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BREAKING (GRAPHIC): Multiple people reported stabbed. Some reports of fatalities in vicinity of a Black Lives Matter protest in Reading, UK

Sad to say, the Reading Wars continue in the USA. Millions of children are made to memorize sight-words, a proven road to illiteracy. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of websites, continue to assert things that are the opposite of truth. For example, we are told that English isn’t a phonetic language and students have no choice but to memorize the vast English language one sight-word at a time. Nonsense, as Rudolf Flesch famously explained in his 1955 bestseller "Why Johnny Can't Read.” Why does this destructive charade go on? The official experts continue to disorient the public with incorrect theories, fake research,...

As millions of students across the United States celebrate Read Across America Day, Melania and I are pleased to join them in celebrating the wonders of reading and literature, while also honoring our Nation’s outstanding educators, librarians, and families who support America’s remarkable young people. Read Across America Day is a celebration of the joys of literacy and an important reminder that we must make every effort to ensure that our Nation’s children receive the necessary education in reading and writing to cultivate the skills they need to pursue their American Dream. To help all of America’s students unlock their...

It’s a jarring statistic, so much so that it became a talking point among Aspen school board candidates in the runup to the most recent election: At Aspen Elementary School, a mere 41 percent of students were deemed proficient in reading against the state’s standards. “I think this should be an all-hands-on-deck solution now. I suspect there are curriculum alignment issues: it’s not one teacher; it’s not one kid; it’s not one bad day,” newly elected Katy Frisch said during a school board candidate forum in October. “It’s completely unacceptable.” Johnathan Nickell, who won the other open board seat in...

Important Ed News /// Phonics is winning, finally, at long last, after 85 stupid years, after 50 million functional illiterates, after one of the most stubborn subversive schemes against common sense ever to brutalize a country. Finally, the one correct way to teach reading is again embraced as the one correct way to teach reading. Go ahead, shout "OMG." The fix has been in for so many dumbed down decades that many people may have given up hope. You may think this is now crazy optimism on my part. But I will show you some signs that things have suddenly...

READING, Pa. — Pennsylvania overhauled its child sexual abuse laws Tuesday more than a year after a grand jury report showed the cover-up of hundreds of cases of abuse in most of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses over the last seven decades. The central bill signed by Gov. Tom Wolf gives future victims of child sex abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges. The grand jury report spurred several states to change their laws and other states to begin similar investigations.

Full Title: Colorado has spent hundreds of millions to help kids read. Now, it will spend up to $5.2 million to find out why it’s not working. Colorado’s education department will spend up to $5.2 million over six years on a consultant charged with determining why the state’s 2012 landmark reading law failed to produce significant gains for struggling readers. The unusual external audit, to be conducted by the nonprofit WestEd, will dig into how the state’s schools are using about $40 million a year meant to boost third-grade reading proficiency. The review could last up to six and a...

Widespread illiteracy and the ignorance it produces represent an existential threat to the United States today. But it was not always this way. And it can be fixed. Fortunately, neither the cause of this crisis nor the solution to it is a mystery—at least to anyone who has studied the issue. To blame for this dangerous phenomenon are socialist “educators” going back to the mid-1800s. In particular, it was their quack methodologies ostensibly aimed at “teaching reading” to children. The answer to the illiteracy crisis is simple, though: America must go back to what worked for thousands of years and...

A US fast-food chain will cease trading at its first UK outlet amid a row over donations to anti-LGBT groups. Gay rights campaigners called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A, which opened its first branch at The Oracle shopping centre in Reading on 10 October. A spokeswoman for the centre said "the right thing to do" was to not extend the restaurant's lease beyond the "six-month pilot period". Chick-fil-A said its donations were purely focused on youth and education. The family-owned company, founded in Atlanta in 1967, is one of the biggest fast-food chains in the USA and boasts about 2,400...

Many practical people say the situation is hopeless. The Education Establishment controls the country’s public schools with an unyielding grip. Unfortunately, these educrats seem to be socialist ideologues. (That’s not surprising as their Godfather—that is, John Dewey—was a socialist ideologue.) They are obsessed with social engineering, not academic gains. The school is for them a laboratory where they can design the brave new child that will populate their Brave New World. Whether these new children can read, write, or do arithmetic does not seem to be a major concern. Just as unsettling, our Education Establishment has created a far-reaching support...

Up until the last thirty years or so, reading was the most common form of entertainment. These days, technology has been steadily replacing the entertainment of reading a good book. According to a statistic from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Center for Educational Statistics, fewer than half (48 percent) of adult Americans read literature for pleasure. Reading on a regular basis, however, provides amazing benefits to the health of our brain and our mental well-being. Reading has the power to reduce stress, whereas other forms of media tend to increase stress. TV and the Internet require...

n Comiskey Park in Dubuque, Iowa, local barber Courtney Holmes decided to do something special. The father of two decided to give free haircuts to kids who would read to him.

(More about reading): The biggest promises in K-12 involve reading and sight-words. Children are told: Learn your sight-words and you will be good readers! There is a strange tautology in sight-word instruction. When you learn to be a successful reader, you will be a successful reader. That's the weird boilerplate found throughout K-12. Suppose you tell a bunch of six-year-olds that tight-rope walking is easy. Put one foot in front of the other; don’t look down; smile confidently and walk. Children, you stress, cannot enjoy fun on the high wire until they have learned to walk comfortably on the high...

Our children aren’t being taught to read in ways that line up with what scientists have discovered about how people actually learn. It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than six in 10 fourth graders aren’t proficient readers. It has been this way since testing began. A third of kids can’t read at a basic level. How do we know that a big part of the problem is how children are being taught? Because reading researchers have done studies in classrooms and clinics, and they’ve shown...

Hi, I grew up in Chicago and thanks to the internet, I listen to Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson every morning, Chicago's Morning Answer. Dan went to the same school I did, I think, Northwesern. Anyway, he just made a great comment: read some books. History, economics, etc. In other words, don't ever stop educating yourself. The brain is like the body...use it or lose it. 😁 Just thought his comment was worth menntioning.

Democratic senators put on quite a show Thursday at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. Desperate for a "gotcha" moment that would disqualify the Trump nominee, the senators asked pointed questions and gave lectures about transparency. But, they embarrassed themselves in the process. Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) got the loudest laugh.Booker's theatrics came at the very beginning of the hearing. He interrupted Chairman Chuck Grassley's opening remarks to announce that he had broken Senate rules and released "committee confidential" documents about Kavanaugh's opinions on racial profiling. He even referred to himself as "Spartacus," as if he was some kind of...

My End of Summer Reading List: From Eric Metaxas to ISIS By John Zmirak I know that for many of you summer is almost over. Since I live in Texas, we’ve just passed its halfway mark. We might consider putting long pants back on come Halloween. Given that, there’s plenty of time left for “summer reading.” Alas!So here are some of the books I’m partway through and want to recommend to you all through the sweltering days of October.Chance or the Dance?, by Thomas Howard My friend Eric Metaxas was a moving force behind reissuing this 1989 classic. In his...

....concepts that still help me make sense of the world, like the "racial nadir" — the downturn in American race relations, starting after Reconstruction, that saw the rise of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Lies My Teacher Told Me overturned one assumption embedded in the history classes I'd been sitting through all my life: that the United States is constantly ascending from greatness to greatness. "I started out the new edition with the famous two photographs of the inaugural crowds of this guy named President Obama, his first inauguration, and this guy named President Trump, his...

Just finished The Road to Wigan Pier a book Orwell wrote about leftism and fascism during the 30's in Great Britan. Chilton Williamson from CHRONICLES had recommended it in the magazine's What the Editor's are Reading section. Good selection. This is a discussion of class, industrialization, and Orwell's perspective of what happens when humans are treated as disposable. Interestingly, during the industrialization of Great Britain, there were many thrown out of work and lots of talk, as there is today about the dole (today read guaranteed income) being the way to allow people to be "free." Many other parallels with...

What’s the best book you’ve read not written by a big name author? What famous author can you not stomach? “All Over But The Shoutin” by Rick Bragg is my favorite. Hemingway is annoying.