I’m watching teachers who were excited about the Science of Reading a year ago begging for help because the basal programs their districts adopted are garbage.
I am seeing this a lot as well! It's nearly impossible to make wise diagnostic decisions with so many options. Especially if one comes from a balanced literacy background, how is one supposed to have the expertise to know what to prioritize and what to drop?
Not only is each program bloated with more resources than a teacher could implement in 3 years, s/he also likely has multiple literacy programs to juggle. Certainly students in Tier 2 and 3 are being pulled in multiple directions with 3-5 literacy programs in each school.
I have been a private dyslexia tutor for 10 years. I knew in 2012 that the public school would not be able to effectively teach my then-second-grade son how to read and spell so I handled the job with the Barton Reading & Spelling System.
I live in the 10th largest school district (Fairfax County, VA) in the U.S. with a budget of more than $1 billion. As a taxpayer, I am appalled by the waste, and even more so, by the utter lack of results. For dyslexics, it is a catastrophe. As the mom of two other nondyslexics, I now know that the reading instruction my oldest and youngest received in public school was subpar. They picked up on the code anyway, but I sure wish I knew then what I do now.
HMH is a beast with a thousand heads--and all of them are terrible at ELA curriculum. I am watching in horror as we are having all of our autonomy stripped away, and are being forced to shove this terrible, turn-a-page-teach-a-lesson content down our kids throats which DOES NOT WORK. For the love of God, the only people who should be making this content are current veteran teachers. We need release time to develop the RIGHT content for our kids. We are the experts--not some for profit multi-billion dollar industry staffed by people who have not taught in years, did not teach for long (if at all), and never our grade/subject level. This is utter insanity.
HMH is a beast with a thousand heads--and all of them are terrible at ELA curriculum. I am watching in horror as we are having all of our autonomy stripped away, and are being forced to shove this terrible, turn-a-page-teach-a-lesson content which DOES NOT WORK. For the love of God, the only people who should be making this content are current veteran teachers. We need release time to develop the RIGHT content for our kids. We are the experts--not some for profit multi-billion dollar industry staffed by people who have not taught in years, did not teach for long (if at all), and never our grade/subject level. This is utter insanity.
I am seeing this a lot as well! It's nearly impossible to make wise diagnostic decisions with so many options. Especially if one comes from a balanced literacy background, how is one supposed to have the expertise to know what to prioritize and what to drop?
Not only is each program bloated with more resources than a teacher could implement in 3 years, s/he also likely has multiple literacy programs to juggle. Certainly students in Tier 2 and 3 are being pulled in multiple directions with 3-5 literacy programs in each school.
Thank you for bringing this issue to light.
I have been a private dyslexia tutor for 10 years. I knew in 2012 that the public school would not be able to effectively teach my then-second-grade son how to read and spell so I handled the job with the Barton Reading & Spelling System.
I live in the 10th largest school district (Fairfax County, VA) in the U.S. with a budget of more than $1 billion. As a taxpayer, I am appalled by the waste, and even more so, by the utter lack of results. For dyslexics, it is a catastrophe. As the mom of two other nondyslexics, I now know that the reading instruction my oldest and youngest received in public school was subpar. They picked up on the code anyway, but I sure wish I knew then what I do now.
Please keep shining a light on these issues.
HMH is a beast with a thousand heads--and all of them are terrible at ELA curriculum. I am watching in horror as we are having all of our autonomy stripped away, and are being forced to shove this terrible, turn-a-page-teach-a-lesson content down our kids throats which DOES NOT WORK. For the love of God, the only people who should be making this content are current veteran teachers. We need release time to develop the RIGHT content for our kids. We are the experts--not some for profit multi-billion dollar industry staffed by people who have not taught in years, did not teach for long (if at all), and never our grade/subject level. This is utter insanity.
HMH is a beast with a thousand heads--and all of them are terrible at ELA curriculum. I am watching in horror as we are having all of our autonomy stripped away, and are being forced to shove this terrible, turn-a-page-teach-a-lesson content which DOES NOT WORK. For the love of God, the only people who should be making this content are current veteran teachers. We need release time to develop the RIGHT content for our kids. We are the experts--not some for profit multi-billion dollar industry staffed by people who have not taught in years, did not teach for long (if at all), and never our grade/subject level. This is utter insanity.