Research about what works for dyslexics

I always enjoy using proper professional assessments to pinpoint deficts regarding reading issues.

Having seen too parents seek answers without a complete assemment battery doesn’t do much good. I went through the same issues intrying to figure out how to address mt son’r reading deficits in 1994. Today we have mounds of replictade evidence to draw on for answers.

Regards,

Jimmy

I assume you are not taking issue with the research that is supporting the core deficits is reading disabilties?

Regards,’

Jimmy

One of the things that confused our understanding of his reading problem was his high word attack score, and very very high Sound awareness score on the WJIII. Both of these indicated to our tester that he did not have phonemic awareness issues. However, he also scored quite low on the phoneme/grapheme piece of the same test (WJIII). (BTW, he was just evaluated at a local Lindamood Bell center and I am very very curious about what they will identify…)

Susan,
I didn’t realize you were familiar with this test. My son’s orig. neuropsych eval included both the WISC, WJIII, and the CAS. I’ve found most of the professionals reading his report skip right over the CAS b/c they aren’t familiar with it. (I’ve posted some web sites I’ve found about it to aid other parents that may come across this test…)

So maybe you can shed some light - How does the CAS measure mental fluency? Can you obtain an IQ score from the test scores? My son scored quite low on the planning and attention clusters - which are easy to dig into and understand. He’s got some exec. function impairment, some problems with attention, tho not dx as ADD. He scored extremely high (97-99%til) on the the sequential and successive processing clusters. These are more difficult for me to connect to real life. Can you shed any light? ( a big question I realize)

I did several academic searches this morning but could not find articles by Martha Denckla on this topic. I did a Google search by her name and did see that she gives national talks. In October she gave a conference for NIH on the topic of ADHD. See http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/ccgr1000902.ram I wasn’t able to get my video streamer to work with it. The talk is about 1 hr. long. If you listen, let me know how you got it to work. Hope this helps.

I was able to listen to the NIH talk by Denckla on ADHD. I found it very interesting. It starts with her interviewing a teenager with ADHD (clearly very bright with considerable resources available to him). She then talks about ADHD as a disorder of self-control, e.g. frontal lobe of brain+other parts of the brain. She does review the brain studies, which I found quite interesting since she gave some new data/interpretations. She does believe the data supports that many ADHD have motor coordination problems until late teens. She also briefly talks about ADHD and occular motion problems (not really vision problems.

I recommend the 1 hr. tape.

Tests on a different theory than the Wechsler series. Uses what is called the PASS model: Planning, Attention, Simultaneous Processing, and Successive Processing. Has thirteen subtests:

Planning—
Matching Numbers (underline the two numbers in a row that are the same)

Planned Codes (Similar to coding on the WISC)

Planned Connections (Ordering numbers by connecting them with a drawn line)

Attention—
Expressive Attention (identifying pictures of words or animals in color on a page with distracting elements) Note: This one has a mental fluency element because of naming requirement.

Number Detection (identifying numbers on page with distracting elements)

Receptive Attention (identifying pictures with similar elements)

Simultaneous Processing—
Nonverbal matrices - Just like WAIS Matrices.

Verbal-spatial relations (matching a verbal description with its picture component)

Figure Memory (Recognizing a geometric design that is embedded within a larger design.

Successive Processing—
Word Series (repeating real words read aloud)

Sentence Repetition (Repeating sentences read aloud)

Speech Rate (ages 5-7—repeating a three-word series 10 times)

Sentence Questions (answering questions about sentences read by the examiner for ages 8-17)

It is the WJ-III that gets more heavily into mental fluency.

Still, I like the Planning component if the WISC shows low on Processing Speed. I also like some of the visual tasks on this test. However, I would not use it for pure IQ, but to identify difficult tasks that relate to learning needs.

The test-retest reliability is .96 for the Standard Battery (all thirteen tests) and from .88 to .93 for the four scales.

I do not request this test in place of a WAIS/WISC, but rather portions of it as a supplement to dig under the WISC/WAIS factor scores for more information.

She is a person who gathers and discusses replicable data. Where can one find the tape?

The reality for me is that my son reads just fine but then gets tired after a page or two and stops. When I first started down this road we got the assessments, went through many experts and eventually remediated his reading myself after and exhaustive review of the research you site.
I used a program called phonographix because my opinion after combing through exhaustive research (yes ERIC and I are good friends ;) was that it is was the best method of achieving the phonemic awareness he needed.

He has phonemic awareness yet struggles in school because of a diagnosed (by a neurophsych) visual motor deficit.

I continue to work on this deficit and have made great strides. He was removed from sped this year thanks in part to the research you site and work I have done over and above that. My point is that the research seems to stop there leaving folks like me searching for answers.

The experts I have come across seem to be helpful at finding labels in order to explain why he can’t achieve. I am more interested in delving into ways to help him become the achiever I know that he is.

Not that I haven’t found help. I have. His occupational therapist has cured his dysgraphia. His interactive metronome therapist has improved his sequencing, attention and motor skills. I helped him learn to read after others tried and failed.

So I continue, as do many other parents on these boards. I would not encourage parents to look for that one expert that has all the answers. I haven’t found one example of that working for anyone. We get a little help here and other help there each expert sharing their knowledge about the subject they have expertese in.In the end we parents intervene and get our children the help they need.

The address is http://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents.asp

Once you’re on the site you need to click on Search and type in “What ADHD Really Means.” You have a choice of three videos and the Denckla talk is listed. You need the RealPlayerOne to watch the video of the 1 hr. conference.

Thanks for pointing out the differences between phonemic awareness and phonological processing. This does help me understand how my son can score over 140 in phonemic awareness and yet may still have difficulty with phonological processing.

I noticed that Denckla has a chapter on executive functioing in the book
Frames of Reference for the Assesment of Learning Disability, ed. by G. Reid Lyon, 1994.

Also, if you go to http://www.fltwood.com/onsite/brain/2001/ there is a tape of a talk by Denckla on Learning Disability & ADHD.

You used the examples of RAN and sound blending together. Are those just random examples or specific choises?

The reason I ask is curiousity. For example, my son scored in the 160’s in Sound Blending on the WISC III and yet scored in the 1%ile on RAN.

I’m wondering if mental fluency may be entirely dependent on RAN. In other words, even with extremely strong abilities, without adequate RAN speed one cannot develop strong mental fluency…

Can’t remember if I’ve seen all your scores, but if language hasn’t been tested, I’d be doing that: Both expressive and receptive. RAN is in the expressive language category. PA is just a differenct expressive skill that is more speech than language, in my opinion. (Not an SL professional).

Susan, Could you expand on your opinion of PA being more a speech issue?

Jimmy

Hi Linda,

Do you have the link to Dr. Stein’s article by any chance? I though I saw it in this thread but I can’t find it. Thanks.

That is incredible that person had that experience with ulcers. It was several years ago, that a relative saw Dr. Marshall, at the University of VA. I can’t believe that garbage is still going around.

PT

Hi Pat,

Thank you so much for the Denkla references. I will definitely take a look.

PT

The Woodcock Johnson III Cognitive (WJ-III COG) Tests work from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory of intelligence. It contends that human intelligence is based on multiple-factors, several independent abilities that work together in human behavior:

Fluid Ability (Essentially non-verbal and relatively culture free mental efficiency such as figure classification, figure analysis, number/lettr series and matrices…)

Crystallized Ability (Acquired skills and knowledge that are developmentally dependent on culture and knowledge i.e. vocabulary, general information.)

Visual Processing (The ability to visualize and mentally manipulate forms and spatial tasks)

Auditory Processing (The ability to listen and respond appropriately to auditory information)

Short-term memory (The immediate awareness, alertness, and retrieval of information recently acquired)

Long-term memory (The ability to retrieve things stored in memory for longer time periods)

Processing Speed (Ability to scan rapidly and react quickly to simple tasks)

Decision Speed (Ability to give answers quickly to tasks of moderate or slight difficulty)

Quantitative Knowledge (An ability understand and apply math concepts)

Carroll added a visual perceptual element (and had some different names for his categories). The visual perceptual element included spatial relations, closure speed, flexibility of closure, perceptual speed. (There is a nice piece of evidence toward the existence of range of visual perceptual abilities in human performance! See citation below, Rod.)

(Sattler, J. [2001.] Assessment of Children: Cognitive Applications. San Diego: Jerome Sattler Publications. pp. 141-143.)

The WJ-III combines the theories of these three gentlemen. As I’ve said other places, I’m not looking to replace the WISC/WAIS: I’m looking to gain more information about some students whose skill deficits still puzzle me after I’ve looked at the WISC/WAIS. It is more of a *teaching* than an IQ thing.

Mental flexibility can be examined on subtests in several areas. RAN is just one of them. It wasn’t quite fair of me to lay that term on you without defining it. I would define it as the ability to deftly switch between various mental tasks. Naming is just one of those tasks. There is no distinctive category in which it fits—that I can remember, anyway.

The SLP’s that I’ve worked with previously would begin PA work in the sound production domain—which is really more speech than language—at least in their opinions. (I’m talking just speaking now, not reading.) As they worked into the different tasks of being flexible with sounds, it becomes both speech and language, if I’m thinking about it clearly. The speech part is producing the correct sound and the assembling together sounds to form meaningful words is, of course, a language associative process.

Just pointing out that there are lots of kids who, for example, cannot correctly perceive or produce individual phonemes (/f/ versus /v/ or /th/ unvoiced, as examples). Phoneme perception (a segment of auditory perceptual), I believe, falls under speech. No?

Thanks for all this background info. I continue to learn from your posts, and that helps me understand the very thorough neuropsych. eval we have. ( I also see that the observations of the evaluator are critical to understanding the outcome of the tests - in my son’s case low attention scores were primarily because he worked and wrote slowly, not because he was distracted. )

Just a side question - what is the importance of the figure/ground subtest of the CAS? Why would having skill be important? Thanks!

I don’t see a “Figure-Ground” subtest listed. “Figure Memory” requires the examinee to recognize a geometric design embedded into a larger design. Is that the test you mean?

For me, that subtest goes into my personal visual perceptual group. I’m not using the CAS for its four cluster scores—but more using it to show me what kinds of tasks a student can and cannot perform. That subtest is very unique. I like the CAS nonverbal matrices since the WISC doesn’t have one. (The WAIS does.) Since there is one more subtest (Verbal-Spatial Relations) in the Simultaneous Processing component, might as well give it and use the more reliable component score, even though listening to someone describe something that you must select from several choices involves more than visual processing. (That’s what happens in the Verbal-spatial relations subtest.)

Hope this is not too confusing.

If they can’t produce then it would be more of ability of the brain to process would be my undertsanding. Speech paths have understod the issues better then repsource/sped teachers. The colleges did give them some exposure to the PA issues.

In my district they wasted all the speech paths with Lindamood traning 6 years ago. With over 60-70 kids a week to work with then piling this training for intervention was too mich.

Lindamood wasn’t and to my understanding not real clear about their programs and who should be trained.

Jimmy

Hey, Jimmy, nice to see your return!

Also, I haven’t looked to see if anyone has done fMRI studies to show if the speech area of the brain “fires” when kids are *thinking about* sounds.

These gals’ theory is that even though a phoneme isn’t *literally* “spoken” through sound production, the brain is still associating to sounds that are normally produced. That is why they think of it as speech. (For me, it seems all mixed together—like most things in the brain. That may also be related to the fact that I’m not a speech therapist.)

Thanks for explaining. My son scored an 18 on that subtest so I was curious about what it demonstrated. He also scored 15’s on the other 2 subtests of this component. I’m interested in understanding how we can exploit his areas of strength to compensate for his other deficits so if you have any thoughts…

Is that visual perceptual the same skills assessed on the Bender? His Bender scores indicate a mild delay .

{Without reposting all his wisc and cas scores (which I ;ve done previously and you’ve commented on before : ) ) I can just tell you that I think his relative strength in this area contradicts some of the conclusions that others make when they read his WISC scores. It also shows how interesting the human brain is I think and how a good evaluation has to really tease out what’s really happening.}

Thanks again!

In my coursework for Elementary Ed certification, I had one whole course on Speech/Language and its relationship to reading and learning. (I think this is an exception, not a rule!) Taught by an post-grad SLP. Enjoyed that course, but that doesn’t make me an SLP. :-) Most of my colleagues did not see the purpose, sadly.

When I first heard what my employing school district had done with combining Lindamood-Bell theory with a phonics program, I must admit that I was skeptical. After three years of data, I believe they made the right choices.

They train all classroom and sped teachers in a program that includes P.A. and phonics (“Pathways” is the main program. See http://www.pathwaystoreading.com/main.html)
who then provide instruction for all students K-3 (preventive model). A sped teacher and SLP in each building are trained in clincial Lindamood-Bell for students who come in and need to catch up or for those who need more intensive intervention than may be obtained in the classroom.

I wanted pure LmB in the classroom and I’ve found out that it just isn’t necessary. Our regular teachers “track” sounds (add, omit, substitute, and shift phonemes) using letters as symbols and not little colored blocks. They do “hook” sound to symbol using LmB-type lessons, though.

The preventive model seems to be coming along in my district. However, we still must work on the remedial model. Students are transient and come in after Grade 3— others are developmentally functioning below grade level. These students, and others categories, will need a remedial model in Grades 4-12.

This preventive model also does not do extensive enough work with multi-syllable words for students in Grade 3-5 who need explicit instruction in structure syllables.

The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test is designed to measure perceptual motor skills. It takes ten minutes and can be group-administered. The subject is given a a figure on paper which they are to reproduce. There are nine figures in all. This test is given to 4-12 year old kids.

As you probably have already perceived, the motor component makes it a whole new ball game. Now we are not just dealing with how one perceives what one sees, but how one interprets it through motor activities (i.e. drawing.) More skills needed to do this.

I like the Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI) better if processing speed is a question.

Re: Teaching your son—All the test information is combined with observations and histories and interviews to equal an assessment. I can only look at what scores *might* mean since I don’t know you or your son, the history, haven’t observed tasks, etc. It is a long and arduous process.

That is the difficulty with on-line discussions with parents regarding student assessment. It is most incomplete. It is also the reason that most professionals refuse to discuss it at all.

I dug out a reference book from a course on special education assessment. It is called, “Special Educator’s Complete Guide to 109 Diagnostic Tests” by Pierangelo, Roger, Ph.D. and Giuliani, George, Psy.D. Published by the Center for Applied Research in Education in West Nyack, NY. 1998.

It begins Section 6 with a dialogue about perceptual measures. Their definition of perceptual is the initial organization and meaning given to information that has been delivered through auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, gustatory, or olfactory modalities.

They break down visual perception assessment into these categories (without reference to supportive research):

Visual coordination - ability to follow and track objects with coordinated eye movements.

Visual discrimination - ability to differentiate visually the forms and symbols in one’s environment.

Visual association - ability to organize and association visually presented material.

Visual long-term memory - ability to retain and recall general and specific long-term visual information.

Visual short-term memory - the ability to retain an recall general and specific short-term visual information.

Visual sequential memory - the ability to recall in correct sequence and detail prior visual information

Visual vocal expression - the ability to reproduce vocally what one has previously seen visually

Visual motoric expression (visual motor integration) - ability to reproduce motorically what you as previously seen visually.

Visual figure ground discriminant - the ability to differentiate relevant stimulti (the figure) from irrelevant stimuli (the ground).

Visual spatial relationships - the ability to perceive the relative positions of objects in space.

Visual form perception (visual constancy) - the ability to discern the size, shape, and position of visual stimuli.

Then it goes on to lump the symptoms into categories:

Visual-Motor Channel Disabilities, Visual-Receptive Process Disability, Visual-Association Disability, Manual-Expressive Disability, and Visual-Memory Disability.

The rest is too long to type. This is long enough as it is.

Remember, Karen, this is just the opinion of two people. While some will agree with their writing, others will not. Others may use different terms.

I’m not sure—nor do the authors indicate—how they came up with the groups of disabilities or the skill areas. It is just something else for you to put into your database of information.

Hiw well are the scores in 5th and 5th grade for the regular ed. Also, How are the children that have been found with major deficits doing with fluency and comprehension two areas the LMB is weak in. Or I should say didn’t mention when they sold their product and training to our district.

Jimmy

And of course its impossible to really consult over the internet. But even hearing such knowledgable people like you (and all the other teachers on these boards) discuss these topics is tremendously helpful to us parents. I may have to go back to grad school just to satisfy my curiosity about this whole field.. Thanks for educating us all.

There are some brain studies going on in Houston currently. They are hooikng the child up and can actually see the bain processing improve with intervention. As I mentioned before LDonLine has gotten lots of suggestions but I don’t think there are enough discussions on what is known.

Second guessing and a theroy ais fine but how many parents are currentlt knowing exactly the deficits and have had proper intervention is not clear.

Regards,

Jimmy

Don’t waste your time with college sonce they don’t understand nor acre to address the issues LD kids need.

As you know, there are a lot of other factors that go into reading besides just phonemic awareness. That is, however, an important facet of decoding skill development.

Our school district has not, to my knowledge, formally measured fluency—The WRMT-R was our pre- and post-test and it has no fluency component. Some teachers instruct fluency using Read Naturally and others use Great Leaps. Still others make up their own fluency or use something like Carbo for fluency. (I like both reading along with tapes and repeated readings, myself.) Would be an interesting study, no doubt. (BTW, Torgesen gave the heads up to our district that phonics and phonemic awareness training demonstrated little effect on fluency. That was a terrific part of that longitudinal study.)

Now, as readers advance in age, so must their vocabulary, language, and thinking (idioms, inferences, cause & effect, & much more). Those are huge variables—I cannot fathom how complex.

We are also finding a monumental problem with getting kids to read enough for pleasure in order to make sufficient gains—or even hold onto what they’ve learned. For example, we have a great summer school program and offer Extended School Year (very, very freely as compared to other districts in our area). Despite this, many students who leave school measuring 1.5-2.5 grade level reading, return after one month with serious regression—some even back to square one. Even in the school setting, there is a percentage of poor readers who resist reading for pleasure: “Don’t wanna, ain’t gonna.” We’ll be lucky to get those kids to functional reading, especially if they have no models at home. I even see this in private practice when parents are *paying* for reading intervention. (Why would someone *pay* for teaching and then not see that children practice it every day?)

I’ve never believed one method or program would do the complex job of teaching reading to a very diverse population. Teaching reading—and leaving no one behind— requires individual diagnostic consideration and application of interventions based on particular student needs. That means we may not abandon any good practices—or apply any of them generically to all students.

Your school district did not take a bad step with LmB. Just an incomplete one. However, with reading being such a complex topic, it is a one-step-at-a-time process. None of us has each step in the process, properly sequenced.

Hey Jimmy,

I do feel that studying in college has helped me grow a great deal. Credentials are a good thing, too.

I have found some people who totally changed the way I think on some teaching and learning subjects. While I have only found a few people who study the science of reading, teaching and learning is so broad as to provide me with many new and good ideas that I can also apply to teaching reading.

If the wrong people are the only ones in college getting their Ph.D.’s, then who will teach our future teachers?

Who are the PI’s on those studies? Fletcher? Foorman?

Most children haven’t gotten the first and most important factor phonemic awarenss addressed. Until hat is done nothing will improve. Fluency isn’t addrssed since they have gotten segementation to a good enough level to help a child begin to enjoy a little reading. I bet if you tset the kids that hate it they ahve major problems in this area.

Jimmy

using my own experience as a teacher and doing my own “research” on boards such as this one. I wouldn’t rely on college professors to teach me how to teach kids. If they know so much, we would have a nation of better readers by now.

doesn’t necessarily make for a teacher who can teach.

It is some doctors not associated with the education side of the U of Texas. Flecther and Foorman are not inlvoved. I spoke with a group in Washington that touted some middle school and high school intervention for kids in reading. I haven’t heard anything within the district at all about about this.

I am afraid the major players in reading are on the money path verse what is right.

Jimmy

I’m seeing a lot of kids that have been effectively taught to segment and blend up to 7 sounds, but just don’t practice-read enough to get up speed. The also have poor poly-syllabic skills—along with such underdeveloped comprehension skills that they fail to recognize the word that they blended. Reading is a process. PA is a critical, early part of it—certainly not the only part.

BTW, forgot to add that spelling skills for kids in general ed classrooms in my district are soaring with LmB-like clone. That’s sure-fire indicator that kids can segment.

Having credentials does not necessarily guarantee teaching skills. I don’t think the majority of parents would want their kids to be taught by just anyone who walked in and said they could do the job, either.

Your comment, however, adds another variable into the education research forum: varying teacher abilities. Unlike with pharmaceutical products, a machine doesn’t make the treatment consistently and evenly every single time. Huge variable in studying teaching and learning.

If you don’t respect teacher credentialing practices, then work to change them!

This along with oral vocabulary have beena common thread of probelms teachers are having to deal with. I guess this is why whole langiage has been so invinting in trying to engage students. Of course, an engagment doesn;t aways turn into a good marriage or a marriage at all for many.

If you go back and look at the over all curriculum it is not suitable for kids needing reinforcement. We have gone from a knowledge curriulum to a process or performance based. In Texas we give the teachers and stuents three years to master certain things. Instead of first grade required to know this or that it is now first to third grade. Taking all of this into consideration the kids nor the teachers have a real cahnce anymore.

Jimmy

////

It’s the curriculum after all.

The test drives what the teacher does as well as a huge amount of time on test prep throughout the year.

Trying to fix the reading problems then putting the students back into a curriculum that is performance based doesn’t give the child incentive to produce.

My LD son was in private school until 7th grade. Transferred mid-term to a public school and ace the state wide test. The past two years have been problems for him on the test. I as well as many others in the field look at the way we are general teaching these days. LD students do better with systematic instruction with lots of review. This method is not being used. Even the regular Ed students with no problems are not doing so hot.

Reading is taking a real hit with all the pulp fiction they give the kids to read. My son, in 8th grade has spent 6 weeks on the Giver. Give me a break, this trash has no benefit to the kids.

How is a child going to develop more fluency when the books they are given are not building on complex sentences. The multi-cultural folks have taken over the literature. As Sandra Stotsky wrote in her book How Multi-Cultural Literature is Preventing Our Children from Reading, Writing and Thinking.

Hope you grasp the direction I am going. If you teach a child or fix a child’s problems in reading then you need to continue working with good instruction with quality reading materials. This is not happening in our schools today.

How many kids do you have that should be off and running only to stumble coming out of the gate?

Regards,

Jimmy

… and neither would many, many other people. Nobody’s going to like all the choices teachers make in lit classes. (On the other hand, I’ve known some teachers’ reading lists that I’d think should inspire mass suicide or groaning frustration, so you may be right.)
THere is a lot of watering down and subjectivizing of the curric — you can use books like The GIver to learn all kinds of neat analytical skills, or you can make everything completely “open-ended,” which means the teacher feels so very good about the positive experience with literature s/he’s engendering, and isn’t accountable for actually teaching anything.

Kind of like the judge said I can’t define porno but I know it when I see it.

Yes, there are lots of neat things a teacher can do but there are a wrold o quality text out here also. Tell me why this is the book the majority of middle schoolers are having to read these days? There most be underlining issues the schools want to bring up other then a man sticking a needle in the head of a baby.

Jimmy

Wow, lots of issues in your posts, Jimmy.

I’ve read “The Giver” and could understand why it was a Newberry Winner. The fact that it is a Newberry winner makes lots of schools put it on their list. I haven’t taught the book, so others may have different ideas. It is a relatively brief work and so I’m not sure why it would take six weeks to read.

Lois Lowry used some very interesting writing techniques: Leaving the specifics about setting and era up to the reader, for example. At first one thinks it is taking place in a town just like the one in which they live. Then, we find out that isn’t true. The Giver can also foster great discussions about “group thinks” and what that can do to a diverse society. That is all I remember without pulling out the book and reviewing it. I remember it being very interesting, however.

Lots of teachers/districts can swing the pendulum wildly on multicultural issues. I personally look around my room and and try to be sure that I’m including the perspectives of my learning community. I try to let my students decide some of the multicultural issues that they wish to explore. I bring up some, too, as they pertain to the objectives I teach. Most important, I try to model and teach tolerance and altruism toward people whose cultural values are different than mine. I don’t encourage adoption of the values, just respectfulness toward the person(s) and their differences.

If you don’t wish for your child to be involved with multicultural issues, you will probably have to keep him or her in private school. There, you may demand that lessons stay within your cultural boundaries. I’m not sure how I feel about that—and will leave you to your own thoughts about it.

I believe you missed it Stotsky has made very clear in her book and she tries to point out. Is going about social cahnge or instilling knowledge?.

Jimmy, I didn’t realize that these were the only two choices. Personally, I feel that there is an overwhelming amount of information to learn. I wish to help children have the tools to find the information they need—whether their field is history, science, math, or literature. I also hope to help them learn how to think and reason for themselves.

I believe that good written communication skills are very important. Reading is a critical part of those skills.

I’m not familiar with the book you mentioned or the person who wrote it. Sorry. Not sure how this Stotsky person describes instilling knowledge or social change. You’ll have to be more direct if you wish me to “get it.” Not sure what I’m getting.

You seem quite disallusioned. This is my third year working in public schools. I enjoy it very much. Many of the students come from quite different backgrounds than I. If anything, I have gained a respect for the people working in urban and 1st tier suburban public schools. Home & family ‘taint what it used to be.

There are lots of issues going on that few have the interest to time to follow. Not sure if you new I was the Editor of EducationNews.org http://www.EducationNews.org or not. Having ben extreemly active both in Texas as well as nationally I picture is not as bright as you think.

The comments on social issues are mind. Stotsky was a Harvard professor now working for the Mass. Dept. of Ed. Here is a link to a great review of her book.
http://www.textbookleague.org/101stot.htm

Here is another very upsetting book I just finished.

FedEd
The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced.

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The good news has been the inclusion in “No Child Left Behind” of many ideas on LD kids I shared with Paige when I worked under him in Houston.