…'Good' schools - failure of suburban schools to teach basic math and reading - Back to School: Dumb and Dumber - Cover Story

National Review, Sept 25, 1995 by Jen Riptoes

I TEACH in a Basic Skills Improvement Plan at a lovely, well-maintained suburban elementary school. The students I work with have average or above-average intelligence according to CAT (California Achievement Tests), yet they arrive in a third-grade BSIP class unable to read, write, speak coherent English, or do basic math -- addition and subtraction problems with carrying and borrowing.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at how their classrooms functioned for first and second grades, then went into shock. I had assumed that what went on in a classroom was at least somewhat similar to what had gone on when I was in primary grade school.

What do you expect to find in a first-grade classroom? What do you believe should be going on in the morning hours before a young child tires and gets hungry?

The typical first-grade class is strolling about the classroom to look over 'centers.' A center is a section of a classroom set apart by partitions, book cases, or carpeting. Centers are geared up for each child to explore, experiment, and discover. There is, as a rule, no adult present who is equipped to provide proper vocabulary or direction for the exploration or discovery.

Now, are we ready to watch our young children explore their way through the 3 Rs? The teacher is trying to organize a reading group on the carpet 'center.' The children are lying on the floor with their books; several of them are wearing their books on top of their heads. Teacher has a book too. Everyone reads along as Teacher reads the words, and reads the words, and reads the words. Then a little person reads the same words, and the next little person reads the same words, and the next little person reads the same words. All the little people read the same words. These words now go on a word ring. The ring will go home, and voila! every little person knows the same words. Reading is done for the day. Let's go on to math -- get out the beans, the sticks, the giant Lego blocks that have replaced math texts and workbooks. Let's play math.

I AM not making up these classroom activities. They are real. Reading is part of Whole Language Development, math is part of Living Skills, and writing is done through Journals. Journals. Here is the sum total of first- and second-grade education demonstrated, or illustrated. Each day the students transcribe their memorable activities in a journal. Innovative spelling minus any organized program that would teach handwriting results in absolute gibberish; therefore, pictures are accepted instead.

The picture of education does not get any better as you move up to the next grade. The classrooms continue to have centers and carpeted areas for reading on the floor. What you do seem to see, however, is more diligence to nonsense.

Third grade is where Developmental Education is supposed to end. This is where everyone is supposed to be ready to do structured reading, structured writing, and structured math with real applications. If this is supposed to happen, then where are the textbooks? There is no Basal Reader or workbook, there are no language or spelling books or handwriting books; there are math texts that are unreadable, with no more than seven or eight problems per page, and there are bean counters, sticks, blocks, and the new toy calculators.

The third-grade students are still doing their reading on the carpet -- Teacher reading the words, students following along, one chapter at a time. Students cannot read ahead to get to the end of a story because the books are collected and put away. So it goes on -- word by word, sentence by sentence. (And where does it end? Take a quick peek at a 'low' seventh-grade reading class. The students are following along in their novel -- word by word -- as they listen to it read on a tape recorder.)

Parents start to notice that their child, aged seven or eight, cannot read. Why can't their child read? Read? Read? These parents are met with a chorus of teachers or administrators responding, 'Your child is just not developmentally ready,' or 'Your child may be perceptually or neurologically impaired. We really cannot tell yet, because we do not give any standardized tests to K, first-, or second-graders. We really won't know how your child is doing until the end of second grade when we administer CAT tests. Trust us. We are the professionals. We know what is best for your child. Trust us! Trust us! Trust us!'

This is reality in the suburbs. This is what is foisted on a trusting populace. This is what is foisted on the dwindling number of teachers who are leftovers from a time when the word education meant education.

Classroom teachers no longer have the freedom to teach. They are closely monitored, examined, and graded. Excellence is out. Conformity is in. All subject material comes out of a box -- lesson by numbered lesson, game piece by game piece, ditto by ditto. No variations accepted.

Personally I am grateful to be not a classroom teacher but a BSIP teacher. My job is to live up to what BSIP stands for: Basic Skills Improvement Plan. I plan to improve the education of each individual child who comes into this program.