And homeschooling families are criticized for seeking an alternative? Oh, right, the only place education takes place is in an institutional setting for 7.5 hours a day. . .
From the website EducationNews.org comes the report from the Colorado Commission for Higher Education:
52.7%
Colo. students starting two-year colleges in fall 2008 who needed remedial help in math, reading or writing17%
Students at two-year schools who needed help in all three areas19%
First-year students at four-year colleges who needed help in at least one of those areas40%
First-year students in two-year schools who needed math remediation16%
First-year students in four-year schools who needed math remediationLest anyone in my great state of Texas feel too smug, here are our stats:
Half of Texas college freshmen are in need of remedial education, compared to only 28 percent nationally.
I shouldn't wonder, given the Houston Chronicle article of 12/25/09 headlined, "Schools take a new direction on spelling":
Quoting from the article by Ericka Mellon, "An age-old staple of elementary school — the weekly spelling test — is disappearing from some classrooms.
Causing confusion among parents, a growing number of schools are ditching tradition for a different method of teaching spelling that focuses less on memorization and more on understanding why and how words are constructed.
Some districts, including Clear Creek and Conroe, have gone as far as encouraging teachers to scrap the typical spelling test — no longer should students get a list of words on Monday and be quizzed on them on Friday. Instead, students should be graded on how well they spell in their writing and whether they stumble on certain words when reading aloud."
But what about all those words not commonly used in writing, or the words not regularly seen in the drivel that often passes for contemporary literature used in classrooms? The spelling test may be the only exposure students get to words like "palladium," "hierarchical," "docent," "cosmopolitan," "hegemony," or "stratosphere."
And why can't spelling tests be done alongside the attention to correct spelling in writing assignments and the correct pronunciation of words when reading aloud?
Reminds me of the years in which "look-say" rather than a combination of phonics and rote memorization got a chokehold on public ed.
We all know how that turned out.
2 comments:
I am living proof that the public school system does not prepare you for college. When entering community college I had to take remedial math classes. Very sad!
I'm also living proof that 12 years of public education does not prepare one for success in college. A near straight-A student for most of my life, I hit a brick wall my freshman year at university. Freshman algebra -- it should have been a walk in the park. In reality, it was like walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I begged the professor to pass me with a D so I'd never darken his doorstep again. Bless him for agreeing to do so. I'd had years and years of public math instruction, so what went wrong? It wasn't until I began teaching my own children and researching in-depth the ways in which math is taught and SHOULD BE taught that I realized how I'd been cheated. From the looks of things today, not much is changing.
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