Officials: 80 Percent Of Recent NYC High School Graduates Cannot Read

CBS NY ^

[SMGFan]

It’s an education bombshell.

Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.

The number of kids behind the 8-ball is the highest in years, CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer reported Thursday.

When they graduated from city high schools, students in a special remedial program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College couldn’t make the grade.

They had to re-learn basic skills — reading, writing and math — first before they could begin college courses.

[metmom]

Here....

You can use this....

[metmom]

It is not true that teachers cannot be fired; unions simply ensure that they have a right to due process.

Bullsh!t!

Tenure ensures that they can't be fired unless it's for murder or rape, and not necessarily for the latter.

That's also a bunch of crap. In Buffalo NY every few years, the city's teachers are given a high school proficiency exam and most of them cannot even pass what is required of the students to graduate from high school.

And the response is what?

Cries of *racism*. No denying that it's wrong results. No, the test administrators are racists.

Right.....

You are SO pathetically dumb and rude.

After your obnoxious, and yes, rude and dumb post, you have the nerve to call HIM rude and dumb? That's the pot calling the kettle black.

[metmom]

However, AVOID Saxon Math. It is merely rote learning - no THINKING involved. I cannot tell you how many parents say to me, “My child has ALWAYS made A’s in Math.” These students can apply the algorithms, but they cannot apply that knowledge to solve real-life problems.

My kids cut their teeth on Saxon math and used it all thorough their schooling. And all three of the got into calculus in their first semester of college without the need for pre-calc or remedial math of any kind. And they all passed it.

I learned more math teaching my kids out of Saxon math than any public education system taught me and I understood it.

Saxon is the best for teaching real life application of math and preparing the student for real life application of it.

[Liberty Wins]

Yes, you were one of the lucky ones. Studies show one-third of first grade students can memorize enough sight words to learn to read fairly well. However, the bottom third is handicapped for life. Some sort of reading Bell curve.

Comparative studies show phonics produces better readers in the long run, and yes, they can spell.

One study at Yale using MRI brain imaging techniques revealed that learning to sound out words results in more flow of blood to the brain. Readers who lacked the ability to sound out words had less blood flow to the language centers and in some cases, not much activity at all.

I saw one study comparing Open Court (phonics) with a well-known sight reading program which showed an increase in IQ of 5 - 10% for the kids that were taught phonics.

[metmom]

I'd disagree with you. Used Saxon Math from my 4th grade year up until I went into calculus in college, loved it. No problem applying to real-world problems. Many many homeschoolers love Saxon for the mastery of basic concepts.

There is one school district in NY which noticed that all the homeschoolers used Saxon math and all their kids did exceptionally well on the standardized testing. They looked into it at the elementary level, Math 54, 65, 76,and 87, and liked it so much that they used it for their elementary schools and THEIR standardized test scores went up.

[Liberty Wins]

John Saxon was an algebra teacher who was disappointed in the results he was getting with the standard texts. After studying older texts from earlier in the century he noticed that after introducing new mathematical concepts they would constantly review those concepts before giving the kids new material to master. And that’s how he designed his math program.

It’s common sense. Give the students plenty of chances to review material so they retain their skills.

Public schools continually experiment with new methods without bothering to study the research, if any, to see if it works. This is true of language arts, math, science, etc. Perfect way to dumb down the schools.

[metmom]

Experimenting on the kids by constantly changing the curriculum is a recipe for disaster.

[Liberty Wins]

And the jargon!

The term “sight reading” changed every few years to: look and see, look-say, look-and-guess, Dick-and-Jane, picture reading, picture reading, whole word, whole language, emergent literacy, functional systemic linguistic theory, psycholinguistics and oh, yes, invented spelling.

All of it was a pretense of professionalism. If they were real professionals they would have looked at their research once in a while and designed reading programs that work.

[Terry Mross]

50% of the teachers can’t read English. They sure as hell can’t speak it.

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for your support, metmom.

This entity of indeterminate sex is so over the top and deluded there was nothing else it could do in the reply to my original post but to name-call...and continue with the most inane school-yard nonsense. It probably thinks that all the teachers in NYC have just been doing a great job; yet, the the fact that the kids have been getting worse and worse means nothing as long as s/he and its colleagues cannot be fired and never have to be checked for competence (while their pensions increase), all is good in its world.

Incredibly pathetic. No wonder the kids are in such bad shape with this as an example of NYC teachers...and a socialist calling itself conservative. Sheesh.

[PUGACHEV]

What is not clear to me is how learning to pronounce a word leads to a quicker understanding of its meaning, and, thus, would necessarily help a young student to read more quickly and with better comprehension. Standard English, certainly more so than Spanish, is almost a different language when spoken as compared to its written form. For example, consider he sentence, "I can buy tomatoes in a can". There is no difference between the verb and noun "can" as written, but when spoken in common dialect they are hardly recognizable as the same word. If I were to render that sentence phonetically, it would have to read "Ikin buy tomatoes in a can". How could one associate "kin" with "can" as used in the affirmative? Even more puzzling, when used in the negative, as in "I cannot buy tomatoes in a can", the verb "can" resumes its phonetic similarity with the noun "can". There are thousands of dissimilarities between written and spoken English that can be spotted with a sharp ear, all of which would retard a student who relies on phonetics. It seems that way to me at least.

They say that one one can read the New York Times knowing only 600 words; I would say that if we leave aside the jargon in the Sports and Financial sections that number drops to less than 400. That is all it takes to get a good start on the road to reading. 600 to 400 words is well within the most reluctant student's ability, and if we could only teach our students that much, that is to read the NYT (okay, I know the Times is a a piece of liberal fish-wrap) we would not be saying that 80% of our high school graduates are illiterate.

[editor-surveyor]

Como como?

[Blue Collar Christian]

Thanks. That’s funny.

[metmom]

What I find ironic is posters (and there are more than one) who rant about others being rude and obnoxious and are doing it in the most insulting manner, displaying the very behavior they are condemning in others.

[metmom]

What is not clear to me is how learning to pronounce a word leads to a quicker understanding of its meaning, and, thus, would necessarily help a young student to read more quickly and with better comprehension.

Well, just maybe because the kid may know the word from having heard it and once he sounds it out, realizes, that, yes, he does know it after all even though he did not initially recognize it in print.

The other option is having people memorize every single word they'll ever encounter in their lives. Not only is that burdensome and tedious, but it leaves them totally helpless when they run into something they don't recognize.

Besides, phonics is about more than just learning to read faster. Faster isn't necessarily better. But mastery is.

Phonics is a tool to decipher language.

[wintertime]

At the age of EIGHTEEN, two of my daughter finished bachelor degree in MATHEMATICS! Thank you, John Saxon!

Avoid Saxon Math? UBELIEVABLE!

Are you a government employed K-12 teacher? ( I hope not.)

[jacknhoo]

From looking at that report, it is clear these students can read, but are not able to read English all that well.

And, consider the facts that 60% of black children and 40% of Hispanics are killed in utero in that city. It follows that it is accurate that these so-called “minorities” are still oppressed, in that city, in far greater numbers than they have ever been throughout the history of any city of this nation.

It is too bad they refuse to acknowledge that it is their own ideologies that have them down and it is their continued generational ignorance of the Truth that will comfort them as they continue to look in all the wrong places for escape.

New York city no longer aspires to belong to the land of free and it is far removed from the home of the brave - it is “the city” of willfully ignorant, insufficient, and helpless anti-Americans. Generally speaking, of course.

[wintertime]

Are you a K-12 teacher or work for the government K-12 schools?

Just wondering.

[wintertime]

Indeed!

[wintertime]

My spelling ability is very weak, and I learned to read using phonics. While you blame sight reading for your poor spelling skills, I blame phonics.

How about that! :-)

Thank goodness for spell check! Life has been much easier since this invention.