As those who follow the education scene know well, literacy testing takes up a huge amount of time, effort and money. Tom Sticht, an international consultant in education, in reviewing the field has termed the situation "The Debacle of Testing Literacy Ability." He summarizes the state of affairs as follows:

"Despite extensive use of standardized tests by the 50 states, 30-year reading trend data show minimal if any improvement for 9-, 13-, or 17-year-old children since the early 1970s...Further, the testing of adult literacy in 1992 and again in 2003 shows little or no improvement in literacy at the lowest levels and a decline at the highest levels."

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Posted by Marion Blank at 08:19 PM
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As a four year old, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was reported to "play faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy" Behavior like that makes musical talent intriguing and mysterious.

Given that certain families produce abundant numbers of musicians, sci­en­tists have long sus­pected that talent in this realm mu­sic might have ge­net­ic roots. Now research indicates that they may be right. Sci­en­tists in Finland say they’ve found ap­prox­i­mate loca­t­ions in our ge­nome where genes af­fect­ing mu­si­cal tal­ent may lie. The find­ings suggest not only that mu­si­cal abil­ity is partly ge­net­ic but it may share ev­o­lu­tion­ary roots with lan­guage.

Continue reading "Musical Genes? They May Even Tell Us Something About Dyslexia" »

Posted by Marion Blank at 06:58 PM
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At the heart of the No Child Left Behind law is a $6 billion program called Reading First. In a front page story this past week, the Washington Post offered the disheartening news that that "students enrolled in the program are not reading any better than those who don't participate." Guided by the idea that comprehension is the ultimate goal in reading, the study focused on reading comprehension, rather than other aspects of reading such as whether kids grasp phonics.

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Posted by Marion Blank at 12:01 AM
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This month, a fascinating study was reported, showing that dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. The study was conducted by Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong and was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI's), Tan's group studied the brains of students raised reading Chinese. They then compared those findings with similar studies of the brains of students raised reading English.

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Posted by Marion Blank at 04:15 PM
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We hear over and over again about the problems in American education. Unfortunately, dire warnings have become so commonplace that we often don't pay them much heed. But Bob Herbert, a columnist in the New York Times, has offered some facts and figures that should make us take notice.

For example,

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds.

More than a million drop out every year.

These are among the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.

Think about it! Two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are leaving, without the skills to negotiate the modern world.

Continue reading "Education in America: An Institution in Crisis" »

Posted by Marion Blank at 12:02 PM
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With all the many problems that are swirling around us, it's easy to feel a bit downcast. When that happens, a smile can work wonders. Hopefully some of these one liners will do that for you.

Time is a great healer, but a terrible beautician.

If #2 pencils are the most popular, are they still #2?

I live in California, and my watch is three hours fast, I can't fix it, so I'm moving to New York.

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include free trips around the sun.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and drycleaners depressed?

It's not who you know, it's whom you know. (It's so nice when jokes also teach some language.)

Continue reading "Time for Some Smiles" »

Posted by Marion Blank at 05:41 PM
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