I started this series several months ago with “Why do our schools consistently avoid the most successful teaching approach of all?” Today I add the fourth blog to the series, and the inspiration comes, shock of shocks, from the far from conservative The Atlantic, proving once again that education isn’t a liberal or conservative issue. For the continuing picture on why our schools continue to fail our kids, click the “Read more” link.

To review a bit, my initial blog talked about research dating back to the Lyndon Johnson era, recently reconfirmed, that shows the best approach to teaching disadvantaged kids is by using teachers as a “Sage on the Stage,” not a “Guide on the side.”

Unfortunately, that Guide on the Side approach is a feature of numerous education fad programs currently favored by many Kentucky educators. Of course, those misguided educators always claim that “research shows” their stuff works, but as we pointed out in the original blog, researcher Joy Pullmann says the truth is that:

“…the field of education research is well-known for producing especially shoddy, ideology-driven, and therefore untrustworthy work. The social sciences replication crisis is particularly acute in education, meaning that when you hear “research says” in the context of schooling, nearly all of the time what follows is bunk.”

Moving forward from the first blog, on April 21, 2018, I added another blog dealing with similar questions, “How’s that – Explicit instruction in math works best.” This blog discusses observations from a highly experienced math teacher in Seattle who also knows that the teacher in math, at least, needs to be a Sage on the Stage.

My growing group of blogs got expanded yesterday when I posted “Why do our schools consistently avoid the most successful teaching approach of all – Continued.” This third blog discusses how the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) isn’t impressed with the quality of Ed School programs that prepare teachers to teach math. As of 2016, the NCTQ found that only 13 percent of the Ed School programs were getting it right in preparing student teachers to handle math instruction. That means 87 percent of the teacher preparation programs are still getting it wrong with math instruction, making it a lot easier to understand why Kentucky’s black eighth graders only scored nine percent proficient or more on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and fewer than one out of three white Kentucky students passed muster on the same eighth grade assessment.

Now, it’s time to add a fourth blog in this series, this one based on a new article in The Atlantic that tells us “Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years.”

The problem as the Atlantic puts it is:

“Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge—even though education researchers know better.”

A truly dramatic example of how some at the Kentucky Department of Education regard content surfaced in October 2014 when the Kentucky Department of Education tried to push a new set of social studies standards that were “devoid” of history content according to Kentucky History Teacher of the Year, Donnie Wilkerson. Thanks to Wilkerson, other educators and BIPPS, the department pulled those grossly content-devoid standards off the table, but a clear message about philosophy at the department had been sent. By the way, Kentucky currently is still struggling along with creaky social studies standards that date way back, but the potential for content-devoid social studies to surface again is still present as a new revision effort is currently in progress.

Returning to The Atlantic’s article about reading, the publication points out that a recently assembled panel of reading experts says current reading instruction in most schools, “is based on assumptions about how children learn that have been disproven by research over the last several decades—research that the education world has largely failed to heed.”

Among the many flaws in current reading instruction cited in the article:

“…educators have also treated the other component of reading—comprehension—as a set of skills, when in fact it depends primarily on what readers already know.”

The Atlantic article points out that poor choices for instructional approaches also hurt disadvantaged kids the most, saying:

“Poorer kids with less-educated parents tend to rely on school to acquire the kind of knowledge that is needed to succeed academically—and because their schools often focus exclusively on reading and math, in an effort to raise low test scores, they’re less likely to acquire it there.”

Parents of wealthy children tend to fill in content knowledge that the schools miss, leaving poorer kids even farther behind thanks to the ineffective reading approaches favored in too many schools. That is probably why Kentucky’s black students scored well under 20 percent proficient in reading in both the fourth and eighth grade NAEP in 2017.

Suggests The Atlantic:

“The implication is clear. The best way to boost students’ reading comprehension is to expand their knowledge and vocabulary by teaching them history, science, literature, and the arts, using curricula that that guide kids through a logical sequence from one year to the next: for example, Native Americans and Columbus in kindergarten; the colonial era and the American Revolution in first grade; the War of 1812 and the Civil War in second grade, and so on.”

What a radical idea. Teach kids content, not nebulous comprehension skills that will never be effective without prior content knowledge.