community college is the new high school

from K9Sasha:

My son went to school until Spring Break of his 8th grade year. At that point, I had had it with him not knowing how to write, and not even knowing his basic math facts. I told him that we had four years to get him ready for college and that it would take all four.

I was a little concerned about him getting into college from a homeschooling situation, but he applied to 6 schools and was accepted at all 6. He was strong enough academically to take Chemistry at the community college his junior year, and Writing and Physics there his senior year. The school I removed him from felt good if their students were ready for the community college after high school. I used the community college as part of high school to get him ready for university. What a difference in expectations!

One of the things that really stands out for me: When my son came home from taking his first PSAT test, the first thing he said was, "Thank you for making me learn my math facts. The first math problem was a simple doubling problem and I had it answered by the time everyone else got their calculators out."

My sister has done the same thing with one of her daughters. They did a California variant of homeschooling for 8th grade,^* then public high school for 9th. Most of the subjects in 9th grade were so low level that she enrolled in community college for 10th. It's worked out well.

^* It's not homeschooling....consultant schooling, maybe? I believe this option was created for students who are acting or perhaps homebound. There is a consulting teacher & texts are provided by the state. On the other hand, the parent can choose which textbooks his child uses. It's similar to what we would call Independent Study.

K9Sasha's list

You asked about books I've used to educate myself. That's a harder question than it sounds. I've read a large variety of books, but I've also read articles, read websites, followed links, etc. I think what happens overall is that I pick up a little knowledge here, and a little knowledge there, without even quite realizing I've done it.

The places I've probably learned the most are:

* the training for using Wilson materials (Orton-Gillingham based)
* Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz
* books by Diane McGuinness
* The ABC's and All Their Tricks by Margaret Bishop
* anything written by Louisa Moats
* the Phonics Pathways website and newsletter
* and especially anything written by or suggested by Palisadesk. I'm in awe of her knowledge base.

As to that last item: me, too!

Holistic Teaching

My current, and last, class to obtain a Reading Specialist endorsement is Teaching Reading to Special Needs Students.

Here is the publisher's description of the book as provided on Amazon.com:

When the first edition of Readers and Writers with a Difference appeared in 1988, it shattered the myth that whole language instruction was too unstructured and inexplicit to help remedial and learning disabled students. By providing specific assessment and instructional strategies, it was one of the first texts to show that struggling readers and writers could, indeed, benefit from holistic methods-not just in the resource room, but in the regular classroom as well. [Great, just what we need, more whole language for those students who didn't learn with whole language the first time around.]

Today, as more and more students with learning problems are entering mainstream classroom settings, the models presented by Rhodes and Dudley-Marling are more cogent than ever. But the framework upon which whole language theory rests has greatly evolved since the first edition was published and has also come under increasing attack. This second edition renews the case for whole language theory, taking into account the various developments in language arts over the past eight years. Included are new and expanded sections on literacy theory, instruction and assessment, and literacy as social practice; and a reconsideration of how teachers, administrators, and parents might work and learn collaboratively.

I cannot emphasize enough how frustrating I have found my reading endorsement classes. I can't wait to finish this last one and be done (hopefully) choking down the unsupported garbage that passes for reading pedagogy. There is real research showing real results using Direct Instruction and its ilk, that is not only ignored, but denigrated, by progressivists. I'm tired of "learning" all this useless tripe, and I'm totally fed up with it. I still want to earn a Master's degree in some area of education, but I'm not going to continue with my current university. The Educational Research class I took was the last straw (some day I'll post about it). If anyone knows a good, research based Master's program online, please let me know about it.

Teacher YOU Training Institute
k9sasha on holistic teaching

Redshirting Kindergartners

Here's a story from today's Slate magazine about redshirting kindergartners.

"In addition, the trend toward older kindergarten among well-off families may be fueling the trend toward state laws that delay kindergarten for everyone. As Elizabeth Weil noted in a great piece on redshirting in the New York Times Magazine last year, almost half the states have pushed back their birthday cutoffs since 1975, several of them fairly recently."

"It's easy to see what the states are up to: They're worried about test scores, and they figure that older kids plus academic kindergarten will produce better ones."

"The increasing availability of public pre-K becomes, then, not the additional year of school that early childhood educators and advocates wanted for families that can't afford private preschool. Instead, pre-K, when it's offered, just replaces what the first year of kindergarten used to be."

""There is no evidence of a lasting benefit to education or earnings from being older than one's classmates," they (Deming and Dynarski) write. Another recent study, by Sandra Black of UCLA, crunched data from Norway and actually found a small boost in IQ for starting school early, but little effect on educational attainment—how well kids do in school in the long run. The place where redshirting is a proven advantage is the sports field. For example, 60 percent more Major League Baseball players are born in August than in July, and the birthday cutoff for youth baseball is July 31. But athletics, Dynarski points out, isn't academics."