Okay, so I already know a bit about this topic. Well, at least I have in classroom observations that I have made that I feel like are relevant.
- There are a humassive number of students physically present in the schools.
- Whatever alternative schooling method that happens is going to have to deal with the insane number of students who are there all day every day
- What is actually the best way to learn things? Everyone is different but what does that mean for mass educations?
- Everyone's situation is different?
Microschools
montessori schools
waldorf education
unschooling
Allison thinks it's becuase the teachers are being stripped of their ability to actually manage students
Other people think the teachers are being too hard and not meeting students where they are at
## Off Camera Notes (Day 1)
Continuing list of Factory setting school alternatives from above:
- distance learning?
- Charter schools
- worldschooling???
- Acton Academy
- https://acton-myjourney.com/acton-academy-the-basics/
- I'm going to start with this one because it sounds the most intriguing.
- Established network of private schools, over 100 in the states.
- first started in 2018, so relatively new
- A bunch of nonsense about inspiring children to "find a calling that will change the world"
- Their mission statement is intriguing. They don't want to "teach" the children but give the ability to learn on their own
- They are multi aged, which I personally think is great. K - 6th together, middle school together and high school together.
- they've renamed classic things to change the perception
- teachers are "guides", students are "eagles", classrooms are "studios"
- the guides are "not allowed to answer questions" instead they "guide" students to the answer.........It's like the idealized language that sounds great in theory, until you realize you've been cultified.
- Who is teaching these schools?
- What is going to set them apart from being daycare for older children if the teacher or whoever is in charge isn't motivated?
- Okay - Questions
- How do these students turn out?
- It's not a well known school and it's only been in operation for 9 years so there's not a lot of data.
- Promising though
- Could they handle the level of students needed to make a change?
- So...this question is going to come up with all of the "micro" schools. Where do you put 253,000 young people!?!?
- https://www.ed-data.org/county/Sacramento for the above statistic
- I may have bit off more than I can chew with this topic....
- Can micro schools effectively handle even a small percentage of this?
- My guess is probably not
-
Okay, main questions to ask about each of these "alterative education systems"
- What are they? Overview of things that make them different
- Arrrgghhh there were other questions I had wanted answered but I forgot what they were
- What are the end results of these school systems? Have they actually been effective?
- Are they realistic alternatives or just options for the parents that want a different choice.
- which honestly, might be enough by itself
https://www.elevatek12.com/blog/elevate-in-action/american-education-issues/
- there is a high student to teacher ratio!? What!?
- Oh....nevermind...they mean there are way more students than teachers
- literally the only point they make. The rest is just BS about random things
I'm always hearing about how schools are underfunded. But what does that mean exactly?
- https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/are-poor-schools-underfunded-its-more-complex-youd-think
- Good god FINALLY! Thank you for actually citing your research!
https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/
- the research suggests that school funding is not corelated with education quality
- another source cited
- https://www.educationnext.org/is-the-us-catching-up/
- I'm realizing as I'm reading through these that, with how controversial and complex this topic is, the fishing I am 100% doing for the answer I would like to see is absolutely going to result in finding the answer that I would like to hear.
- There's no way my opinion has not been convered at some point by someone. How am I supposed to find "evidence" of anything?
- This topic is huge and complex and if I want any answers at all I'm going to need to pick something specific, drill down into it and only look at the numbers.
Let me search up "Main problems with education in America today". That's how I got off on the underfunded kick. Maybe that will turn me on to something interesting I can drill down into
Circling back around to the Waldorf School style
- It seems like the main difference is that ease into the day with some music and or physical movement stuff
- then they have a 2 hour block where they focus on one main subject, but that 2 hours is dedicated to that subject every day for a month, then they switch at the end of the month
- After lunch is an hour of standard normal subject stuff
- followed by an hour of "elective" type classes where they learn "useful" type stuff
https://one-roomeducation.com/the-factory-model-does-it-work-did-it-ever/
- Apparently before the factory model there was the Lancaster Bell Model.
- this needs to be verified
- Look into this more, then circle back around to the Waldorf Style
- Lancaster-Bell Model (Monitorial System)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitorial_System
- students taught students
- able to handle a larger number of students becuase the teachers didn't have as heavy of a load with the other students teaching those lower down
- How rigourous was the academic aspect of this model?
- Would it work now with students who don't want to learn or teach?
- Okay, I feel like this method, especially the peer to peer model, is something worth looking into.
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
- reading?
- Three-cueing?
- Were they not already sounding things out?
- https://sterncenter.org/whole-language-vs-structured-language-approach-to-teaching-reading/
- Whole language vs structured language
- whole language is learning to recognize words by repeated exposure in order to focus on the information as a whole gained from reading.......freaking DUMB
- Structured language is starting more from the ground up, learning sounds, then prefixes and suffixes and sentence structures.
- I feel like this is more what I've seen in classrooms. Maybe?
## Off Camera Notes (Day 2)
- Current goal:
- What method do they actually use in schools today to teach kids to read???
- Or I guess what are the most popular methods. Cause basically every school is different.
- https://edsource.org/2022/a-movement-rises-to-change-the-teaching-of-reading/675989
- citing the “whole language” movement again
SEARCH QUERY:
Why can't students in schools read
- I'm sure the standard answer is going to be that it's a variety of things with an emphasis on students with disabilities bringing down the numbers, or something like that. But that can't be the whole story.
https://hechingerreport.org/many-kids-cant-read-even-in-high-school-is-the-solution-teaching-reading-in-every-class/
- Is it that they can't read? Or that their reading comprehensive is trash? Or that they can't read quickly enough to complete things on time?
- Nations report card?
- https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/supportive_files/2022_rm_infographic.pdf
- report card highlights
- https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/
- My main takeaway from this is that reading scores have been real bad for a long time and everyone is freaking out over nothing lol
- " have not necessarily been well prepared to teach kids reading in ways that are aligned with the scientific evidence base"
- but why though. Back up this statement PLEASE!!!
- "“evidence-based” instruction"
- What the hell does that mean!?
Leave it to reddit to give me some material to look into.......sheesh!
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homeschool/comments/18ydp6g/why_cant_public_school_kids_read_anymore/
- "balanced literacy" What is it?
- SEARCH QUERY: balanced literacy explained
- https://www.learninga-z.com/site/company/what-we-do/balanced-literacy
- What Is the Difference Between Balanced Literacy and Structured Literacy?
- Everyone keeps ragging on the approach they feel is not "science based". But it seems to me that everyone is more than willing to call the approach they favor as "science based" and disregard the non favorable one.
- Although, to be fair, I personally feel like the approach that students will just pick up words if they are exposed to them enough is absolute lunacy. That's just me though
- Balanced is doing all of the things, throughing in some phonics, some site words, some read alongs, some of this and some of that and hoping that it will all coalesce into a reading child
- Structured is exactly what it sounds like
- Teach sounds first, then phonics, then reading, then vocab, then comprehension.
- This sounds like a no brainer, but with this topic it's always more complicated than that
- https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/the-science-of-reading-vs-balanced-literacy
- this podcast episode was referenced a few times
- https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- Survey citing that "72% of American Educators" use balanced literacy (Allegedly)
- https://www.edweek.org/research-center/research-center-reports/early-reading-instruction-results-of-a-national-survey
- https://epe.brightspotcdn.com/1b/80/706eba6246599174b0199ac1f3b5/ed-week-reading-instruction-survey-report-final-1.24.20.pdf
- "the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention is the program most frequently used in elementary schools"
- "There is no single definition of balanced literacy."
- "The less experience they have in higher education, the more likely postsecondary instructors are to favor explicit, systematic phonics with language comprehension as a separate focus. And the more experience they have in the classroom, the more likely elementary teachers are to support balanced literacy."
- Okay this paper is 42 pages long. It seems like this is the most promising source that will give some actual answers about what is going on....but it's real long.
- I can't find where the teachers taking the survey were sourced from, but it was a fair number of teachers, and the results cited in the first couple paragraphs are definitely intriguing.
- "Lucy Calkins, another champion of balanced literacy, advocates using a workshop model to teach students how to read. Students then demonstrate their skills with minimal direct instruction. Her approach has been criticized for asking students to rely heavily on contextual cues to identify words and their meanings, known as the [three-cueing system](https://readingpartners.org/blog/the-science-of-reading-and-balanced-literacy-part-one-history-and-context-of-the-reading-wars/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw4ri0BhAvEiwA8oo6FzEoooe6qnRJzUnAPLwOXPspxPwAmN_j9P5UuVVyPQL5PCDxdYg_YRoCq4cQAvD_BwE). In 2023, she stepped down from her organization, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, amid criticism that her method downplayed phonics. The organization has since been [disbanded](https://edsource.org/updates/amid-reading-wars-columbia-shutters-lucy-calkins-famed-workshop#:~:text=Critics%20argue%20that%20Calkins%20downplayed,according%20to%20a%20recent%20announcement.) and Calkins now advertises resources that include phonics and decodable books for a private organization she leads."
- THIS PARAGRAPH!!! SO MUCH DRAMA!!!
- "### Is the Science of Reading Better Than Balanced Literacy?"
- some hardcore propaganda naming going on with these titles lol
- SEARCH QUERY: the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention explained
- https://blog.heinemann.com/get-the-facts-responding-to-misinformation-about-fountas-and-pinnell-literacy
- Oh man! Here's that juicy drama that I've come to love!!!
- Apparently there's a bunch of "misinformation" that's been put out about this method
- https://www.fountasandpinnell.com/research/fpc/
- they linked to their own research that supports this.
- It's hard to tell with these because, I don't know about heinemann, but this research was funded by themselves, and obviously they're going to put out research that is favorable to people continuing to use their curiculm. Arrrggghhh. How to get answers!?!?!
- The one thing that I will say about this research is that it makes it pretty clear that changes that are made in education are not made lightly and there is a lot of thought that goes into the changes
So what does all this have to do with "the problem with schools"?
Okay. I think it's pretty safe to say that schools that put out students who can't read are not hitting the mark. Underfunding, lack of support, poor curiculmn choices, blah blah blah, there is an insane amount of things that go into this topic just to explain what the scope of the problem is, without even starting to mention what a solution for one of those problems could be.
I've run out of time but...yeah. No further comments :)