>Wednesday, August 8, 2001
>
>White House plan to teach children to read- Administration focuses on
>accountability and science in promoting early literacy.
>By Francine Kiefer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
>
>
>Americans have long heard about the difficulties of learning to read. Now
>they're discovering more about the causes and solutions - which seem to lie
>in preschool years. A typical child, for instance, enters Head Start
>knowing only one letter of the alphabet. At the end of one year, he or she
>still knows only one letter. In some poor school districts, kids begin
>kindergarten not knowing basic words such as "chicken," "leaf," or
>"triangle." One study shows that three-year-olds from affluent families have
>larger vocabularies than some welfare parents. Now the Bush administration
>wants to make early childhood reading a national priority - but with a
>twist. It wants to promote only programs that are "proven" to be effective
>with scientific results.
my girlfriend/kindergarten teacher was 'asked' to participate in one of
these scientific programs one day a week after school for nine weeks with
kids who needed special help. the program model was this:
3 weeks of pretest (allowing the kids who are already struggling to see
just how much they do not know) -- 6 hours
3 weeks of instruction -- 6 hours
3 weeks of post-test -- 6 hours
they found modest gains.....
gary
shank@duq.edu
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