Jackson Jambalaya

The fail percentage is drastically different when you compare the white kids to the black kids. Education starts at home. I don't know how to resolve the issues black children face in the household, but that is what must be fixed.

I wonder how it would turn out if tenth graders in these districts took the same test?? There is enough blame to go around. Administrators, teachers, students, but probably parenting mainly. There are similar problems in all the districts, that Jackson is experiencing.

Parents. Parents. Parents.
Reading is so basic it can be taught at home or self taught if needed (imagine that).
These kids ain't farming from sunrise to sundown so what's the excuse?
Y'all got some pretty dumb genes in this gene pool or very lazy, disengaged parents.

5:18's post identifies the problem. At least a portion of a sentence does.

Now read 5:18, and then read 4:29. It's not like this problem is limited to Mississippi. Not by a long shot.

5:49 Actually there is a problem with Mississippi education or the gene pool. Have you seen the national rankings? It's not a black or white issue as 4:29pm claims. It's parenting. Plain and simple.
Do a google search on "Why Johnny can't read"? This ain't new. Any idiot can learn to read for free.
I repeat. Lazy, disengaged parents and the gene pool?
Too busy stuffing their faces with food?

Will the kids who did not pass be held back? That's a lot if kids in some schools. Parents who did not sit down and read to Johnny or Suzy or whatever names are made up now will be angry. Sad

From USA today:

"But reading scores are notoriously difficult to improve. While math scores on tests such as NAEP have improved substantially since testing began in the early 1990s, reading scores have increased only by slim margins. Experts believe that's because children learn math mostly at school, while they learn most of their language skills at home, much of it before they even enter school."

Parents are failing their kids.

I was born in the 50's. Neither of my parents went to college. Starting about age 3, my Dad sat me down on the living room couch and we "read" the Commercial Appeal every Sunday. I learned to recognize common words. I was also read Bible stories from a rather thick, illustrated book that I still have.

In first grade, we learned to read with phonics. There was no pre-school or kindergarten back then.

I scored 27 on the ACT and graduated both college and law school.

My only child was read from that Bible story book by both me, my wife, and our nanny until she was three. She started our church's pre-school which featured some watered down academics, including reading, and she excelled. She went to kindergarten accomplished at very basic reading. She made a 32 on the ACT, got substantial scholarships to a private college and had straight "A"s this past semester with no fluffy, easy courses.

You are damn right the parents have to shoulder the burden and shoulder it early. It need not be expensive, it can be as simple as my Dad reading me the newspaper and prompting me to recognize words.

If parents don't give a damn, there's no point in increasing my taxes to babysit huge numbers of people that will be lucky to get qualified to haul my garbage away.

Wow. The racism on this post is glaring. Mississippi is half black. So please tell us, which gene pool are you referring to?

Hi, the problem is bigger than any of you can comprehend and over all very sad. Many children will never be what they could be if their inadequacy to read, write or comprehend basic math is not detected and corrected at 2nd and 3rd grade. TV culture, sport escapism and parents who have no clue of what it takes to get a child ready for college 11 years ahead are all causes of the 3rd grade level failure. unlike some of you, gene pool or race, I believe you can reverse a child's trajectory at 3rd grade, so, in a way, it is a blessing that the system is detecting the problem. The price to pay to provide remedial is overall cheaper than what comes with a failed child at 18 years of age. I say, pay now or later.

Parents of failing students are making excuses that the legislature hasn't fully funded education, so that's why so many have failed. That's a crock of whatever....Don't blame the government or schools, it's not their job to follow your kid home to reinforce want he's learned for the day. The bottom line is you use school as a babysitter and expect them to train your child to be human, plus teach them the skills to get a good job and maybe go to college. After your kid returns from school/daycare, they watch YOU call your friends or relatives, cook a meal, wash some clothes and chill out, while they play with cousins and friends. Yes, you sign their notebooks, but do you ever practice "your" reading, by reading to them (if they're real little) or do they read to you while your cooking or folding laundry....bet not. When is the last time you took them ALONE to the library for a few hours. Do they even have a library card? Bet not. (BTW: that's called useful parental involvement) Parents of the failed students: don't you dare blame the system, blame yourselves or your families for reading failures. You see, you can get just so much free, (such as free services and money) and then it catches up to you....YOU actually-have-to-do-something (besides work) to help your child speak proper English all the time and to learn to read.

There many assumptions being made that aren't substantiated by research.

Yes, children with the advantage of good early parenting have an early advantage in school. And, parents who continue to focus on helping a child learn and develop good learning habits can continue the advantage to some extent on testing short term retention.

However, that advantage is erased by the 5th grade IF the child has the ability to learn.

It is not unimportant to know what percentage of these children have medical or learning disabilities before making judgments about the school performance.

Do remember that the dramatically increasing rate of autism is showing up in our schools.

There, also, are children who come to school without anyone knowing if they are too far sighted to read the words or have diminished hearing from having had untreated ear infections. They could have dyslexia.

My first question is have the 40% been evaluated and if so, what percentage of these children could be predicted to have problems reading?

How many of these children had problems at birth? Did they get good pre-natal care? Did the mother have a normal delivery? Was there mother a substance abuser?

Was their genetic potential altered before birth ? Genome studies are indicating that environmental exposures can alter the genes one is born having and that alteration can get passed along to the next generation.

While good genes have nothing to do with race, they do matter. They do have a great deal to do with ability to learn.

If these teachers are trying to teach children with IQs below 70 in a public school setting geared to average, you have not only created " Mission Impossible" to expect those children to test average, but you are likely diminishing the time a teacher has to teach the average and above average child. So the latter is becoming more bored by the second.


Children are not born equal. We are committed in our Constitution to equal opportunity, however!

And, children with learning challenges can learn with specialized help. A child born without a medulla graduated from junior college and worked at the Ag Museum! Her parents made sure she got the special help she needed!


We are too enamored with testing. Test results are meaningless if you don't have a good description of the sample population you are testing!!!! And, some of it has become useless in that it is testing memory, not comprehension.

A child with learning disabilities scoring 40% on a reading test geared for IQs of 100 would be miraculous and that teacher should be praised not trashed!

Y'all are making good points. However, over half of a school failing means there is a serious problem at that school.

Does it bother anyone that there are B school districts that have a huge share of their third graders who apparently can't read at reading level?

Are we socially promoting the school districts themselves?

By the way, Clinton is 50% black.

9:06 are you a racist? This has nothing to do with color. Anyone can be taught to read. It's not hard or expensive. It costs time and attention that is all.
If you want to suggest the "gene pool comment" is about blacks then you are the racist.
The history of forced illiteracy on blacks should have every black person in Mississippi taking full advantage of the free education offered and MOST OF ALL teaching their kids to read.

Of course, there's a problem.
We just don't know what the problem is addressing it politically and intuitively rather than empirically.

How is the rating system determined?

Does the criteria include the buildings and equipment and teacher qualifications and subjects offered and parental involvement? If so, a school could be great in all those areas but still have a student body that has a low percentage of average to above average learners.

Is it based on testing of last year's students who may have been better performers? Or did the school lose good teachers to the private sector?

One of the greatest problems to me is that we are having politicians and parents and politics drive the discussion without knowing what questions they should be asking!

If everyone is concerned about the learning disabled brining the test scores down, just flag those with medically approved disabilities. Include their scores with with an asterisk. Now before every parent does this, remember this will be a permanent part of your child's record, even going into high school. The consequences can be harmful or helpful in the future. They will always have this disability, but it doesn't mean they're stupid! In some testing, for instance, they won't be timed. Even a slow learner can we taught, it just takes a parent that is determined to see they that succeed, by also working with them at home.

3:44
"Even a slow learner can we taught, it just takes a parent that is determined to see they that succeed, by also working with them at home."

Excellent point! Parents are the problem. Read to your kids unless as I stated... A large part of the Gene pool in those failing schools are full of lazy, fat, disengaged parents (this group is in every color so don't call me racist).

Here's a point. Not a single school district in the country makes it a requirement that kids already know how to read before they start first grade. Schools are supposed to assume that their kids don't know how to read, and consequently they're supposed to teach them. What these scores show is that schools have no idea how to teach kids to read. If they come in already knowing, then great. But if they come in not knowing, the schools apparently have no idea how to teach them to read. And this is having the kids for 6 or 7 hours each day.

This is not about dysfunctions in the home. This is clearly a case of schools not having a clue what to do, and instead relying on the parents to have already taught the kids.

If the reality is that kids do pick up most of their language skills in their first 4 years, and if they don't they will never catch up, then schools need to make certain preliminary skills mandatory. Such as, "Don't bring your kid to first grade if they don't already know how to read, because otherwise we won't be able to help them." That is a much different model than what we have in our schools today.

First, Mississippi is NOT 'half black'. If you can read, you can Google.

Second; for the love of God please stop dancing around the issue of race. When will the black population or black posters to this site admit the problem. If you won't admit the problems, you won't solve them. If you keep shooting with a scatter gun claiming others are guilty of racism and that race has nothing to do with crime or poor performance in school, that's all you'll do.

While you will readily jump on the ACLU gimmick-card that 'too many black children are disciplined in school', then why the hell won't you jump to the reality that 'too many black children are failing in school'?

And futhermore, on a related note, far too many young black mommas and daddies talk like THIS on twitter, facebook and in everday conversation: 'dat, dis, flo, mo, sho, ho. Please tell me how someone who speaks that way will even be ABLE to sit down at home and read to or with their children. Word recognition, proper pronunciation and phonetics are essential to reading.

Buck up, own the damned problem and do something about it.

Madison Ave. Upper - 99%. Can't say enough about Madison schools, students, parents, and teachers. Great job to all!

@ 6:30AM: Excellent observation. Now the next discussion will be the "I have the right to send my illiterate, failing child to any school I want 'cause I got a voucher, but I won't be physically moving into that school district because I can't afford the high rent."

Schools are merely a reflection of Society

If the parents were to all take a multiple choice test, how many might choose this answer: "What he need to read for? I don't read and I do fine." Of course a teacher would have to read the choices of answers and show most parents which circle to color-in.

Since colleges and universities and employers are not requesting nor getting elementary school assessments, I think it's a bit ridiculous to fail to help a struggling child for fear his disabilities will become a life long identity rather than a problem that is faced, addressed and resolved early!

That argument sounds more like parents worrying about their current image than their child's future!

I suggest to all of you strongly that you need to love and help the child you have rather than the child you imagined you would have! And, realism is necessary to do that!