I didn't see any questions, so here are some errant thoughts I had while reading. The first idea I found interesting was on page 151. "...entry level jobs required higher reading level skills than the lowest 40-50% of our high school students." That's a scary thought. I had heard something once about how many job applicants, can't even read the application they are required to fill out to get the job in the first place, let alone read to fulfill job expectations. I always felt I had a broad vocabulary, but I was just reading a series of vampire books marketed to teens ( not Twilight) and was surprised by some of the words the author used. I was a good student and used my context clues to infer what they meant but I can't imagine some teenager knowing them.
Another thought came when reading about the standards and how they came to be. I realize each state has thier own unique standard, and some areas of the country require different knowledge based on culture, location and such. I started thinking though about when we teach kids about standard and non-standard measurement and how each was standardized to be universal, to eliminate error and bias. When reading about how the global economy and industry have affected the educational system, I thought maybe corporate America should have a say in standards. Also, to make educational standards more of a "standard" shouldn't they be based on a national set of requirements? Just some things that came to mind as I was reading.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks Melanie! It has been a crazy week! You picked alot of great comments out of these chapters. Your last comment reminded me of what I heard at the Administrative Conference this week. The State Standards will be updated in 2011 (I am pretty sure that was the date), then every 5 years after that. I thought, "What a difficult thing for districts". I mean when you map your curriculum, it will only be good for five years.
ReplyDeleteThe only "constant" in Education is that things will continue to change and change until eventually we'll end right back where we started from...I think if we focus on reaching the goal of having solid readers by third grade, all the other issues/problem areas... may not be issues/problems at all. I don't think we can hurt students by making reading and math a main focus in the first 3 years and let development and maturity of their minds help them to use the knowledge that a book, web site, or lesson can give to them. And they can make sense of what they read and apply the knowledge that they gained from reading it. Does that make sense? I hope so...??
ReplyDelete