Woke this morning, 5 degrees, I never want to hear the words “polar vortex” again, face mask, three layers, ski mittens, life goes on.
Maybe Springsteen and Big Bunny have turned the tide, if there’s anyone left to write the history of our era it will be fascinating, in my darker moments I see us all in “reeducation camps” in North Dakota run by ICE stormtroopers
These days we get our news from the net, hopefully not Facebook, maybe the NY Times, Chalkbeat or whatever pops up on your phone. Every elected, or chancellor or union leader or corporate executive has a media team. Our new chancellor is off on a meet and greet, probably carefully selected schools and parents, lots of photos and coverage beyond Chalkbeat
Unfortunately the eyries of power are still searching for the manic bullets, and no, endorsing phonics, requiring every school to use a phonics curriculum is not the magic bullet, Diane Ravitch deflates the balloon here
A comprehensive Study of Phonics-Curriculum,
… school districts in major urban areas using the science of reading found while students are grasping basic literacy skills, limitations toward deeper comprehension still exist, according to a new study.
The “Robust Reading Comprehension” report … examined literacy instruction … using materials rooted in the popular phonics-based literacy approach for at least five years. Through numerous classroom observations, teacher surveys and interviews with district officials … researchers found a majority of reading lessons lacked “depth” – meaning foundational skills were mainly limited to working on single words rather than reading them in sentences.
Comprehension lessons in later elementary grades also mainly focused on completing a task, such as identifying a main character, rather than using a text for discussion and understanding its purpose.
“You’re not able to really think about the unpacking of a complicated sentence. You’re not thinking about really intentional vocabulary instruction or the building of kids’ word knowledge over time,” “Ultimately, how should we be framing kids to read? Are we teaching our K-4 kids that reading is just tasks? Are we teaching them that they just need to label stuff and fill out graphic organizers?”
New York City jumped on the phonics bandwagon, probably to the detriment of our students, and our new chancellor is wedded to the past, it’s not his fault; however it’s unlikely he’ll relitigate the reading wars. The hop on the phonics bandwagon was adopted by the Adams team, has anyone checked whether any Adams acolytes benefited financially? Just asking ..
Generational poverty has plagued us seemingly for a millenium
Economists, sociologists, etc. now have the tools required to analyze, dissect vast amounts of data and a leader in the field is Raj Chetty
I’ve been told again and again that poverty is not an excuse, I agree. I also agree: the primary determinants of academic success are parental education and income.
Can high level inclusive instruction alone successfully reduce generational poverty? Unlikely.
William Julius Wilson, in The Truly Disadvantaged, points to jobs, creating pathways to jobs breaking down generational poverty.
“Wilson argues that the decline of inner-city jobs due to deindustrialization is a primary driver of poverty, creating a large, jobless underclass.and rejects the idea that poverty is solely due to racism or an inherent “culture of poverty,” pointing to the changing economic landscape as the main factor, Wilson details how economic inequality has grown within the Black community, with a growing gap between the poor and the middle class calls for public policies that address the structural economic problems, rather than focusing solely on social or cultural issues.“
Forty years later we have failed to successfully address generational poverty.
In the Obama and Biden administrations we were making progress, substantial federal investments, legislation both creating jobs and tackling climate change, all ended by the Big Bad Horrendous Trump Bill.
Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard and his team address how changes in children’s social environments have increased class gaps an reduced racial gaps in economic mobility.
A recent Chetty et al Study:
“Children’s prospects of achieving upward economic mobility vary
substantially across geography and demographic groups in America.
Given the long shadow cast by history, is economic opportunity largely fixed by historical policies or can opportunity change in shorter, more policy-relevant time frames?
In his new study (Chetty, Dobbie, Goldman, Porter, Yang), analyzes
changes in economic opportunity.
“Although substantial racial gaps persist, we find rapid
changes in the size of these gaps: over the past 15 years, the Black-
white gap in upward economic mobility shrank by 27%. During
the same period, class gaps expanded: the difference in incomes
between white children growing up in low- and high-income families
increased by 28%“.
“Further analysis reveals that these trends were driven by changes in the social environments in which children grew up. Our findings show that opportunity is malleable in short time frames and provide new insights and data to expand opportunity
going forward.“
KEY FINDINGS
• The Black-white gap in upward mobility shrank
significantly in the past 15 years, although racial gaps
remain wide. At the same time, gaps in white children’s
outcomes by parental income grew.
• The geography of opportunity has shifted in America: the
coasts, which have historically provided more pathways
to upward mobility than other regions, no longer do so.
Additionally, in areas where Black children’s outcomes
improved the most, white children also did relatively better.
• Divergent trends in mobility by race and class were driven
by changes in the communities in which children grew
up, as measured by parental employment rates.
• Social interactions are central to changing opportunity:
children’s outcomes are shaped by parental employment
rates of peers with whom they interact most”
Fascinating, How can these findings be converted into actionable policies by the Mandami administration?
It’s only been a month, our Mayor is a smart guy, education is only one aspect of addressing generational poverty, can Mamdani create an administrative wide approach?
Ed in the Apple: Blogging on the Intersection of Education and Politics Title 