Hard to believe... Detroit... 47% �functionally illiterate.�

[Perry]

Study after study has proven that student performance is only really closely tied to parents' education and parents' SES. The schools can't be blamed much.

But it doesn't have to be this way. When those studies are done in truly effective schools, that association is much lower. Achievement is correlated so strongly with parental education because the schools s*ck, not the other way around.

[stripe]

Exactly. Study after study has proven that student performance is only really closely tied to parents' education and parents' SES.

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

And the true mark of an excellent educational system is not to take geniuses in and turn well-educated people out. It's to take illiterates in and turn out the well-educated.

[suzziesnowflake]

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

And the true mark of an excellent educational system is not to take geniuses in and turn well-educated people out. It's to take illiterates in and turn out the well-educated.

 

I think it has to do with several generations living in poverty. My FIL was a Detroit policeman for many years and knew how wonderful it once was (he's 86 and the pictures of these historical building make him want to cry) but after the riots they left detroit and went back to his home town in the thumb of MI. He was worried about his wife and children (14 of them!)

Some say that people are capable of "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" but what if you have no boots? It has got be tough for kids to learn when they pack all their problems up and put them in their backpacks and take it to school with them. I think the key is to strengthen families before we are able to tackle education wether it be by providing jobs(with a living wage) and public services (libraries, summer programs, affordable good quality day care, tear down building that are blight, ect.). I believe that if you give people the boots they will infact pull themselves up even if it is just a little and that is how it all starts. Some won't but most will.

I read the comments following the story and it is just a bunch of political finger pointing and some down right racial comments. People need to put more effort of advocating for what cities need instead of insulting eachother. It made my heart sad that some were actually insaulting those who couldn't read. Its so easy to judge others, when in fact they need to walk a mile in some of these peoples shoes. Sad. Ok off my soap box now!

[BigMamaBird]

Parts of Detroit are like completely different countries. It's so sad.:001_huh:

[Jennifer3141]

DH and I drove through parts of Detroit last fall when we needed to see a specialized attorney and it looked like something straight out of a "Batman" movie. It was horrible. :(

I believe the statistic and I don't see how it's going to get better with class sizes of 50-60 coming in the near future.

[ElizabethB]

But it doesn't have to be this way. When those studies are done in truly effective schools, that association is much lower. Achievement is correlated so strongly with parental education because the schools s*ck, not the other way around.

 

:iagree:

 

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

And the true mark of an excellent educational system is not to take geniuses in and turn well-educated people out. It's to take illiterates in and turn out the well-educated.

 

:iagree:

 

When I start my classes with inner city students, it takes a fairly high adult to student ratio to hold their attention. But, once they get to know you and realize they are learning to read, it takes less people, and their motivation increases.

 

With the right methods, they can learn a lot. My students who were in and out of inner city Los Angeles schools because of homelessness actually required a very low adult to student ratio at the end. And, as I mentioned before, they actually did better than my students who had been in schools learning sight words.

 

(And, all of my inner city students have improved more on average than my middle class students because I had not yet discovered Webster's Speller when I was working with primarily middle class students. I spent less time with the inner city students overall, but they improved more because I was using better methods.)

[AngelBee]

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

 

:iagree: One of my dance team students parents speak no English and are poor. She has a 4.00 (plus) and is extremely driven. She is also one of the sweetest young ladies I know. :)

[lisamarie]

A couple of these made me cry. I grew up about an hour's drive from Detroit and got my undergraduate degree at the University of Windsor across the river (in urban planning/geography, so you can imagine how much we talked about Detroit). I still miss John K. King Books, the DIA, Greektown of old.

 

A friend just linked this article and as I just looked at the above pictures yesterday, I just had to post this article because the Michigan Cental Depot is beautiful and I'm so happy it's going to be restored.

 

http://www.freep.com/article/20110505/BUSINESS06/110505028/Bridge-Company-moves-ahead-Michigan-Central-Depot-restoration?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

[stripe]

An interesting short (~1 hr) documentary, by the way, is "Pressure Cooker," about a culinary arts teacher in Philadelphia. It doesn't really address many of the issues outside the classroom, but it's an interesting look at students with a vision of improving their lives, almost all of whom are African American. It's also interesting for the perspective of Fatoumata, a recent immigrant from Mali. (An interview on NPR here.)

 

There are a lot of wonderful people, our fellow citizens, who have a lot of potential to contribute good to society. It's not simply "poverty," and I do think there has to be a concerted effort to address it in a positive way.

[KAR120C]

The only one here?

 

I can't explain Detroit or it's education problems. The one thing I can tell you with certainty is that if you think you know what The One Problem is, you don't. There are huge, huge problems that go back generations. Poverty, drugs, politics, racism, crime, corruption... and they feed into each other. No tax base to pay for services means not enough police and fire-fighters to keep people safe. That alone is huge, but it's not the whole story. The dependence on the auto industry is another piece -- there's hardly a job in the area that could be said to be completely independent of the auto industry. But again that's nowhere near the whole story. The relationship between the city and the suburbs is such that it makes an enormous difference which side of the line you're on. Growing up just outside Detroit is nothing like growing up inside. But it's not just between Detroit and its neighbors, it's within the city too. Detroiters are masters of compartmentalizing. East side vs. west side is the biggie, but it's between neighborhoods too. When things happen, it's always some other neighborhood, or at least the other side of yours, or something that lets you feel a little safer. And it sounds awful to draw lines like that, but really if you can't leave I think you have to come up with stories that let you sleep at night.

 

None of this is new. The stories my inlaws tell about growing up in the 40s and 50s in Detroit are very much like the stories I tell about growing up in the 70s and 80s. Their stories have more knives and fewer guns, but they're substantially the same.

 

On the other hand, Detroit still has a lot going for it, even in the midst of crushing problems. The Detroit Institute of Art is fabulous. Wayne State is actually quite a good research institution. I could spend a whole weekend at John K. King books. The restaurants and delis... I gain five pounds every time we go up there for Christmas, just from the list of food we can't get anywhere else. And even the schools.... I had some amazing, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers. They did teach phonics. There were still serious literacy issues. There were kids in my neighborhood, close to my age (same schools, same teachers) who never really "got" reading.... or math... to say nothing of literature, science, history, art, or any of the worlds that those things open for you. And there were kids who did fine. (Just a side note - a "tiger mom" is nothing compared with a mom who knows and cares what's at risk if her kid grows up uneducated in Detroit.)

 

I don't have a solution. You'll note by my location tag that I left... and I have no plans to return. (We're likely moving back north sooner or later - but not to Detroit.) It's worth saving, I don't think it's hopeless, but there is no simple solution. A lot more is going to be lost before things really start to look up.

[stripe]

The one thing I can tell you with certainty is that if you think you know what The One Problem is, you don't.

.... I had some amazing, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers. They did teach phonics.

What an eloquent, insightful post. Thank you for taking the time to write it out.

 

I did not graduate from Detroit Public Schools, but I did attend public school in a large city, at a school both "majority minority" and academically well respected.

 

(And I certainly think the idea that teaching phonics would rehabilitate the city of Detroit is beyond ridiculous.)

 

I could spend a whole weekend at John K. King books.

This is one place I'm dreaming about visiting. Literally. I've never been there, but once I did in my dreams.

[Margaret in GA]

As I'm reading this thread, I'm listening to Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. I love this song and these lyrics:

 

First they built the road, then they built the town

That's why we're still driving round and round

And all we see

Are kids in buses longing to be free

 

Really sums up to me the tragedy of suburbs- white flight, decaying downtowns, loss of public transportation, and kids riding in buses all day long to arrive at the doors of a failing concept...

 

Back to the topic, doesn't it strike you as odd that all the emphasis placed on teaching kids to read earlier, pushing them harder, keeping them in school longer... not to mention all the early intervention programs like Headstart, PreK... these haven't yielded any better results and in fact, the results seem worse? I don't think we should eliminate Headstart, etc. I am just saying this push to institutionalize kids at an earlier age and push them into learning things they may not be capable of learning reminds me of the Moore's Better Late than Early. And makes me wonder if we are teaching kids to fail. :(

 

Margaret

[TravelingChris]

The problems in Detroit are many. The waste you see in those pictures is due to mismanagement from the top. SO you are shutting down schools, police stations, etc. OKay, there is a procedure for doing that and it was not followed. One thing both cities and corporations normally do when shutting down is call in liquidators. Obviously that was not done here.

[angela in ohio]

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

And the true mark of an excellent educational system is not to take geniuses in and turn well-educated people out. It's to take illiterates in and turn out the well-educated.

 

The studies have been done recently, though, and this isn't the situation in many inner cities now.

 

My Irish grandparents came here as children, and they were dirt poor. My grandfather was a bicycle delivery man for Ford to feed six children, and he ended up with a son who was the valedictorian of Notre Dame University, a son who owned a company that subcontracted for NASA, etc. That was Detroit then.

[angela in ohio]

But it doesn't have to be this way. When those studies are done in truly effective schools, that association is much lower. Achievement is correlated so strongly with parental education because the schools s*ck, not the other way around.

 

The only studies I've seen that showed effectiveness were with very, very low teacher ratios and very, very highly trained teachers (which is not financially feasible in Detroit.) And in studies where the students with low SES were simply moved to schools with high SES, they still failed. The key is the parents, and I think the school reformers are often missing that point. You can put as many bandaids on the schools as you want, but until you address poverty, despair, and a culture that denounces education, you won't get far.

[twoforjoy]

The problems in Detroit are many. The waste you see in those pictures is due to mismanagement from the top.

 

It's not simply mismanagement; it's an extremely difficult city to manage.

 

Detroit is a huge city, in terms of area. The amount of just vacant land in Detroit, IIRC, is larger than the total area of San Francisco.

 

And it's also spread out. So, yes, the population has declined, but it's not like entire pockets of the city have been entirely abandoned; they've just been almost-entirely abandoned. You have blocks that have one resident left on them, but that resident still needs water, electricity, police and fire services, etc. So you're left maintaining an infrastructure meant to support twice as many people as actually live there (and meant to support a much larger tax base than it currently does).

 

I'm not a huge fan of Mayor Bing, but I do think his consolidation plan--to relocate people in nearly-vacant areas so that the infrastructure and services in those areas doesn't have to be kept up, and resources can be focused on the populated areas--makes sense. The problem is that, while it's practical, it's certainly not ideal. Removing people from their homes is never ideal. It seems like one of the few viable solutions for Detroit at this point, but I can see why it would be an absolute last resort.

[regentrude]

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

 

A culture that values education. A culture where parents consider education important, where they expect their children to perform, where the kid gets in trouble at home for not doing well in school. A culture where being a teacher has high status.

[twoforjoy]

But this can't be the whole story, because many children of immigrants do well (historically and now), even though they may be poor. They have a work ethic and drive to succeed. And frankly, immigrants know how to stretch a dollar like nobody's business, which is something generally only Depression-era Americans can do. There are plenty of places in the world (like Korea) that have radically improved literacy / education rates rather quickly. I think it's something else. I don't know how to put it into words. Drive? Outlook? Positive examples?

 

I don't think it's quite that simple. Yes, it's more than SES; I think parental attitude and involvement makes a huge difference. But, I don't think those can simply be put down to outlook or good examples.

 

Many immigrants, while they were poor, were well-educated in their own countries. I have many students in my college classes whose parents are Middle Eastern immigrants. And many of their parents are poor here, but that's because they took a big cut in prestige and salary when they moved here. Their parents were professionals in their home countries, and came from professional families, and see taking service or working-class jobs here as a temporary situation. They see the value of education, and push their children very hard to get a good education. But they see the value because it has actually paid off for them. It's not a theory for them, that education can help people get ahead; they actually have had that experience themselves, even if it didn't translate into success here.

 

When we're talking about immigrants who don't have that background, I'm not sure we see the same educational successes. One of my grandfathers emigrated from Italy when he was 5; his family was poor in Italy, they were poor here, and he dropped out of school after the 7th grade, because he had to work. If you look at the educational outcomes of the children of poor immigrants from Mexico, they aren't good. The graduation rate is extremely low.

 

In the case of Detroiters, I think a big part of the issue is that many parents--not all, but many--either don't see the value of their child getting an education (and, honestly, reasonably so: the economy is so bad here that pretty much the only thing a college degree is guaranteed to get you is debt), or they are actively hostile to the school system (which a history of racism makes understandable as a cultural phenomenon, even though the situation has changed a lot), or they are dealing with other very serious issues (addictions, disabilities, imprisonment, etc.) that make investing time and energy in their child's education impossible for them. So these kids have NO positive support at home for their education, and the same is true of most of their classmates.

 

Honestly, while I obviously don't blame homeschoolers, charter schoolers, or private schoolers, Detroit is a city where you can see how these things can hurt the public schools. Because, as I mentioned, the situation in Detroit, at this point, is such that every single concerned parent I know who hasn't moved to the suburbs has pulled their kids from the public school system for an alternative. You're now left with public schools that are pretty much filled with students whose parents don't care (or are unable to care) about the education their children receive. There's a few public schools that are exceptions, but those tend to be specialized public schools that parents need to make an active effort to get their children into. But the regular, local public schools are pretty much filled with the students who have parents who do not care or are unable to provide their child with any educational support or guidance. That just makes it that much harder for the teachers and the students who are left, and then that makes it even less likely that parents who do care about and are involved in their child's education will enroll their kids in the schools.

 

Even more than SES, family involvement is key (although family involvement is highly tied to SES). And that's something that is very much lacking in the Detroit public schools, for many reasons.

 

And the true mark of an excellent educational system is not to take geniuses in and turn well-educated people out. It's to take illiterates in and turn out the well-educated.

 

That's a nice idea, but has there ever been a society where the educational system, on a regular basis (not an exceptional one), took in students from the lowest classes of society and turned out people who made it into the highest classes?

[twoforjoy]

A culture that values education. A culture where parents consider education important, where they expect their children to perform, where the kid gets in trouble at home for not doing well in school. A culture where being a teacher has high status.

 

But why should a culture value education if, historically, they were barred from getting one? If getting one yielded them nothing much of the time? If the school system often denigrated and was actively hostile to the child's home culture? You can't just get people to value education in the abstract; you have to show them that it will actually have value for them. In a city with a 30% (almost 50%, by some estimates) unemployment rate, where I, a white woman with a good work history and a master's degree, had to spend two years on the market to find a job (and ended up working a part-time minimum-wage job for over a year), is it even honest to say that education is going to make much difference? The opportunities have to be there, and in Detroit (and many other poor areas), they just aren't.

 

This isn't simply an issue with inner-city blacks. The same thing can be seen in rural white areas, like Appalachia, where for a very long time the school system set itself up as the saviors of the children from the terrible, impoverished cultures and families they came from. That creates an animosity between school and family that can run very, very deep, and I think we still see the fall out of that in many poor communities, even when the school culture has changed quite a bit. There is still a sense, I think, that the schools are at odds with the families. And, to some extent, they might be. All the pushes for longer school days/years do end up seeming like attempts to get children out of their homes and families (which are seen as a bad influence) and into the superior environment of the school. That's obviously something a lot of homeschoolers bristle against, so it shouldn't be too surprisingly that many minority communities, who have often borne the brunt of that attitude, should feel it, too.

Edited May 6, 2011 by twoforjoy

[twoforjoy]

I had some amazing, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers. They did teach phonics. There were still serious literacy issues.

 

That is still the case. DPS is not full of hippy-dippy whole-language proponents, at all. The education the students get is VERY old-school: phonics, basic math, lots of drills, very few frills. In fact, many of the schools are required to use scripted, phonics-based literacy programs. It's still not working.

 

I don't know, I tend to think that is a detriment to the students. The percentage of students with LDs of various kinds in the DPS system is pretty high, and IIRC from my literacy courses, for kids with certain LDs, phonics is the least effective means of literacy instruction. There's a reason, after all, why schools moved to whole-language. It wasn't because they just felt like trying something new, it was because while phonics is a fantastic means of literacy instruction for many if not most children, for some percentage of children, it does not work at all. They simply cannot learn to decode through phonics. And, public school teachers aren't expected to teach many or even most of their students, but all of them. Whole language may produce less proficient readers, overall, than phonics, but it tends to work at least a little for every child. There will be some kids who will leave a phonics-based classroom unable to read at all, but almost no kids will leave a whole-language classroom without any ability to read. That doesn't make whole-language better--I'd say that for most children phonics will lead to more mastery more quickly, and is preferable--but it does make it more utilitarian, especially as classrooms were mainstreamed and more and more teachers were left to teach reading to students who were unable to learn via phonics.

 

That's neither here nor there, but I tend to think the practical reasons why whole language temporarily came to supersede phonics (I don't think that's the case any more, and a combined approach seems most common) get ignored by many phonics proponents.

[Perry]

And in studies where the students with low SES were simply moved to schools with high SES, they still failed. The key is the parents,

This is true, but unfortunately, very often, the instruction in schools with high SES kids is not all that different than in the low SES schools. Within a district, you can have vastly different SES schools. The curricula is the same, the student teacher ratios are usually the same, the amount of money spent per pupil is the same. The difference is the SES. It makes sense that if you simply move a kid to a different school, they don't improve, because the only thing that has changed is the other kids. But if you take the low SES kid and put him in a school with truly effective instruction, they often make remarkable improvements.

 

Effective instruction won't fix the problems of corruption, terrible administrators, and poverty, but it's a critical piece of the puzzle. Necessary, but not sufficient. There's plenty of evidence about how to do it right, but it's by and large ignored.

[Perry]

That is still the case. DPS is not full of hippy-dippy whole-language proponents, at all. The education the students get is VERY old-school: phonics, basic math, lots of drills, very few frills. In fact, many of the schools are required to use scripted, phonics-based literacy programs. It's still not working.

Do you know, specifically, what curricula they use? I can't find much about reading, but I found this regarding math:

 

Standard-Based Innovations - The curriculum promotes inquiry-based, hands-on instruction. Standard-based innovations include: FOSS Kits, TERC Investigations, Science Technology for Children (STC), Insights, Connected Mathematics, Core Plus, Project AIMS, Science Videodiscovery, State of Michigan Science Lessons, Mathematics from Many Cultures, Science Sleuth, Center for Learning Technologies, African Centered Mathematics, Jasper Woodbury Video Laserdiscs, Carnegie Cognitive Tutor Algebra Program, and other curriculum materials.

 

 

 

 

I'm not familiar with all of these, but TERC, Connected Marh, and Core Plus are the worst of the worst. If a district spent money on those, they're using garbage.

[Perry]

Do you know, specifically, what curricula they use? I can't find much about reading, but I found this regarding math:

 

 

I'm not familiar with all of these, but TERC, Connected Marh, and Core Plus are the worst of the worst. If a district spent money on those, they're using garbage.

I found a few schools that use Reading Recovery.

 

That is not an evidence based reading curriculum. It stinks. And it's very, very expensive.

[twoforjoy]

Do you know, specifically, what curricula they use? I can't find much about reading, but I found this regarding math:

 

 

I'm not familiar with all of these, but TERC, Connected Marh, and Core Plus are the worst of the worst. If a district spent money on those, they're using garbage.

 

I know that Open Court is required in many of the schools, or at least was several years ago.

 

If a school is deeded "failing," as per NCLB, they have to use an approved curriculum. There's only so much leeway they have, and nearly all of the approved literacy curriculums are phonics-based (if they aren't all phonics-based).

[ElizabethB]

I know that Open Court is required in many of the schools, or at least was several years ago.

 

If a school is deeded "failing," as per NCLB, they have to use an approved curriculum. There's only so much leeway they have, and nearly all of the approved literacy curriculums are phonics-based (if they aren't all phonics-based).

 

Open Court is not phonics based, it is balanced literacy. It teaches the Dolch sight words and uses many components of whole language. The old Open Court was great, the new Open Court, not so much. The only good programs I like that I have seen being used in public schools schools are Phonics Pathways (unfortunately, very few schools) and School Phonics.

 

I have given hundreds of reading grade level tests to children since 1994, to children from dozens of states since we move often and many of our friends move often. Schools that use balanced literacy have a 30 to 40% failure rate. I have not yet found a failure from a school that used a good true phonics program. When I first started tutoring, the schools that still used 100% whole word methods had a 60 to 70% failure rate.

 

I met a lady who taught in a one room school for 11 years in Texas. She said she used old fashioned phonics and never had a reading failure in her 11 years of teaching. She would now be 102 if she is still alive, we no longer live near her.

 

Edit: And, the failure rate for balanced literacy in an inner city school is much higher, your 30 to 40% failure rate is for a more middle class school which will include some parental tutoring or tutoring from Sylvan or something like that.

Edited May 6, 2011 by ElizabethB

[regentrude]

But why should a culture value education if, historically, they were barred from getting one? If getting one yielded them nothing much of the time? If the school system often denigrated and was actively hostile to the child's home culture? You can't just get people to value education in the abstract; you have to show them that it will actually have value for them.

 

 

That, TOO, is an assumption based on your culture. I realize that in this country education is seen as a means to an end: to achieve a well paying job, for instance.

In other countries, education historically DOES have a value per se; an educated person has prestige completely independent of income. (For instance, for centuries, being multilingual has been a trait of an educated person in Europe, not because this translated into better job opportunities, but because it was seen as a value in itself to be able to read literature in its original.)

So, education CAN be valued independent of the economic benefits it gives a person. Btw, I grew up in a country with full employment and no monetary rewards for higher education whatsoever (often people with university degrees earned less than the workers they supervised).

 

In a city with a 30% (almost 50%, by some estimates) unemployment rate, where I, a white woman with a good work history and a master's degree, had to spend two years on the market to find a job (and ended up working a part-time minimum-wage job for over a year), is it even honest to say that education is going to make much difference? The opportunities have to be there, and in Detroit (and many other poor areas), they just aren't.

 

But even if looking at education from such a point of view - wouldn't people realize that education is the ticket OUT? I mean, even the most undereducated people do have TV and see what happens outside of their bubble. Especially if the situation is dire: why don't people LEAVE?

[hana]

Sadly, the illiteracy rates are not hard for me to believe. This is the fruit of balanced literacy and sight words. They can read 300 - 1000 sight words but have trouble sounding out words they have not seen before.

 

They are that high in areas were there is not the money for tutoring and/or literate parents or grandparents to step in and teach a bit of phonics. With a bit of phonics added, many children are OK. (Not that I am advocating this as a teaching method, mind you!!)

 

Just back from vacation, I'll add more later. Here is my "Why Johnny Doesn't Like to Read" that explains to some degree they what and why of "functional illiteracy" caused by sight words:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/aliterate.html

 

Also, the damage done with sight words can be very hard to overcome, it takes a lot of work and nonsense words to overcome guessing habits. My class of students in a homeless rescue mission in LA actually did better overall than my inner city Little Rock class of students because they had been in and out of school so much they never learned sight words--it is easier to teach it right the first time than to have to untrain bad habits and learn new ones.

 

I'm curious what leads you to believe this is the problem in Detroit.

[FaithManor]

I know why they don't get out. It takes money to get out. It takes a car or a bus or some sort of transportation and that costs money. It takes having a home to go to of some kind and it takes money to find a job. It takes money to leave and if you don't have any, you are stuck.

 

My parents stopped to help a woman who was stranded along the side of a road with a broken down van (this was three years ago). She had three children inside and was fleeing inner city Detroit because there was no opportunity for her children and their school district was abysmal. She was desperate, absolutely desperate. She took the last cash she could scrape together, filled the gas tank of this totally beaten up van that was probably being driven without insurance, purchased bread, peanut butter, and water and threw what little belongings they had in the back. She literally just drove out of the city on I-94 and headed west. She'd heard of a church in Battle Creek that would help single homeless women by putting them up in a church run shelter, get their children enrolled in school, and provide meals until a job could be found. That's where she was headed. The van conked out just west of Ann Arbor. She had no relatives with a single dime to help her; they were just sitting by the side of the road, no phone, no back up plan, just praying that God would provide someone to help.

 

Well, dad and mom stopped. Dad thankfully found that it was just loose battery wires but just in case, drove into town and bought her a new battery. They gave her the last of the cash they had on hand, $50.00 and called the church to let them know that this desperate mother was on her way and to keep an eye out for her. That was all they could do and it was a lot more than anyone had probably done for them in a while. She hugged, and hugged, and hugged them. All she wanted was a better life for her children.

 

Any plan is going to require money in this day and age. We don't barter for services anymore, gas is $4.00 a gallon, the car has to work, there needs to be somewhere to go, somewhere to run to....many people just do not have it.

 

Our culture isn't exactly helpful in a lot of respects. We have this "our fore-fathers came her with nothing and look what they did....get with the program, pull yourselves up" mentality. Unfortunately, a. our forefathers did not come to a culture that keeps spinning based on money b. they didn't come with "nothing"; they came with chickens, pigs, wool, guns and ammo, beer, seeds, salted fish and beef, peas and other grains, etc. They came with supplies and to a place where one could live in a tent until you could build a house and not have social services coming to take your kids away. Their weren't a lot of rules and regulations keeping them from making a life and they could put a roof over their heads and food on the table with earning a wage. c. they had enough money to purchase their passage. That's something that these families cannot do and $7.50 an hour doesn't cut it. But, then, most small businesses can not afford to pay more than that for unskilled labor and still keep their doors open.

 

It's a vicious, vicious cycle and it's far too complicated for simple answers.

 

Faith

[stripe]

I found a few schools that use Reading Recovery.

 

That is not an evidence based reading curriculum. It stinks. And it's very, very expensive.

This article suggests they are ADDING in Reading Recovery with the volunteer tutors. That doesn't explain what has been used for the past 50 years. I don't think what schools are doing NOW really explains the cause of adult illiteracy.

 

And I just don't believe inner city decay has much to do with phonics.

[ElizabethB]

I'm curious what leads you to believe this is the problem in Detroit.

 

Well, there are obviously many problems going on in Detroit.

 

But, the OP specifically addressed functional illiteracy. I've been tutoring remedial students for 17 years, and have helped many inner city children, most of whom were minority, poor children. Some of them had experienced homelessness.

 

They all were functionally illiterate. They all had been taught sight words in school and had guessing problems due to sight words. When given remedial phonics with nonsense words to help stop guessing, they all improved--on average 2 grade levels over 2 months of tutoring twice a week.

 

I've moved 8 times in the last 9 years and every state we have lived in have given reading grade level tests to everyone I know and have compared the results to what the schools were using. The schools that use good phonics problems have good literacy rates, the schools that use sight words don't. We lived in an area where the Catholic schools served a diverse population and all their poor minority children learned to read, they used a good phonics program. (I also had a girl from that school who I missed out on tutoring because I didn't give her a reading grade level test until just before we left, I had stopped giving reading grade level tests to students who had been enrolled in that school. I found out latter that she had transferred into that school and had been taught sight words when she learned to read.)

[Perry]

This article suggests they are ADDING in Reading Recovery with the volunteer tutors. That doesn't explain what has been used for the past 50 years. I don't think what schools are doing NOW really explains the cause of adult illiteracy.

 

And I just don't believe inner city decay has much to do with phonics.

I don't know anything about what types of curricula they've used in the past. It's hard to tell anything from their website.

 

In my opinion, a school district that spends money on Reading Recovery and TERC Investigations is making bad decisions in choosing curriculum.

 

I'd be very interested in what they've used in the past, what they're using now, and any relationship with test scores.

 

I do believe the failure of schools, particularly reading instruction, is an important contributor to the problems of inner cities, both now and in the past. It's not the only issue, but it's an important one.

[FaithManor]

Detroit is ridiculously complicated. but one main factor is criminal mismanagement. A former mayor is doing prison time for that along with some of his cohorts in crime.

 

The loss of the manufacturing industry.

 

High business taxes - not just the state level - it's the combined issue - property, city taxes, extra utility taxes on just businesses, along with the fact that licensing for a lot of jobs is much more costly here than other states such as Tennesee, Wyoming, Montana, Missouri, Alabama, etc.

 

A huge employer in the banking industry moved to Wyoming two years ago because of tax incentives and lower cost of doing business. It left a gorgeous, huge building in downtown sitting there to rot and 600 people out of work and there are literally 100's of those stories.

 

Michigan has been mismanaged from the top down for a very long time and it has happened at the hands of both parties. So, you can't say it's the democrats or the republicans...it's both! I won't regale you, but the city of Flint's decay has gone hand in hand with Detroit and a few years ago their mayor had to be recalled and a state auditor put in charge of the books. What they found was sickening.

 

Mostly, Michigan's government for the past 25 years, have had their heads up their behinds in regards to sound fiscal policy and the warning signs that manufacturing was leaving and new industry would need to be attracted to the state. Of course, this is not anything different from the complete idiocy that has been displayed on "the hill" at the federal level. So, I guess I can't blame them too much. But, I have seen other states who saw the warning signs and tried to take action a lot sooner.

 

During the Clinton adminstration, several of Michigan's Army and Air Force bases were closed. Oscoda, which had a strategic air command base, has become almost a ghost town compared to what it once was. The base had been a huge employer for good civilian jobs and of course, military personnel spent a lot of money in local businesses. The loss of jobs was staggering. There were other base closures/contractures like this and it all hurts. Michigan was still trying to figure it's way out of those losses when the manufacturing jobs began to disappear and along with them, the support industries.

 

There is the dwindling tax base both on the business end and on the population end. The state, facing this, did not contract it's spending in many areas that it could have, for a very long time and now we have to pay the piper.

 

Detroit and Flint have a lot of similarities culturally. Education was not valued. Work was and the kind of work that once paid very, very well with generous benefits for not having a high school education. I know many men who retired from factories having never completed high school and having made GOOD money. Though their children did get high school diplomas, their parents encouraged them to try to find factory work through unionized shops because the money was good. It sounded great to a lot of kids of the 80's and 90's, but what they didn't see was NAFTA opening the door for their factories to go overseas. This left them unemployed and undereducated for the new job market. They lost their jobs, their homes, etc. Some, who lived in good neighborhoods, decent schools as schools go, and what not ended up moving to, let us say not greener pastures, because that's where the cheap rent was, the city bus could take them to the supermarket, etc. Their kids now go to crappy schools, in crappy neighborhoods, without any real hope of a future because Michigan is so bad that the well known mantra of even those going to college is, "Get a degree and flee the state." If you don't have the means to get even that, well, you can see the lack of hope.

 

I knew kids from poverty stricken homes that would study their brains out for the state scholarship attached to the MEAPS. This was enough to get them through community college or a couple of semesters at a commuter university such as SVSU and U of M Flint. Well, the state had to renig on those scholarships. So sorry, we are too broke. Many of the state grants awarded to low income kids to go to a state school...gone. To little was done, and now for many people, it appears to be too late.

 

Kids adapt to whatever crap is dished out to them. It's dysfunctional, but it is what helps them survive. With little hope on the horizon, they assume poverty to be their future and do not waste precious energy on a pipe dream of something different. They put that energy into surviving from day to day! It doesn't lend oneself well to applying your efforts to schoolwork. It appears to them that the teachers are just liars paid by the state to tell them that if they get an education there will be a job available for them when they do not believe this to be true.

 

If you watch the movie October Sky, you'll get a glimpse of a town situation that is the heart of what is happening now in Detroit/Flint/etc. - a town completely dependent on the coal industry with a mine slowly going defunct. People who have put all their hopes and dreams on always having a "good coal job" and no resources for when that is no longer true -schools that have been hampered in their teaching by a city and state administration that for years refused to face the truth and just didn't encourage education for the sake of education as it should have - teachers valiantly fighting in the trenches, just like that high school science teacher, for something better only to be looked down upon for what she was doing - ......................I could go on and on.

 

The absolute worst is that I don't think the situation has hit rock bottom yet. I think that thud is still ahead and I shudder to think what shape that bottom will take!

 

Faith

[stripe]

Detroit is ridiculously complicated. but one main factor is criminal mismanagement.

Including massive layers of fraud and corruption in the school system.

[swimmermom3]

pqr, thank you for starting this thread, even if it has stunned me to tears.

 

 

Here are pictures from the Detroit public school book depository. It was abandoned many years ago. Those piles and piles of rubbish are school text books some still inside their plastic wrapping. This is the publics tax dollars at work in the Detroit public school system.

 

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=detroit+school+book+depository&view=detail&id=67D26492FD7CA5371FF967D26492FD7CA5371FF9&first=1&FORM=IDFRIR&qpvt=detroit+school+book+depository

 

Stacy, I think I lost about two hours this afternoon reading photographer, James Griffioen's article and blog posts as well as looking at Youtube videos. He talked about he took the photos of the Book Depository because they were beautiful in their own way. He didn't realize the visceral response people would have to them. He decided to get to the bottom of how the whole mess happened. In 2008, he photographed the interiors of many of the Detroit schools that were closed the year before. Apparently, the company that was supposed to clear and secure the buildings never did, so students in active schools had to bring tp and light bulbs from home to the school while these abandoned schools contained millions of dollars worth of usable supplies, equipment, and textbooks. The schools were promptly broken into, stripped of all metal and completely vandalized. Thousands of students' personal records were left in the buildings for anyone to go through and take.

 

The problems in Detroit are many. The waste you see in those pictures is due to mismanagement from the top. SO you are shutting down schools, police stations, etc. OKay, there is a procedure for doing that and it was not followed. One thing both cities and corporations normally do when shutting down is call in liquidators. Obviously that was not done here.

 

I feel very naive. I had no idea that corruption could exist at this level and leave so many children without what I thought was a basic American right.

[ElizabethB]

 

I do believe the failure of schools, particularly reading instruction, is an important contributor to the problems of inner cities, both now and in the past. It's not the only issue, but it's an important one.

 

:iagree:

 

This article suggests they are ADDING in Reading Recovery with the volunteer tutors. That doesn't explain what has been used for the past 50 years. I don't think what schools are doing NOW really explains the cause of adult illiteracy.

 

And I just don't believe inner city decay has much to do with phonics.

 

Inner city decay is mainly from other problems, but phonics does play a part.

 

Here are two graphs for you, literacy and earnings and the percent of Americans at each literacy level:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/profitable.html

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/litpercent.html

 

And, phonics has not been well taught for large numbers for quite some time. Before 1826, it was well taught, then a period from 1876 to 1930, but even from 1876 to 1930 there were some pockets of whole word teaching, mainly in the form of the "sentence method," but also regular whole word methods.

[melmichigan]

The absolute worst is that I don't think the situation has hit rock bottom yet. I think that thud is still ahead and I shudder to think what shape that bottom will take!

 

Faith

 

:iagree:It is rippling across the state with no end in sight.

[ElizabethB]

Phonics also seems to be more important for minority children. Here is a good article with some nice graphs comparing black children in Fairfax, VA (with million dollar homes) to black children in Richmond, VA (mostly eligible for school lunch) after Richmond adopted phonics and Fairfax stuck with balanced literacy. (There was one school in Fairfax that taught with a good phonics program--and houses were $100,000 more in that neighborhood. Like the Catholic schools, I never found a failure from this school. Again, I thought I had, but I later found out that the student had transferred in from a school that taught sight words. The rest of the district had the typical 30% failure rate.)

 

http://www.votemariaallen.com/minority-achievement.html

 

(You can find newspaper articles if you google, but this has the best graphs.)

 

Also, my ESL students in Little Rock were more helped by phonics than my native English speaking students. They were also especially helped by Webster's Speller, the schwa/accent pattern was very helpful for their pronunciation and ability to learn to read 2+ syllable words.

[hana]

Faith Manor, I think you described the situation amazingly well. Thank you for doing that. (I live in Flint.)

[angela in ohio]

By coincidence, we were with my parents in Detroit this weekend, and we drove by the home we lived in when my dad was just out of the service. I was 5 at the time. My mom started talking about how we lived there (a Detroit suburb) and how I went to school for a few months (before we moved out of state) across the street at the church. She said I had to go there, because they were going to start busing kindergarteners from our block downtown that year, so the church opened a school to save the kids in the neighborhood. :ohmy:

 

I found this on Wikipedia: "The judge who instituted the Detroit busing plan said that busing "is a considerably safer, more reliable, healthful and efficient means of getting children to school than either car pools or walking, and this is especially true for younger children."[2] He therefore included kindergarten children in the busing scheme: "Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of forty-five minutes, one-way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way."[2] The resultant Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, imposed limits on busing: children could be bused only within Detroit's city limits, not between Detroit and its suburbs.[2] This case led to the "white flight" issue, which some believe results from busing: parents of white children moved to suburbs to avoid busing.[2]"

 

I had no idea I was a part of all that. I just know I had a nun for a kindy teacher. :001_smile: Anyway, I asked my mom more, and she said that many private and church schools opened to save the kiddos in those areas from the long bus ride to a school they didn't know (it wasn't about race, either, because the neighborhood we lived in was diverse even back then.) I suppose we can blame the busing program some, too, for those schools even opening to compete with DPS.

[FeFe]

This was not the most encouraging thread to read when your husband is in Detroit this very minute for a job interview.

 

I figure illiteracy is a big issue in most large inner cities but I had no idea about the other issues in Detroit.

[pqr]

Just found this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13384255

[Kile529]

I live about 30-45 minutes from Detroit. This isn't shocking to me at all. Also...if you visit...there are many many areas where you don't stop at a red light. ;)

[FaithManor]

Wait, so you drive through the light?

 

Oh Yes, absolutely and especially after dusk and before dawn. The gangs are out. The rare times I've gotten turned around and ended up someplace I didn't want to be, I've either never seen a police car or the ones I've seen apparently did not have a problem with my driving choice.

 

There are areas that it is best to NOT get lost in....non locals (and believe me, you are easily spotted) are not looked upon kindly. It's not just drug crime, Detroit has a lot of organized crime - mafia - stuff going on and being in the wrong place at the wrong time is one reason the murder rates is so high.

 

But, I don't consider it to be worse than Miami, L.A., NYC. or Philadelphia in terms of safety. Now that literacy rate...if Detroit were at the absolute bottom of the pit, I would not be shocked.

 

Faith

[lorisuewho]

Saw this today, The Call Detroit 11.11.11

[twoforjoy]

I live about 30-45 minutes from Detroit. This isn't shocking to me at all. Also...if you visit...there are many many areas where you don't stop at a red light. ;)

 

I live in Detroit. I can see midtown from my porch and downtown if I walk a couple of blocks.

 

I have ended up in parts of the city that I had never been in before and that seemed a bit sketchy a few times (once when going to the city dump--a trip to the Detroit city dump is an experience!--and once when I drove a pregnant student waiting at a bus stop by a local school home when it was very, very cold, and realized she lived all the way across the city--and, yes, I have given rides to people waiting at cold bus stops, especially older people or young pregnant women, and nobody has been anything but polite, gracious, and kind) and have had no problems at all. I'm a white person living here, and I haven't been treated as an "outsider" or "non-local." I once got lost in what I'm assuming was one of Detroit's "scary" areas, and I was given help by some men outside to find my way back on a road I knew. They weren't standing around waiting for a white chick to wander by so they could carjack her.

 

In fact, by the large, the people of Detroit have been the most kind, accepting, and generous people I've ever met. I feel more at home and welcomed here than I've felt living in suburbs where everybody looked like me. I'm hoping my husband can find a permanent job here, because I never want to leave. I have completely fallen in love with the city and the people here.

 

The people here are not animals roving around in packs looking for victims. In general--and certainly this isn't always the case, but just in general--if you or one of your family members are not involved in criminal activity, you have nothing to fear from gangs. Nearly all gang-related violence involves disputes with other gangs or over illegal activities. The innocent bystanders who do sometimes get hurt are usually family members or friends of people who are being targeted because of their gang or criminal involvement. White people visiting the city have very little to fear; there's pretty much no chance a gang is going to target and attack you. If you live here, then property crime is certainly a real issue and being robbed is something to be aware of and take reasonable precautions about (like not walking alone in certain areas after dark), but you certainly don't need to run red lights in the city. You just need to take the same common-sense precautions you'd take in any urban area. Put a club on your car--absolutely (in fact, my friends and I joke about having "guest clubs" stored in our front closets ;)); run red lights--unnecessary and dangerous.

 

There are certainly problems in the city, but the people here--and in other urban areas--aren't some strange, alien species who are more like animals than people. They just aren't. You really don't have to be afraid of the city or its people.

Edited September 24, 2011 by twoforjoy

[twoforjoy]

Saw this today, The Call Detroit 11.11.11

 

The problems in Detroit aren't caused by abortion, and they certainly aren't caused by Muslims. (Detroit's Middle Eastern population is, IMO, a beautiful asset.) They are caused by greed and racism, so let's cry out about that.

[Beth in OH]

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=detroit+school+book+depository&view=detail&id=67D26492FD7CA5371FF967D26492FD7CA5371FF9&first=1&FORM=IDFRIR&qpvt=detroit+school+book+depository

 

That is an amazing photo essay about the decline of a modern city. Thanks for posting!

[Sahamamama]

Alarming, yes. Hard to believe? Not if you live anywhere near it...

 

Dh is an Episcopal priest in downtown Detroit. The things he sees are just so sad. We have a number of parishoners who really cannot read.

 

:iagree:I have a close friend who lives in Detroit. Her husband is a public elementary school teacher there, and they are both involved in church ministries. From what we've talked about, I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher, more like 60% or more. Forty-seven percent seems low, actually.

[pqr]

T

They are caused by greed and racism, so let's cry out about that.

 

...and sometimes it is simply poor behavior on the part of the residents of an area. Almost anyone who wants to learn to read can, not to learn is a personal decision (or a choice made by parents of young children in not ensuring that they learn).

 

Your comments do a disservice to people by avoiding the real issue. In the overwhelming majority of cases no one makes someone refuse to learn, no one makes someone rob their neighbor. The fact that apparently some 47% of people in Detroit are illiterate is the fault of those who decided not to learn to read, and when adults still decide not to learn. ....so lets cry about that rather than making excuses for poor behavior.

[YLVD]

...and sometimes it is simply poor behavior on the part of the residents of an area. Almost anyone who wants to learn to read can, not to learn is a personal decision (or a choice made by parents of young children in not ensuring that they learn).

 

Your comments do a disservice to people by avoiding the real issue. In the overwhelming majority of cases no one makes someone refuse to learn, no one makes someone rob their neighbor. The fact that apparently some 47% of people in Detroit are illiterate is the fault of those who decided not to learn to read, and when adults still decide not to learn. ....so lets cry about that rather than making excuses for poor behavior.

 

This is one of the craziest things I've read in a long time. As someone that grew up in an inner city area, I can say that you are beyond mistaken.