That was an entertaining piece.

alamo,

As most of this thread suggested, ALL KIDS ARE DIFFERENT. If you’re a teacher, how are you going to deal with it? Will they ALL flourish in a phonics program? Go for it.

“Chall recognized the need to combine the two methods.”

Where? I’ve read two of her books and don’t recall her saying anything like this. Reference please?

“Children are exquisitely attuned to the way adults size them up, so there was never any mystery about where anyone stood. Those of us in the dumb kids’ class took it as a badge of honor. Smart kids were pampered kiss-asses, overly concerned with pleasing teachers and parents. Dumb kids took no s—.”

Bowden concludes: “It’s well and good to enjoy the world’s esteem, I learned, but better still to be underestimated. ”

It’s an entertaining piece:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/dumb-kids-8217-class/8981/

Chall recognized that holistic approaches help learners recognize irregular words which do not sound as they are spelled, and give children a jump-start in the early years. For this reason, Chall recognized the need to combine the two methods. Because phonics nurtures logic, and whole-language is based on memory, children can benefit from both. Having said that, if forced to choose, Chall’s preferences are clear. She argued that if children are to become independent self-educating readers, they need a good grounding in phonics.

“Systematically analyzing a vast body of qualitative and quantitative research, Chall compares achievement rates that result from traditional, teacher-centered approaches with those resulting from progressive, student-centered methods. Her findings are striking and clear: that teacher-centered approaches result in higher achievement overall, with particular benefits for children of lower socioeconomic status and those with learning difficulties.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Academic-Achievement-Challenge-Classroom/dp/1572307684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337867313&sr=8-1

You claim that Chall said, “Some kids learn to read best phonetically while some do better in a sight program.”
You seriously misrepresent Chall when you make this claim.
Here’s a brief summary of one of her most popular books. This summary was written by Diane Ravitch:

“In 1961, as the debate about how to teach reading continued, the Carnegie Corporation of New York commissioned Jeanne Chall, who was well established as a careful reading researcher, to review the controversy. Chall spent three years visiting hundreds of classrooms, analyzing research studies, and examining textbooks; she interviewed textbook authors, reading specialists, and teachers.

“Chall found that studies of beginning readers over the decades clearly supported decoding. Early decoding, she found, not only produced better word recognition and spelling, but also made it easier for the child eventually to read with understanding. The code emphasis method, she wrote, was especially effective for children of lower socioeconomic status, who were not likely to live in homes surrounded with books or with adults who could help them learn to read. For a beginning reader, she found, knowledge of letters and sounds had more influence on reading achievement than the child’s tested mental ability or IQ.”
http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/researchbytopic/4853/

Differentiation is not as common as you believe. So many kids are conveniently grouped so the teacher has less prep, less work, but the differences in these “groups” can still be enormous.

I had the privilege of hearing Jeanne Chall speak a couple of times at Harvard. Her overriding message: Some kids learn to read best phonetically while some do better in a sight program. There are some who need some kind of combination of the two. Their differences need to be diagnosed early so they can then be placed in the appropriate program. A teacher cannot teach a phonetic program to the whole class and expect them all to flourish. The same with a sight program. The district must be willing to purchase both kinds of programs or some kids will simply be short changed.

You’re railing against a straw man. Differentiation and social promotion is the status quo now. You’d be hard pressed to find a school doesn’t use it.

And you’re still not answering my question. Why? Why is it that we have so many students who are not achieving at grade level? It can’t be just environment or socioeconomic level, because Hirsch has shown that poor, minority students in France achieve academic success with appropriate instruction. Same with poor kids in China. What’s the difference? Again, I wish you would look into the work of Dianne McGuiness and Jeanne Chall. Their research shows that, with proper instruction starting in Kinder, virtually every 2nd grader should be able to read.

“it’s my belief many of these differences would be self-remedied by students themselves.”

I have several 3rd-5th graders that demonstrate this is not true. Sure, they want to read. They work hard. But they don’t understand the English code. How can they teach it to themselves when neither they nor their teachers even know what it is? After 3-4 years in school they weren’t able to “self-remedy” their reading problems. They got worse, as the maladaptive reading strategies they were taught became entrenched habits. Yes, I meet them where they are, which in this case means that I teach them Kinder and 1st grade decoding skills. And they are making progress. Still I ask, why were they allowed to get to the point where they can’t read in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade? We can’t keep sweeping this question under the rug. It is an injustice to these kids. But it is easier to claim that these kids are “just different” then to confront the fact that we teacher are to blame for these “differences” emerging in the first place.

It should not be just CK schools that need to address this issue. It’s my (humble) opinion all teachers in all schools need to deal with student differences and not pretend they don’t exist because it’s the most convenient approach for them.

Some (chronological) “second” graders might need to spend the bulk of their year reinforcing/learning/mastering first grade, even kindergarten material and hopefully get into the second grade curricula before the end of the year. All kids ARE different. It’s about time this reality is finally being acknowledged. That’s what this approach recognizes and addresses. It’s a given, not all second graders will “master” most of “What Your Second Grader Needs to Know.” As well, some youngsters in second grade could master a great deal of the third grade curriculum and even some of the fourth. So? Address them where they are. Are teachers professional educators or time markers as to how long a student has been in school?

BTW, it’s my belief many of these differences would be self-remedied by students themselves. It was my experience everyone in the class knew exactly where everyone else was in all the discipline sequences. The LAST thing any one of these kids wanted was to be determined at the bottom of the class. All kids, deep down, want to succeed in school. Most worked their little behinds off to get themselves along in the sequences. As the teacher you too, worked extra hard to get them along as did their classmates. It was community spirit at its best as part of the hidden structure I discussed in the book. Heart-warming.