I named my middle DD Willa. Enough said!

Reading quickly is just a skill. At the younger ages it tells us that they are using the most efficient part of their brains for processing written language. We know that kids with "reading disabilities" often use many more parts of their brain when they are reading. That slows them down. But, reading slower can also have it's benefits. Using more parts of the brain leads to greater creativity, a greater ability to find connections between seemingly disparate ideas. I expect there is a whole spectrum of reading speeds. Most kids will come to a reasonable speed as they mature. And, even slow readers usually find means of accommodation (try text to speech speed listening) Certainly, you can read more in a shorter amount of time. I'm not sure that actually means you will interact with more material, or interact in a qualitatively better way with more material. So, it might take one person two weeks to absorb the same amount of material as you can absorb in one week. Over the long haul, I don't see that as more important. It is more important in schools and college because we have chosen to privilege that skill over other skills (especially through testing). That is a choice. I don't think it says much at all about crystallized intelligence. I know tons of kids and adults who can spout facts, but don't have much interesting to say about them, or any novel ways of applying them. I just think the focus on speed is ridiculous, damaging and inefficacious.

Completely agree! And, most forum members do not have remarkably advanced readers. It's just that those with advanced readers are always the ones posting about how early and how fast and how much their children read. I have been following this thread with my jaw to the ground. I can't even really believe that this fast reading stuff is really a thing. Thank goodness we are homeschoolers. The previous poster who commented that her sons were slow - sounds like they are totally normal to me. Just to balance the scale a bit, my eldest DD could not even read a MTH book until she was at least 8 1/2. She is now a lovely 14yo, very smart, and still a somewhat slow reader (big deal), but she reads voraciously. She loves reading. My middle DD could read MTH in second grade, but wasn't really interested. I don't think she ever read one in just one sitting, and if she did it would never have crossed my mind to see how long it took her to read it. My DS, who is almost seven, can't read MTH yet. He's a fine, fantastic, interesting, loving human being who is learning to read at a completely appropriate age. Never in a million years would I suggest that he is "behind."Behind what? Please, please, please do not buy into the great lie that reading early or fast is a sign of academic strength or intelligence. It's just something that is easy to measure so schools have used it as a shorthand for gauging strength. It's a big mistake. It tells you something about the ease with which young kids engage in a certain type of processing. That's it.

Estimation is exactly what I was going to suggest! Singapore math does a ton of this -just so kids get used to knowing what ballpark they are going to be in before they ever begin working the problem.

I have been revisiting, via audiobook, a number of books I struggled through in High School and College - All Quiet on the Western Front, A Tale of Two Cities, Grapes of Wrath etc. I have absolutely loved them as audiobooks! Perhaps it is because I am listening when I cannot be doing something else, like when I am driving or running, so I don't feel hurried? Perhaps it is because I appreciate a good narrator? I can remember being in tears running down main street listening to the end of Call of the Wild. I don't remember that book having any particular effect on me when I was younger. Maybe I am enjoying them because I am older? I don't know? I am a good reader. I have a PhD in political philosophy, so I can handle dense texts. But, I have really enjoyed classic literature in the audiobook format.

I don't think the point of the article is that there are not college options for students with fewer "accomplishments." Rather, the point seems to be that the standards have changed from when the author went to college. For elite colleges and universities, that is true. So, the piece is not nonsense. Admissions at these top schools have become so competitive that they have fostered a admissions culture that expects a very multi-faceted applicant with virtually no history of failure. You must be really good at everything you do, and you must do many, many things. This process selects for a certain type of student, and misses many others who would not only benefit from the education, but also enrich the college itself. Students who have never failed are different than students who have struggled. That's not to say that there is no where for these students to go, but rather that they are no longer part of the population of the institutions that pave the way to power and influence in this country. I think that is a loss for those institutions and for the larger society.

This! I am homeschooling three kids, one each in high school, middle school and elementary school. Planning allows us all to know who is doing what when and with whom. We have our lessons in skedtrack, so each child can immediately see what they are doing for the day (or week, as is the case for the 9th grader) and get to work independently. This allows me to run, shower, make breakfast and not go completely wacky. And, they know when they are done, so less whining.

I think the question of "how to help" depends entirely on what is going on, and you won't know that without the neuropsych evaluation. What you can see with the full evaluation is the large gaps between skills. For example, my dd13 was in the highest percentile for problem solving and reasoning, but at the very lowest end of normal for certain processing skills. That is a gap of more than two standard deviations, and that gap (as well as a more general gap between intelligence and achievement), is crucial for diagnosing stealth dyslexia. It used to be assumed that dyslexia was a unique phenomenon characterized by an oddity in the visual processing system that caused letters to move around on the page or be seen or written upside down and backwards. Today, with much better research and much better technology (particularly brain imaging technology) researchers can actually see that it is primarily a deficiency in phonological processing. However, it is still the case that the symptoms can be very different from one individual to another. Because reading and writing are such complex processes there are lots of places where the process can get hung up. Visual processing challenges, awkward ( or perhaps we should say novel) communication pathways between different parts of the brain, difficulty processing sounds, slow processing speeds, and difficulty with organization and sequencing are just some of the problems that "dyslexic" students often struggle with. I think this is why there is disagreement about how useful the label "dyslexic" is (that is another debate entirely). But, a full evaluation does matter when you are trying to figure out how to help. For example, My dd's comprehension, which is great when she reads long passages, is much worse when she is reading small amounts (like instructions or multiple choice questions). It is very important for her to physically underline or highlight exactly what she is being asked to do when she is reading instructions. But, if she is taking extra time to process the instructions, then she needs extra time to complete the tasks. The physical act of writing is also very challenging for her. Combining the tasks of composition and spelling and grammar and sentence mechanics seems almost painful at times. Yet, she has a lovely "voice" and lots of intelligent ideas. Keyboarding has really helped, and we are thinking of trying some of the writing software designed for dyslexics to ease the processing tasks required to write. I think seemingly careless math mistakes are also classic, so I wouldn't discount those problems. My dd does exactly the same thing. She can say one number and write the opposite and not even see it on the page. Maturity and learning to be aware of these issues is important as well.

Where is he is the learning process? Does he have pre-reading skills? Know the alphabet and letter sounds? Know vowel sounds? etc... My DS is six and a half. He has been sounding out simple words very slowly for a while. We just do a very little bit about three days a week. He doesn't always want to begin, but the lessons are so short that it's not really a struggle or anything. I'll let him pick the order of what we do - i.e. if he wants a story first, or to do some math or science first, but we always try to get in a few minutes of reading practice. Of course he is the youngest, everyone else is "doing school" so it makes sense to him that that is what we do in the mornings. My oldest struggled with reading and didn't real gain any fluency until 8 1/2 (she is now diagnosed dyslexic), my middle child began to read with some fluency in first grade (6 1/2 or so). Looks like my youngest will be a bit slower. I learned my lesson with my oldest - some kids really do need to be taught to read, so I have been very proactive with my younger two. I think it is a bit harder when your oldest child learns to read easily and early. Then you start to think something is wrong with a six year old who is not yet reading. He is old enough to be doing reading lessons. Make them short and be very matter of fact about them (like brushing teeth), no big deal. Don't mention what anyone else is doing. He is fine just the way he is. There may be absolutely no reading difficulty at all, or he may have some reading struggles. Either way, reading lessons at this age are perfectly appropriate.

This is so crucial and is something that I was totally unaware of. I thought I had read the website thoroughly, but I guess not thoroughly enough. And, I still find the highlighted quote a bit unclear. In any case, I was definitely expecting more from the tutor. I wish this had been explained to us from the beginning, or at least two weeks in when I complained. I feel a bit embarrassed and disheartened that I so completely misunderstood how this works. It was an expensive mistake. I guess I just could not image so completely ignoring a student who was so clearly floundering. Seems a bit of an odd arrangement. I think the tutor should interact with the student daily, regardless of what the student does. They are, after all, getting paid. I guess this service was just not a good fit for us. Oh well, I hope this discussion saves someone else from making the same mistake we did.

Sure, If we had the money to continue to pay $75 for additional months perhaps something might have eventually happened. As far as I could tell, there was no clear methodology. I paid for a service that they advertised, i.e, that they would help a student complete a specific assignment. I did not step in to help until more than 2 weeks had passed with very little communication from the tutor. It is important for anyone contemplating using this service to understand that you are paying by the month, not by the project/assignment. If the tutor was committed to seeing this assignment through to the end, regardless of the time it took, then I might have been more patient. Perhaps it is a good business model to let students work slowly, then you have to continue to renew the contract. The OP was looking for experience with the writing program. I used it in a very specific way. She may be planning to use it differently, or have a different kind of student. I have honestly recorded my experience as completely as possible. I think the OP can make her own judgement. I did not ask to have my actions reviewed, judged or critiqued

I tried WriteGuide just this past month for my DD13. I cannot give it a favorable review. I wanted something to walk her through the writing process and to take the tutoring out of my hands. My DD is dyslexic and writing has always been a challenge for her. I am a writer and I think I sometimes have too high expectations. That combination had made writing difficult for us as a team so I wanted to try and hand the process off to another tutor. She had a specific assignment (a persuasive paper) from the K12 Literature and Composition course that she is doing for English. I was hoping the writing tutor would walk her through the process of coming up with a topic, researching the topic, turning that topic into a thesis, organizing her arguments, revising and refining her drafts etc. In fact, I laid out exactly what steps I wanted help with when I was first contacted by the tutor. I also told her that DD needed clear structure, specific assignments with specific due dates so that she could finish the essay in the one month period. Unfortunately I ended up doing almost all of the tutoring myself. Her writing tutor would contact her in a casual way and suggest that she write about something she was passionate about. And then just wait. Well, as I expect is the case with many young teens, DD would read that and think, "oh, good idea," and nothing else would happen. As long as DD didn't respond back, the tutor didn't send any more communication. What she needed was the tutor to say something like, "come up with a list of topics you are interested in and email them to me tomorrow." I had to do that part myself. This continued throughout the month. If DD didn't make any progress the writing tutor didn't follow-up with additional emails. Once DD came up with a topic I helped her find articles to support it, I helped her organize her thoughts into three main arguments, and I helped her organize her supporting evidence. Once she came up with an outline, the tutor asked her to write the first paragraph. Again, a week went by without any progress or additional communication from the tutor. Eventually, I prompted her to write the complete first draft so we could at least get comments on that (by this time I had already expressed my frustration with the process and lack of communication to the tutor). The tutor sent back comments that were entirely grammatical and mechanical directly in the text so all DD had to do was go through and fix her mistakes following the exact wording given to her by the tutor (this is one of my pet peeves). There was no direction for substantive revision provided at all. Again, I had to do that myself. When DD completed the final draft, the tutor was effusive in her praise of it, saying it would surely receive an A. I was pleased with the essay (writing has been a long haul for us), but it was definitely not an A paper (at least not by the rubric provided by K-12). It was a good essay, and a good effort for someone who is not a natural writer, but it was more like a solid B. So, all in all, it was not a great experience for us, and not worth $75 considering the amount of work I still had to do. I also found the limit of one email a day (which I did not pay attention to beforehand) to be a bit draconian. Perhaps it would work better with a more enthusiastic writer? But, that was our experience. HTH

I guess I might fit into the "newbie still panicking" category, although I am trying to sit quietly with my anxiety. DD13 is my first high schooler. She is doing what I would consider the bare minimum, but really all that she can handle. She works from 7am to noon and then leaves the house at 1pm for ballet school and doesn't get home until 9pm. She also has ballet on Sat. and has to spend most of the weekend finishing up the week's work. She is doing fine with geometry (using tablet class and her dad, who is a math teacher). She is doing Derek Owens physics. This is a good class, but she moves at a much slower pace than his syllabus. Not sure if she will finish this by next September or not. I am teaching modern history, and she is doing a modified version of the K12 literature and composition independent study. After struggling to do latin 2, we dropped it a few weeks ago. I had wanted her to do it to get the 2 years of foreign language (she did Lukeion in 8th grade, but it was way too much of a time commitment). But, she was miserable, and I have had to come to terms with the fact that she really is dyslexic and really does struggle with foreign language. She switched to ASL and loves it. It's amazing how quickly she can learn this visual/gestural language. My biggest anxiety right now is just figuring out what to do about pace and written output. I know that she is dyslexic. I have all the testing and paperwork. But knowing that doesn't change the fact that she works at a much slower pace than most high school classes expect. And, she has to work so much harder to write short answer and essay questions and compositions. The time commitment for dance combined with the dyslexia makes it much harder to fit her into a standard high school schedule. I am much more sanguine about our year when I don't read what all the superstar kids are doing. I love my kid. She wants to dance. She doesn't like school. She doesn't want to go to college. She doesn't care what everyone else is doing. I wish I could be more like her!

I agree that West's article is very sloppy scholarship. I have blogged before about the logical inconsistencies in the arguments made by scholars such as West and Robert Reich (whom West cites in the above linked article). But, even with their clearly biased assumptions about homeschoolers, West and Reich and other opponents of homeschooling do not speak in the outrageous voice of someone like Williamson, who denigrates the entire state of CT as "a venn diagram overlap of everything that is awful about New York and everything that is awful about New England." How can he possibly hope to be taken seriously? And, frankly, as a homeschooler, I would like policy makers to take me seriously. Moreover, why not just write an article about West? He has conflated the Sandy Hook Commissions proposals on mental health with the inconsistent arguments of anti-homeschooling scholars. I guess hoping that we won't look carefully at the commission but just join in the frenzied rhetoric. His argument just as, if not more, sloppy than the one/ones he is criticizing.

I don't disagree with these facts. It's silly to blame homeschooling, especially in this case. But, if CT tries to institute an integrated mental health system for children, and its locus is the schools, then I guess I want to make sure those services are available to all. I am looking at what is really new about what the committee is proposing ( and I do think it is an exciting new idea to try and build a truly adequate mental health system for children). I don't think there should be any requirements that homeschoolers use the system. And, frankly, it would be a huge departure from the approach the state has historically taken to impose such requirements. I don't think that will happen here. And, CT homeschoolers are smart enough to make those arguments without the craziness of the article in the OP. They could simply state what you very rationally and intelligently stated above.

I disagree. The vitriol in that article regarding the state of CT, academics professionals, teachers unions etc., does little to further the cause of homeschoolers. The "tone" of homeschoolers in CT, at least in my experience, is much more measured. I get little sense that homeschoolers feel anyone is out to get them or coming for their children. Certainly, there are many misconceptions about homeschoolers. But, this is a straw man argument. If you watch the advisory committee hearings in CT, the tone is very measured and thoughtful. The committee members may be unfamiliar with homeschoolers, but we will hardly convince them that additional mental health screening is unnecessary by acting paranoid, and attributing evil motives to the committee members. I am actually sympathetic to the committee's attempt to find a way to ensure a better provision of mental health services to children in the state. If our healthcare system were not so woefully inadequate it would not fall to the schools to try and provide these services. But, if mental heath services are not going to be generally available to children (and our current health insurance system makes it impossible for many kids to adequately access mental health services), and the schools are actually going to become the locus of mental health service for kids in this state, then I would like to find a way for homeschoolers to access those services (in the same way they can access testing for LDs ). Homeschoolers need to get involved in this debate in an equally intelligent and measured way so that they can be sure to make sure that homeschooled children are not left out of what may indeed become a new mental health service system.

I am also a CT homeschooler. This is proposed language in a "draft" of the advisory committee report. Even if it made it into the final report, it is only an advisory committee, not law. All these proposals would still have to go through the legislative process. So a bit of a reach for so many commentators to be getting themselves into such a frenzy.

I think it's a great problem too. My 6th grade dd would probably enjoy answering it. It would likely take her about 2-3 hours to try out all her ideas. It's just hard to assess creativity on these kinds of tests. And, she would totally fumble around with the input. She would need lots of practice with the screen format.

It may be passé to mention Finland but there is an important point to be made here. We can have a long discussion speculating about what might make for better teacher quality, but it's really not a mystery. Other countries, not just Finland but Poland and Hungary and China just to name a few, have already figured it out. We, as Americans, just seem to hate to admit that we could learn from some other less powerful country. In these systems, teaching is a highly respected, well (but moderately) compensated profession. Teacher education programs are very competitive to enter, rigorous and challenging in both content and methodology/pedagogy. Teachers are not graduated until they have demonstrated excellence in both content and pedagogy. But, importantly, all these countries have a much more centralized educational system. Recent studies have demonstrated that excellent teaching makes a huge difference in student education. We are just never going to make the changes that need to be made as long as we cling to an outdated system of local control.

Yes! A typo on my part. I meant to type a 1000 rather than 100! I had this observation confirmed by the neuropsych when we had my DD evaluated. It's not uncommon at all for dyslexics. DD comprehends long passages very well because she is so good at understanding context. But she has difficulty with short passages (like instructions). I think dyslexic kids are actually "seeing" the words on the page very differently. So it doesn't surprise me at all that she could read "Honey" over and over again without really "seeing" how the word is spelled.

I think the concepts of auditory learning and visual learning are often used in ambiguous ways. What seems to be missing for my poor spellers is visual memory. Some kids see a word 1-5 times, and they easily remember how to spell it (i.e., what it looks like). For other kids that same memory might take 1000 repetitions (this is my dyslexic). So not expecting spelling to "kick in" until at least 11 or 12 years old helps. By that time they have had time for the thousands of repetitions that they need. Phonics, correct pronunciation and hearing the sounds will only get you so far. My middle child knows the "rules" quite well, and spells almost everything phonetically correct. That doesn't mean it's right. I continue with spelling through middle school. No harm in practicing. But the lessons are short and I try not to make a big deal of it. Once you reach high school it's time to figure out your own coping strategies (thank goodness for spell check). If you have a good speller consider yourself lucky. If not, modern technology makes these struggles less obvious. Visual memory is only a tiny component of intelligence.

If you find a good way to teach this skill, I would love to hear it. I have a 10yo beginning 6th grade. We have only done school here for a little over a week, and already I have had three instances of her dissolving into tears and crying that she "can't do it." This has happened once in science, once in history and once in writing, so it seems to be challenging her across subjects. I recognize that the skill of synthesizing information for a short answer is a challenging skill, but I am not really sure how to best teach it. I also admit that I have a particular sensitivity to inadequate answers for these types of questions. My ninth grader (who is dyslexic and has struggled with writing all along) still has trouble with short answer questions. I would like for this child to figure this out before she gets to high school. Some days I just want to pull my hair out. I know some folks would say that if she is crying the skill is too much for her, but I think it is more a matter of its newness. Here is an example: The question was to explain why glaciers are called nature's bulldozer, and to give examples of how they reshape the land. At first she wrote some related information about glaciers that didn't really answer the question. Then I asked her to go back and read the section on glaciers again (here's where the crying starts, because I thought her first answer was inadequate). Then I re-read the section out loud, and asked her some questions about how bulldozers work. At that point I think she was capable of answering the question, but she was feeling rather demoralized at having to do it again. That's as far as we got. We still need to find examples of glaciers reshaping the land and incorporate that into the answer. If we spend this much time on every short answer question.....yikes!

There's definitely a confusion in the article as to how wide the "Ivies and their ilk" extends. In some places he seems to include all highly selective institutions, and in others he suggests alternatives such as Wesleyan and Holyoke (which are still highly selective). So perhaps that distinction will be cleared up in the actual book, but it is a flaw in the article. But, in his defense, he is looking at the school's educational philosophy and attitude, and I think that is where he is making his distinction. Part of the problem might just be perspective. Living in the northeast, everyone knows the Ivies. But, as pointed out up thread, in many parts of the country they are not really on the radar. It might also be the case that students who attend Ivies think they are experiencing real diversity. Again, perspective is everything. Harvard might just be the most diverse environment they have ever encountered. That does not mean that it is really diverse. I once knew a high schooler who wrote an essay about how he lived in an average house on an average street and led an average middle class life. In fact, he lived in a gated community and attended an expensive private school. But for him, that was average. If you have never known anything else...

I'm confused. I thought you said you went to a selective women's college. Those are the sorts of places the author lists as great alternatives. In fact, he specifically mentions Holyoke as an example. I don't think people are just trying to convince themselves that the Ivies are not that great because they didn't get to go there. I think the author and others are sincerely trying to ascertain if the atmosphere is as ideal as it is typically assumed to be.

I don't have a paid job from home, but I am homeschooling three children and have a 13yo dd who is in a pre-professional ballet school. She leaves home at 12:45 each day and does not get home until 9pm. Honestly, most of my time is spent schooling the younger children. By 12 my dd was very independent in her work. Teaching time with her includes the following: -Math lesson with Dad on Sunday night and Wed. morning - math assignments are completed independently the rest of the week -Morning meeting with me at 9:30 Monday morning where we go over assignments for the week and enter them in her planner -Monday 10-11am History lesson with me - assignments completed independently the rest of the week -Friday morning meeting (30 min) to review progress on assignments and talk about weekend homework She is doing an online class for science and for English. I teach history, her Dad teaches math, and she is doing Latin independently using dvd lectures. I probably spend 3-4 hours on Sunday planning lessons for the week (but that is for all three children). So, as you can see, at this age the time commitment for one child who can work independently is not overwhelming. I am available to answer questions and help the rest of the time, but there is not that much time spent on direct instruction.