Tired of the Mississippi mistrust doom loop? Louisiana offers a counterweight. The Bayou State deserves more attention for its own smart model, anyway.
The other thing I really admire about the Southern playbook is the attention on birth-5 support systems for building language in the home. TN's program (GELF) that sends a monthly free book to households is a great example of this.
Yes! Especially when so much of what studies show about literacy is how much it happens at home, and EARLY. What if parents don’t have the foundation for that? Or the resources?
It also shows we’re progressing in understanding how much learning happens between both school and home, and we need to reconcile the formal learning happening in schools with support when students go home. Educators and parents truly can be stakeholder partners with initiatives like this.
I love this book. It worked wonders with one of my kids... But not with the one whom we later found out was dyslexic. And to be honest, I would have been slower to "fix" the problem myself using "100 easy lessons" if we had not had that experience with the older kid, combined with the school piloting DIBELS + knowing to ask about the results + being horrified at all the red! It took us a year in Kinder, going slowly, about 10-15 minutes, 3 days a week to get through the book. It was often hard to convince my kid to do "more" school.
Most families feel like schools should be the experts in teaching kids how to read, and I think it's fair to expect that. I'm a big advocate of keeping things simple for families — talk and read with/to your kid, be curious and supportive of learning — but we shouldn't have to lead basic learning, nor should we have to un-teach crappy things like "picture power."
This is why I admire the 0-5 approach in many Southern states — it's doable to chat while grocery shopping about everything you see, doable to read a picture book or listen to a cool kid-friendly podcast. I don't want to have to swoop in all the time to patch up my kid's learning, I want to trust it's being done at school. But instead I've taught both my kids to read and know their times tables myself.
For many families trust has been broken. That trust could start to be repaired by replicating the Southern surge.
Great article. In particular I like the notes on the Louisiana and the importance of a content rich curriculum to keep driving results after 4th grade.
I've become pretty convinced that something like the following is optimal
1. You need to start with phonics based instruction for reading. Ideally at home, you can do this with 15-20 mins a day. And it’s WAY WAY WAY more effective if done in a one on one environment. Kids must learn how to sound out words.
2. But phonics is just the start, then you need to move to a content rich curriculum. One that doesn’t just have a bunch of short excerpts on subjects but actually covers stuff like history, social studies, science etc. A lot of kids simply aren’t learning a lot of content. They aren’t reading full books, just short paragraphs. This doesn’t work. Trying to divorce reading from content is foolish and wrong. Natalie Wexler has done some great work on this. Her book “The Knowledge Gap” is excellent and well worth a read.
3. Having multiple different curriculums is bad. We need one curriculum per state. That actually covers what is taught in that grade. Not one that covers 50 things where you only have time for 10 during the school year. This is necessary because how can you test the content that should have been learned if the content varies from class to class or from school to school. We need to decide what kids need to learn, teach them that stuff then test them on that stuff. But this requires ONE curriculum.
4. There needs to be frequent low stakes testing (every 3 to 4 weeks). If a couple of kids are falling behind then get those kids small group tutoring. If most of the class fails then you need to cover the material again.
5. All kids should have to pass a standardized test at the end of each year to move on to the next grade. Of course this goes back to the need for one curriculum. So that you can test on what should have actually been learned. As we learned from Mississippi this doesn’t actually result in that many new kids failing. What it does is it changes the way adults and parents act which results in enhanced learning for the kids.
6. Ban all phones and other smart devices from schools from bell to bell. Kids shouldn’t be looking at phones during class. They also shouldn’t be on them during lunch. Go play with other kids get real social interaction.
If you do all this you would see HUGE improvement. That being said, I believe the following is also needed. But I realize this will be harder.
7. Lengthen the school year. Right now kids are only in school for about 180ish days. That’s only HALF the year. Kids should really be in school for somewhere between 220 and 240 days a year. Long breaks are horrible for learning.
8. Lengthen the school day and get rid of most homework excepting reading. For example, if kids are working on paper they should be doing it on school computers with no AI access (or paper, but I hate paper). Also make sure kids are getting the boring practice repletion needed for things like multiplication tables. How do you make sure. You make sure they actually do it at school.
Outstanding, fact-based pushback [disconfirmation] that models the kind of debates we need about American Education.
The other thing I really admire about the Southern playbook is the attention on birth-5 support systems for building language in the home. TN's program (GELF) that sends a monthly free book to households is a great example of this.
Yes! Especially when so much of what studies show about literacy is how much it happens at home, and EARLY. What if parents don’t have the foundation for that? Or the resources?
It also shows we’re progressing in understanding how much learning happens between both school and home, and we need to reconcile the formal learning happening in schools with support when students go home. Educators and parents truly can be stakeholder partners with initiatives like this.
Fair, probably just send every household with age appropriate kids a copy of the "teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons book"
I taught my kids to read with it, it's awesome.
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3OEUQ8JYVNAED&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.oyUlujdajCda0OkfFN66950v0Wr9urUsPpPaAka6WRTk5b_yYLkXr8DAuVVJP2aJ6ANZYfWuUjsRs1ZDOcUiICgrW8tpyjzj8kmHAP1VUzl8b0e-Ptw2SrJJ2ZHJGbpX_PeQ19GEnV0BW-QO2ImconOKaeLjnAwU1sly6ER7QZ5jqgxCHgZEZHdVujrdDaHMZR-fMJuDyEHiuV_-q6fZeTOUm9K9cJx0Uo1pOBDmCcY.tMZY5fnLh6vziVDfYhfIbTdFRchulVljpwI9GtjuUTo&dib_tag=se&keywords=teach+your+child+to+read+in+100+easy+lessons&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1764883085&sprefix=teach+your%2Caps%2C200&sr=8-1
I love this book. It worked wonders with one of my kids... But not with the one whom we later found out was dyslexic. And to be honest, I would have been slower to "fix" the problem myself using "100 easy lessons" if we had not had that experience with the older kid, combined with the school piloting DIBELS + knowing to ask about the results + being horrified at all the red! It took us a year in Kinder, going slowly, about 10-15 minutes, 3 days a week to get through the book. It was often hard to convince my kid to do "more" school.
Most families feel like schools should be the experts in teaching kids how to read, and I think it's fair to expect that. I'm a big advocate of keeping things simple for families — talk and read with/to your kid, be curious and supportive of learning — but we shouldn't have to lead basic learning, nor should we have to un-teach crappy things like "picture power."
This is why I admire the 0-5 approach in many Southern states — it's doable to chat while grocery shopping about everything you see, doable to read a picture book or listen to a cool kid-friendly podcast. I don't want to have to swoop in all the time to patch up my kid's learning, I want to trust it's being done at school. But instead I've taught both my kids to read and know their times tables myself.
For many families trust has been broken. That trust could start to be repaired by replicating the Southern surge.
Teacher. Training.
this part x1000.
PD days that don’t feel like a waste — we ready!
Great article. In particular I like the notes on the Louisiana and the importance of a content rich curriculum to keep driving results after 4th grade.
I've become pretty convinced that something like the following is optimal
1. You need to start with phonics based instruction for reading. Ideally at home, you can do this with 15-20 mins a day. And it’s WAY WAY WAY more effective if done in a one on one environment. Kids must learn how to sound out words.
2. But phonics is just the start, then you need to move to a content rich curriculum. One that doesn’t just have a bunch of short excerpts on subjects but actually covers stuff like history, social studies, science etc. A lot of kids simply aren’t learning a lot of content. They aren’t reading full books, just short paragraphs. This doesn’t work. Trying to divorce reading from content is foolish and wrong. Natalie Wexler has done some great work on this. Her book “The Knowledge Gap” is excellent and well worth a read.
3. Having multiple different curriculums is bad. We need one curriculum per state. That actually covers what is taught in that grade. Not one that covers 50 things where you only have time for 10 during the school year. This is necessary because how can you test the content that should have been learned if the content varies from class to class or from school to school. We need to decide what kids need to learn, teach them that stuff then test them on that stuff. But this requires ONE curriculum.
4. There needs to be frequent low stakes testing (every 3 to 4 weeks). If a couple of kids are falling behind then get those kids small group tutoring. If most of the class fails then you need to cover the material again.
5. All kids should have to pass a standardized test at the end of each year to move on to the next grade. Of course this goes back to the need for one curriculum. So that you can test on what should have actually been learned. As we learned from Mississippi this doesn’t actually result in that many new kids failing. What it does is it changes the way adults and parents act which results in enhanced learning for the kids.
6. Ban all phones and other smart devices from schools from bell to bell. Kids shouldn’t be looking at phones during class. They also shouldn’t be on them during lunch. Go play with other kids get real social interaction.
If you do all this you would see HUGE improvement. That being said, I believe the following is also needed. But I realize this will be harder.
7. Lengthen the school year. Right now kids are only in school for about 180ish days. That’s only HALF the year. Kids should really be in school for somewhere between 220 and 240 days a year. Long breaks are horrible for learning.
8. Lengthen the school day and get rid of most homework excepting reading. For example, if kids are working on paper they should be doing it on school computers with no AI access (or paper, but I hate paper). Also make sure kids are getting the boring practice repletion needed for things like multiplication tables. How do you make sure. You make sure they actually do it at school.