Adoption Rights

The New York Times has a discussion today here about the adoption of a two-year-old American-Indian girl by a non-Indian family.  The case originated in South Carolina, where state law allowed the biological parents' rights to be terminated after a year.  At that time, the adoption was made permanent. However, there is a federal law saying that any adoption of American Indian children has to be reviewed by an American-Indian board.  Consequently, the little girl has been removed from her adoptive home, where she has been since birth, and given to her biological father.  My comment:

Two things:

1.  Best interest of the child needs to be the overriding factor.  Children are not ketchup  bottles, parceled out to the party that has the best “right” to them.  The first few years of a child’s life have a huge—perhaps defining—role in determining whether or not the child will grow up to be a stable, productive, loving adult.  The earlier the child can be placed in a stable, nurturing home, the better.  One year is plenty of time for the birth parents to try to regain rights.  After that the adoption should be permanent.

2.  If the supreme court agrees with the state court, and allows the birth father to regain rights at this late date, it will have a chilling effect on adoptions nationwide—both for people hoping to adopt, and for adoptive parents.   How can they be sure that the child is theirs to keep?  

The Skills Gap

In The Hill newspaper today here, Senator Rubio calls for action to reduce what he calls the "skills gap" of American students.  I pretty much agree with him, but he left out a crucial issue:

Mr. Rubio, there is one reform that, across the board in every subject and in every classroom, would drastically improve the skill level of U.S. students.  It’s not tricky, every teacher could do it, and it doesn’t cost much.

Here it is:  Throw out the all of the Language Arts exercises mandated by the new Common Core standards, and flood the classrooms with high interest mysteries, fantasy novels, suspense thrillers, romances—and any other reading that kids can easily love.

You don’t believe me?  Here is one of the standards for 8-year-olds:  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.2  "Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.”

Could third graders do that?  Well, maybe, with a LOT of coaching.  But why bother?  Third graders need to be hunched over fascinating reading material.  Making them find lessons and morals in multi-cultural myths will simply turn them off to reading. 

Stephen Krashen, in his book The Power of Reading:  Insights from the Research, explains that teaching skills is just testing skills.  Kids acquire skills through wide, avid reading.

To increase the skill level of our students, we need to make developing avid readers our first priority. This means schools must be told to stop doing all of these useless skill exercises that discourage that development. Once students have excellent reading skills, they can easily acuire the other skills that the job market requires. Kids who are poor readers have trouble in all academic areas. 

Students Rising Above

The Huffington Post has an article on a group called SRA (Students Rising Above) here.  SRA provides help for students who have overcome great obstacles but still need help in completing college and finding a good job.  My comment:

My experience with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds supports this kind of help.  Really, what SRA is doing is proving the kind of financial, social, and emotional support that loving, upper-class families provide for their children.

But my experience also suggests that this kind of help is not enough.  The underlying problem for most of these students is an academic one:  they don't have the skills to succeed in college courses.  Making a huge effort, early on in these children's lives, to bring them to a love and habit of reading will help ensure they have the academic credentials to take advantage of the SRA help.

Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, and have wider frames of reference that make all learning easier.

Texas: Great in Accountability; Not so Great in Achievement

The Dallas New Education blog has an entry describing how well Texas is doing in accountability and testing here.  My comments:

Hmmm.   C-minus in K-12 achievement?  I would argue that is the most important marker.  Who cares if the state is doing great in testing and standards if the kids aren’t learning?

There is an easy solution to this.  Make the development of avid readers a priority in Texas schools.  Flood the schools and classrooms with reading material that is fascinating to kids.  Introduce large amounts of free-choice reading into the curriculum.  Give the kids lots of time in school to curl up with a book of their own choice

Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, and have wider frames of reference that make all learning easier.  Developing avid readers—rather than a showy system of standards and assessments—should be the main goal of Texas schools.

On-line Learning

Mr. Schaffhauser, in The Journal, a magazine about transforming education through technology, has a nice column here describing the exciting things kids can do in online sites.   My comment:

I think Mr. Schaffhauser is on the right track.  Any kind of learning that gets kids excited and engaged will increase skills much more than learning that is done reluctantly and under pressure.  Certainly having kids taking part in online games and stories is wonderful.

I would argue that classrooms should also be set up so that students can get excited and engaged with what they are doing.  I let my high school English students choose most of their own reading, and their own writing assignments.  Consequently, I got wonderful work from the majority of my kids.

Whether kids are online or offline, they should be given the opportunity to have a real say in their own learning.