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Alison Haun's avatar

The last sentence of your piece is so powerful! In staff meetings and PDs, I want to stand on the table and scream. Our school in New York City is so concerned with ADDING phonics and phonemic awareness, but they’re removing science periods to do it. All kids aren’t the same and can’t be held to the same generic standard of achievement, but we can use the science to unlock and develop every child’s potential! Teachers aren’t miracle workers in the sense they can’t turn all students into geniuses, but they can use methods that work to help every student become productive, curious lifelong learners. The only way is to build knowledge so they’re not spending their lives googling and relying on everything they consume, not trusting themselves, and unable to synthesize information because they’re so busy looking up all the vocabulary they need to comprehend something. It seems like common sense. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for school leaders to get on board with!

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Sue Livingston's avatar

Shouldn’t we consider the validity of the NAEP reading assessment in light of the results of the recent study Wexler describes? What does it ask students to do . . . read excerpts about ideas they most likely know not much about? Time for a paradigm change in assessment.

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