Politicians play games. Kids pay the price.
That was the theme of the first headline dissection on the latest episode of “Thursday Pundits,” the news-in-review analysis show on WNHH.
The discussion concerned the latest statistics showing that New Haven’s public school system is failing its kids, with up to 84 percent of third-graders reading below grade level. People on all sides of the issue are calling this a crisis.
Meanwhile, New Haven’s school district leaders are resisting calls to shift direction to address the crisis. They are vowing not to be pushed into following the “bandwagon” of a statewide directive to emphasize phonics more in teaching young kids to read (through “structured literacy”). The shift is based on decades of brain research showing that previously in-vogue methods (dubbed “balanced literacy,” including having kids guess words based on how they look or based on pictures in a book) might actually harm kids’ ability to learn. The leaders’ explanation for resisting? That the previously in-vogue “balanced literacy” approach works — despite the fact that it’s clearly not working.
Meanwhile, politicians elected to help steer school policy in New Haven are complicit or silent about the resistance to teaching kids how to read instead of continuing to teach kids how not to read. Or they blame a lack of money — at a time when pandemic dollars rained on the school system, and at a time when officials from low-income communities elsewhere have come to town to testify about a shift in how to teach reading has produced results.
That political reality means “the school-to-prison pipeline will be open again” for another generation of New Haveners, observed pundit Babz Rawls-Ivy of the Inner-City News and WNHH’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. In order to fix the problem, “it needs to be politically consequential” for leaders responsible for failing to make the reading shift, argued panel journalist Markeshia Ricks.
In the meantime, suggested Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman, adults distraught about the school system’s failure can help become part of the solution by volunteering to tutor city kids through the nonprofit New Haven Reads, which has a backlist of interested students running hundreds long.
Click on the video at the top of this story to watch the full episode of “Thursday Pundits” on WNHH FM.
Click here to subscribe to this program on your favorite podcast apps.
This says it all-- "The leaders’ explanation for resisting? That the previously in-vogue “balanced literacy” approach works — despite the fact that it’s clearly not working." Why?
As long as there is money flowing in from "balanced literacy", NHPS will follow it. Data means nothing, which begs the question of why NH administration and State TEVAL torments teachers with data collection. Data can lead to non-renewal for a teacher, so why is administration not following its own rules? And if data is poor, why will the Supt be retained?? Why collect data? It doesn't matter? Why do testing when nothing changes and students are promoted regardless of test scores? Could it be the money that is charged for the testing that flows into the district and gets diverted to some crazy program or hire???? We will never know the truth !!