Posted on 08/14/2005 9:27:41 AM PDT by flixxx
Across the board, pupils' language skills dip
BY PAUL GOODSELL
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Teaching kids to speak and write English properly can be a big challenge these days.
Popular culture - movies, television, music and everyday conversation - feeds children a steady diet of double negatives, verbs that don't agree with subjects and incorrectly used adverbs and adjectives.
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
Ok, I hope I did not make any grievous language mistakes in this post
Across the board, pupils' language skills dip
BY PAUL GOODSELL
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Teaching kids to speak and write English properly can be a big challenge these days.
Popular culture - movies, television, music and everyday conversation - feeds children a steady diet of double negatives, verbs that don't agree with subjects and incorrectly used adverbs and adjectives.
8th grade CAT results
"They're not being barraged by standard English," said Janelle Mullen, assistant superintendent for curriculum in the Omaha Public Schools. It's a constant struggle, she said, to overcome those influences and teach proper skills.
The school district's latest California Achievement Test scores, released last week, suggest that those efforts may be falling short.
From 2000 to 2005, language scores have dipped in each grade tested. The decline is greatest in eighth grade, where five years ago the typical student ranked in the 61st percentile compared with a national sample group. In 2005, Omaha's median eighth-grade score was in the 54th percentile.
The OPS drop in language scores can't be explained solely by the district's rising numbers of students from low-income families, minority groups or households where English is not the native language.
Instead, a closer look at OPS test results indicates that students from a variety of backgrounds may be losing ground.
The World-Herald examined the CAT scores of 7,786 OPS students in 2005, as well as their counterparts in previous years.
Among eighth-graders, for example, the typical language score for black students has fallen from the 43rd percentile in 2000 to the 33rd in 2005. But whites dropped, too, from the 75th percentile to the 70th.
Low-income students - those who qualified for the federal subsidized lunch program - declined from the 44th percentile to the 37th. But better-off students also did worse this year than they did five years earlier, with language scores falling from the 79th percentile to the 75th.
Even advantaged suburbanites - typically among the highest-scoring OPS students - have slipped since 2000. The typical white eighth-grader who lived west of 108th Street and did not qualify for subsidized lunches scored in the 91st percentile in 2000. In 2005, it was the 85th percentile.
But Hispanic eighth-graders made significant gains. Hispanic students scored in the 47th percentile on the English language test, up from the 37th percentile in 2000. Hispanics also improved in reading and math.
Though language scores have gone down overall, OPS students improved in the math portion of the test. Reading results have been mixed, but they generally have dipped slightly during the past five years.
Nebraska Education Commissioner Doug Christensen cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from a single test. But he said there is a clear need to improve literacy throughout Nebraska's schools.
"There's no question that over the last decade, we've gotten really lazy about writing," Christensen said.
Results from the latest statewide writing assessment will be released later this month. OPS officials say those results will show that the district's students are doing well when it comes to actual writing, as opposed to a multiple-choice test.
"The (CAT) language test is an editing test," said Carla Noerrlinger, OPS research director. "It is very related to the mechanics of writing."
It also requires a lot of reading, so students who are weaker readers may have trouble answering all the questions even if they have been taught proper English usage. OPS schools are expanding their reading lessons along with writing and grammar instruction.
At King Science and Technology Magnet Center, a north Omaha school for fifth-graders through eighth-graders, students will spend 90 minutes every other day on extra reading and writing lessons. The extra lessons often have a science theme, in keeping with the school's special focus, but the goal is to help students practice their reading and writing skills.
"The important thing to us is that kids are writing every day," said Janet Zahm, instructional facilitator at King Science.
King Science's language scores are unchanged since 2000 - a better showing than most of the district's middle schools. Six middle schools had lower scores in 2005 than in 2000, while only two did better.
Central Park Elementary in north Omaha is a success story when it comes to language instruction. The typical student scored in the 61st percentile in 2005, up 18 points from 2000. Reading and math scores also are up significantly.
Principal Mary Austin said Central Park emphasizes "old-fashioned grammar" and the phonics approach to reading instruction.
"Our kids are born with the same brain," she said. "But what they're lacking is experience and opportunity."
In better-off households, where parents are more likely to have attended college, children often grow up immersed in standard English usage and a rich vocabulary, Austin said. Her students, many of whom are black and from low-income homes, often are accustomed to a nonstandard English where it is common, for example, to say "we was" instead of "we were."
"We just tell the kids 'That's unacceptable,'" she said. "We have one job: that's to teach standard English. They all need to learn it so they can work in the workforce, in the business world."
Despite Central Park's overall gains, 2005 wasn't the school's best year for CAT scores. Austin said fifth-grade scores were up, but second-graders were down somewhat.
Austin said she and her teachers had become a little complacent. But she has some new ideas for the coming school year. Students still will learn a daily vocabulary word, but they also will study synonyms and antonyms for that word. They will focus on tricky words with multiple meanings - such as "drain," which can be both a noun and a verb.
"Every year, you've got to look at ways to gain more momentum," she said.
This don't be no problem.
I am also not surprised. You should see some of the emails I get at work.
(I corrected one once and sent it back, big mistake. Got called into my boss's office and was lectured on diversity.)
I am sure that the NEA is doing every thing possible to correct this problem. Not!
You be right
It be a big problem, if you axe me.
A comma is required between two independent clauses.
We're a homeschool family, with a ten year old boy. We use Abeka and supplement with other odds and ends. Abeka has a reputation as being a very solid course of study, but even so, it's lacking what I got in a public school classroom back in the late 60's/early 70's.
During 4th grade, Tonto Junior began simple sentence diagramming. It'll get more advanced this year. I hated it while in school, but mastery does lead to understanding of grammar. I don't think they do diagramming anymore in my neck of the woods in public school, and, it's a shame.
Maybe so, but nobody dent axe you.
My 17 year old son has a website and forum for his friends.
I get a kick of them correcting each other's grammar and punctuation.
Some of the posters have been homeschooled, others attend public school, but they do correct each other.
One poster was complaining last week because he claimed somebody had hacked his account and started a thread.
Another poster remarked, "Don't worry, (kid's name), we all knew it wasn't your post because the post had commas and proper punctuation."
Dang, I knew I would lose all credibility by posting this story and screwing up the comment...thanks!
Gee, I wonder why? With 30+ years of exposure to hip-hop, school systems that contemplate "Teaching" ebonics, teachers who can't/won't teach, sitcoms, poor grammar in newspapers and periodicals, sports "stars" and their non-stop "ya know", etc., etc., etc.
We have been wondering why Johnny can't read or speak for decades and the answers are right in front of us. It's no mystery, it's sheer ignorance.
When in doubt, put, a comma. It was good enough, for the Founding Fathers who had an excellent command, of the King's English.
"Me fail English? That's unpossible."
You made perfectly good sense without the commas; however, their use is mandatory between independent clauses, at least in English usage.
Not to mention Lewis and Clark, who could spell a word three different ways in the same paragraph.
Oops, I meant "in American usage."
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