The Face of the Victim

We know what Sodom Hussein looked like, but not the citizens who had their hands amputated.  (You CAN find out at www.ogrish.com, but Professor Plum advises you NOT to).

Professor Plum has had occasion to report on one's little kid's view of himself after he was taught to be illiterate.

And we have reported on the victimizers in the Rockford, Illinois schools here and here.

But let's see the OTHER side of the academic child abuse, as reported by the same heroine who first brought it to our attention.

I found out the sad news last night that Tiffany Parker, the principal in Rockford who stuck her neck out for intensive phonics was told to pack up her office by the next day and report to her new job as the asst. principal at the most challenging middle school in the city. Up until now, Ms. Parker has had no educational experience with middle school students.

 

Already some of the best teachers in the school are beginning to think about transferring to other schools next year that don't have students are as challenging. In three years, one will look at the test results of the city's highest achieving minority, high poverty school and see a steady pattern of decline when it takes it place with all of the other failing city high poverty schools. Thousands of research studies showing that only systematic, explicit phonics results in higher numbers of capable readers provide a clear picture of what will happen. In just the past week the older grade level's Direct instruction reading time has been cut down to 30 minutes so that the students can do guided reading with the balanced literacy leveled books.

 

Fifth graders who are only reading at a first grade level, can no longer work in first grade level reading curriculum.......they can only go back one grade level to fourth grade curriculum (and no, this makes no sense, but the rationale is that the students will be disadvantaged by not having the constant exposure to higher level vocabulary -- even though they can't decode the words) Since these are older failing readers who never had intensive phonics in the early grades, one can look at research studies and predict that the reduced time will result in little "catch-up."

 

The irony of what has happened can be clearly seen in a report on one of our students that I heard about today in another one of our project schools. I'll call this student Jason. Jason's parents could not read in either their native language or English. In kindergarten Jason had an attention span of about three or four seconds which our videotapes always clearly showed. Despite the extra drill and tutoring in the regular curriculum, Jason was so far behind that he had no chance of catching up to his peers. Sometimes the staff wondered if he was a "bit autistic" or developmentally delayed. In some districts he would have been tested as the latter and placed in special education. Jason was a moderate behavior problem in the kindergarten class and many a day I'd walk in the room and see him in the time out chair.

 

Because he was so far behind, by the middle of kindergarten Jason not only was in Direct Instruction Reading Mastery, but because he was one of the two lowest kinders, he was in a group of only two students. One hour each day, the two boys slowly worked through the lessons only moving to the next lesson when they were at mastery. By the end of kindergarten, Jason still only knew a few letters and was only able to sound out a few words he had practiced repeatedly. Because he had so little language, he also was in a small group of students learning Direct Instruction Language for Learning each day. This program essentially teaches English as a Second Language in drill form. As with reading , Jason's progress in acquiring language was so slow, that he was one of the few children selected to continue in the program through first grade.

 

In first grade, he and his pal in this little group continued to move slowly though the reading curriculum at a snail's pace. In order to keep him focused to lessons, the teacher gave the two students points for paying attention which enabled them to earn surprises on Friday if they had earned enough points.

 

By second grade, Jason's increased attention span enabled him to work in a group of four students. He was now talking up a storm and had developed a wry sense of humor. Finally, he could read decodable stories. Understanding what he was reading was often difficult but the focused questions of the Direct Instruction stories ensured that by the time he moved on to the next story, he had thoroughly understood the last one. The staff continued to assess him every month or two with the one minute DIBELS assessments,  but despite the progress in the curriculum his scores were still low.

 

I've been away from Rockford for two years and in talking to a teacher at his school, I just had to inquire about Jason the other day. How was he now doing as a fourth grader, this child who easily could have been labeled as developmentally disabled when he started school? The reading teacher with great pride told me that he's now moved back into the regular curriculum and his last reading test showed that he's almost reading at grade level. She then mentioned as an aside that the fourth grade teachers are amazed at how well this class of fourth graders raised on intensive phonics since kindergarten reads.

 

In some ways the story of Jason exemplifies the amount of effort and commitment a district needs to put into the prevention of later reading problems. The staff at this school would be the first ones to tell you that in years past before the intensive phonics Jason would have been a nonreader.....very possibly a special education student. Over the past four years, I've learned that one of the first questions to ask a school district is how they can show that they are doing the intensive intervention needed in K-3 to prevent reading problems.....money that should not go to balanced literacy approaches like Reading Recovery [and here], but rather towards identifying anyone who needs the extra support of intense phonics approaches like Reading Mastery, Lindamood Bell, or Wilson (and my preference and analysis of the research support is Reading Mastery).

 

One of the PRIDE schools' biggest problems now in Rockford is that with across the district budget cuts, the trained classroom aides that helped maintain those small groups for the neediest students have all been cut. WIth shrinking school budgets, one can understand that cuts have to be made.....but the last, the very last place they should be made is in the manpower needed to prevent reading problems in K-3. Ultimately, this prevention based approach with reduced numbers of special education students, reduced numbers of reading specialists needed at higher grade levels, and reduced numbers of drop outs and behavior problems will pay off ten fold.

The Second Coming.
W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?