staff. How do we leave no child behind without a stable pipeline of teaching talent.

Seeking to Do Good and Do Well

            We must build teaching into an iconic profession, like law or medicine, to motivate our brightest and our best to do good and to do well, to meld idealism and self-interest. A paid and a temporary mentoring opportunity, teaching is not and cannot be.
            Education is meant to be the beacon that represents hope, opportunity, and freedom for ALL Americans. Who will cry out, “Give me your tired, your poor. I can and will educate them month after month and year after year” (at least five years please)?

Below is the complete version of my editorial comment that appeared a Sunday
 Detroit Free Press editorial page  of under the title:
 Globalization Turns School House Mission Up Side Down
 http://tinyurl.com/4os42xe

Reformers, education stakeholders, and free market enthusiasts are all weighing in on how to “fix” or repair our “broken” schools.

Fire teachers!  Eliminate tenure! Get rid of unions! Implement merit pay! Jail Parents!

Attempting to address the crisis is comparable to trying to assemble the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without first seeing and understanding the picture on the box cover.

Schools are not “broken.” The mission is far greater than that. The real challenge REINVENTION of an educational system dismantled by the forces of technological change and the unruly winds of globalization. It is an educational civilization created during an economic and social context (industrialization) in which schools and teachers were not required nor expected to educate ALL children equally and well.

The Industrial Era of Education

Designed to prepare the majority of students for an industrial economy, schools, especially Michigan high schools from where I hail, taught an overt curriculum of basic skills and a covert curriculum of rote memorization, physical quietude, punctuality, and obedience. A factory-based model of education prepared the masses for a pot of gold at the end of the high school rainbow: a life made prosperous by taking orders without question from a foreman, or through repetitive tasks in an office, or a reasonable facsimile.

Unfortunately, “gone” are the days where high school graduates purchased homes, drove insured, late model cars, took vacations, and dined in upscale restaurants.  The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, unleashed billions of new capitalists, new competitors, and new consumers who aspire to the same standard of living they view on American television and in our movies. Now students see their parents jobless, helpless, and sometimes hopeless as they mourn the death of a comfortable way of life. Hence, the term drop-out factories is coined as students drop out in record numbers because they foresee of no future or hold any vision in their hearts or spirits of what life can be like if they play by the old, covert rules. Students desperately need a new vision of themselves and who they can be.

Customarily, public schools have been least successful educating minority children, the children of the poor, and children of the single, underemployed parent. For the cognitively or economically privileged, we created private schools, examination schools, honors programs and provided them with an elite curriculum based on critical thinking and problem solving. They, too, were recipients of a covert contract; graduate from college and a seat at the table of status and/or power is yours for the asking. That contract is also “gone.”

Nevertheless, public education is now expected to serve ALL children equally and as well as were middle-class, white children from stable, two-parent homes during the industrial economy. Educating ALL children equally and well is the civil rights issue of the 21^st century.

 Another Covert Contract

Teachers, too, were co-opted into a covert contract. Punctual teachers with effective classroom management skills, (quiet students) low failure rates, positive rapport with parents, peers and especially the principal earned tenure, a pension plan, and the good life. And, too many administrators in our schools promoted not necessarily because of exemplary teaching but because they too were beneficiaries of the same covert contract and are now challenged to support teachers with the new world order of teaching critical thinking and problem seeking to ALL students. Both groups will need a new vision of themselves.

Parents: Missing in Action

Michelle Rhee and other so-called reformers want to point the finger at teachers for the present crisis without bringing to the table the responsibility of parents.  An industrial economy begat a wider middle class that also provided more opportunities for women and for minorities. A by-product of the new economic prosperity has been latchkey children, unsupervised time after school, and missing homework.  Parents lost their way and found few reasons to give their children for existence beyond more and more material comforts. Tempted by cable television, shopping malls, cell phones, video games, they substituted the curriculum of a spirit-fed life with one spawned of materialism. Inner assets or inner resources were replaced by “affluenza.” A television in every bedroom replaced the human connectedness of the dinner hour, the appointed time for sharing the joys and disappointments of the day and providing the uplifting words needed to navigate a complex world. The industrial era has given way to generations of undisciplined, unmotivated students who have been reared without pain or responsibility. And we blame schools. However, families, too, will need a new vision of themselves.

Game Change: Holding Teachers Accountable

Globalization necessitates all professions move the needle from tenure and a defined pension to merit and a 401K.  Now educators must perform like workers in profit-making industries, and their bottom line is the results of students’ test scores. According to the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who has proclaimed Detroit Public Schools as operating at Ground Zero, “It’s all about the talent.” Teachers are now viewed as accountable talent who should be held responsible if their students don’t perform on assessments, should agree to layoffs and pay raises based on merit in place of seniority. Unfortunately, whether unions and teachers like it or not, their job description is being reinvented, re-imagined, re-conceptualized.

A New World Order

The uncompromising and irrevocable forces of globalization are sweeping aside and breaking down old power structures, social contracts, and a way of life.

Thus, an entire educational and economic civilization is gone, “gone with the wind,” and we must begin to give birth, much like during the era of Reconstruction, to a new educational and economic civilization. Experience teaches us that birth - a symbol of hope - is often a long, slow and painful process and there are no guarantees.  But to prepare our students to become contributing and prosperous members of a new world order, we must begin, and we must keep a persistent spirit in the face of the formidable challenges that lie ahead.