The Mississippi Democratic Trust issued this press release written by Representative Bobbie Moak (D-Two Sisters):
Punishing Children for the Sins of their
Legislators
When children grow up they reach a point where something just
clicks. Things that were complex suddenly make perfect sense. Toddlers who
could barely crawl can run at a dead sprint within a few days. Children who had
difficulty reading the simplest picture books will suddenly jump to chapter
books.
Sometimes it takes a great teacher to make that connection
happen. Sometimes it’s a parent, a friend, or just finding the right book to
capture a student’s attention. Usually it’s a combination of all of these
factors creating an environment where children motivate themselves to want to
learn. If any ingredients are missing, the process slows to a crawl.
This week, the Greenwood school district announced they would
lay off 25 teacher’s assistants. This announcement comes at the same time that
Mississippi’s classroom overcrowding is getting worse. Personal instruction is
even harder to find. The public school classroom has reached a point of crisis,
and our legislative leadership has decided to make the problem exponentially
worse.
This year, Gov. Phil Bryant pushed for a “3rd Grade
Reading Gate.” It is an accountability measure that holds children back a grade
if they fail to adequately learn to read.
Like a lot of the grand education plans of this administration, it
sounds good on paper, but if they took the time to read their own talking
points they might figure out it’s going to be a disaster.
Gov. Bryant based this plan on a highly successful 3rd
grade reading gate program implemented in Florida. However, there is a stark
contrast in the current educational climates of these states: Florida invests
more than a billion dollars in a pre-k program that ensures each child has all
of the resources necessary to achieve proficient literacy.
Gov. Bryant, on the other hand, opposes funding for a similar
program. We spend 3 cents on preschool for every dollar Florida spends. This pays for fewer than 50 literacy coaches
to help nearly 40,000 third graders in the state. To make matters worse, Gov. Bryant and the
Legislative Leadership refuse to fund MAEP which funds the teacher assistants,
(which help pre-k children learn to read) and schools like Greenwood and others
have to lay off the very people who help our children learn to read before the
3rd grade.
Our children have been set up to fail, based largely on lack
of funding, a stalwart position of the Bryant administration. To make the
problem worse, we will now be holding approximately 7,000 more children in the
third grade, but the state budget provides no extra funds to accommodate such a
severe logjam of students packing 3rd grade classrooms.
Over the long term, significantly more children will be in
K-12 school for 14 years, instead of 13. Schools that have been strapped under
years of underfunding will now be forced to stretch budgets even thinner to
accommodate an extra year of schooling for about 18% of Mississippi students.
This administration thought this would be a good way to
continue their assault on Mississippi educations by “holding teachers
accountable.” But it’s our children that must pay the price for the
legislature’s hostile relationship with education.
This poorly planned law asks 9-year-old children to fix a
problem the Governor and our legislative leadership can’t seem to comprehend.
Holding children back and creating an unfunded mandate for public schools in
Mississippi isn’t the answer.
Perhaps it is time for the voters of our state to hold the
Governor and legislative leadership accountable for creating rules that set our
children up to fail. The reading gate for the legislature should start with the
writing on the wall: fully fund our schools.
Rep. Bobby Moak
601-668-4194
5 comments:
Yes, and Common Core was thoroughly planned out and tested.
Public education is a sham, implemented by know-nothing legislators, and implemented by educators who focus more on social engineering than actual education.
Note the typical Democrat, progressive, liberal...you pick the term, argument- all about mo money! Never about personal responsibility. Parents are responsible for the children they have and that responsibility extends to their education. Want your child to read - pay for it! Stop taxing me for the 3 minutes of sexual gratification you had creating little Johnny or Jane.
Things will not improve much until discipline and respect are restored to teachers. BUT, in lieu of 3rd grade reading requirement, social promotion guarantees drop-out and graduation rates remain static. The writer seems to forget that we have head start and day care places devoted to helping pre-schoolers in reading readiness. The children who truly suffer are those who are at home with illiterate adults who ignore them and who do not make 5 year olds attend Kindergarten. Maybe Greenwood should consider parent volunteers or retired persons to volunteer to help with reading. Maybe they should seek grants to obtain iPads and use the on-line reading tools. Maybe they should look at cutting Administrative costs. Of course, the current Federal demand for labels and numbers and the obsession with counting everything including caloric intake/student adds excessively to cost per student. What the state is trying to accomplish is certainly a change and without changing the status quo we know what the results will be.
translation : 25 people are about sign up for unemployment benefits.
Teachers' Assistants (properly spelled) don't teach children to read. They allow the teacher to stay out of the classroom, help children locate their coats and bring the teachers home-baked snacks to help them get through the day.
Serving no useful purpose (otherwise), these people are just a notch below employees who drive the van labeled 'Friends Of Children' ~ another glaring ripoff.
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