Points well taken on early childhood as a 'lost opportunity.' Rather than have government solve another problem that belongs with the family and community, is there any effort to educate parents about how to do their jobs better? Delaware just funded an early literacy program to get kids better prepared before K; we'll find out in a few years how it's working. However, I've seen some studies that say the gains from this early intervention get lost over time. What's missing between 4th grade (decoding emphasis) and 12th grade (comprehension?) Any theories?
Your early childhood questions are harder to answer here, but the decoding versus comprehension question is relatively straightforward. Namely, decoding is essential for comprehension but it's also not sufficient. In addition to decoding a word, kids need to be able to recognize and understand it in context. I wrote about this a bit more here: https://www.the74million.org/article/are-kids-making-progress-in-reading-it-all-depends-on-how-you-measure-it/
The effort will likely need to come from the government, as we need a widespread intervention, much like hand-washing or seat-belt campaigns of the past. Our approach in education is almost exclusively piecemeal.
Thank you so much for this post. If we want to see improvements in student achievement during the K-12 years, we must focus on infancy/toddlerhood. There is so much good research on this topic that we seem to ignore. In the K-12 world, we are obsessed with fixing and not preventing.
Points well taken on early childhood as a 'lost opportunity.' Rather than have government solve another problem that belongs with the family and community, is there any effort to educate parents about how to do their jobs better? Delaware just funded an early literacy program to get kids better prepared before K; we'll find out in a few years how it's working. However, I've seen some studies that say the gains from this early intervention get lost over time. What's missing between 4th grade (decoding emphasis) and 12th grade (comprehension?) Any theories?
Your early childhood questions are harder to answer here, but the decoding versus comprehension question is relatively straightforward. Namely, decoding is essential for comprehension but it's also not sufficient. In addition to decoding a word, kids need to be able to recognize and understand it in context. I wrote about this a bit more here: https://www.the74million.org/article/are-kids-making-progress-in-reading-it-all-depends-on-how-you-measure-it/
You may want to read Parent Nation by Dr. Dana Suskind.
The effort will likely need to come from the government, as we need a widespread intervention, much like hand-washing or seat-belt campaigns of the past. Our approach in education is almost exclusively piecemeal.
Thank you so much for this post. If we want to see improvements in student achievement during the K-12 years, we must focus on infancy/toddlerhood. There is so much good research on this topic that we seem to ignore. In the K-12 world, we are obsessed with fixing and not preventing.