re: The education data out of Mississippi is getting more insane. They have zoomed past CA

This! My daughter is in kindergarten at a charter school here in Baton Rouge. The teacher is teaching phonics based. I also work with her at home on the phonics and she is picking up pretty easy.

I had never realized until recently that places have done away with phonics and it makes no sense. Why?

Teacher and educational unions have always actively opposed the betterment of the students - because that would require effort by teachers.

But were more than happy to force commonly retarded core math down everyone’s throats

That entire article is really worth reading.

LINK

quote:

---

While Louisiana is still living with its parents on food stamps.

---

Louisiana is a focus in the article.

quote:

---

Mississippi’s success is exciting. But perhaps even more exciting is that other states have achieved strong results with the same basic playbook. Louisiana clawed its way from 49th in the 2019 state rankings to 32nd (in fourth grade, where reforms are often visible the soonest, it went from 42nd in 2022 to 16th). Tennessee made it into the top 25 states for the first time.

---

You should read it.

quote:

---

this is not surprising. California and other liberal states are banning gifted programs, teaching how math is racist and other crap that is ruining their children’s education. All the while southern states like Mississippi just continue to teach.

---

People need to stop politicizing the reading issue because it blurs the actual point: “whole language” is a bullshite method to teach kids to read. Phonics before it and science of reading after (basically phonics+) are both vastly superior. Now, California is clinging to whole language for arguably political reasons (basically it’s better for kids who already speak another language), but that’s tangential to the fact that whole language is bullshite and needs to die.

quote:

---

This was never that hard Failure is not to be tolerated. When it is, everyone suffers Hold the kids back who can’t read until they can

---

You can hold them back as long as you want; whole language is a garbage way to teach kids to read.

quote:

---

What’s the other way they’ve been teaching?

---

According to the article the use the "whole language" method that encourages students to vaguely guess at words based on context instead of figuring them out sound-by-sound.

Looking into that further starts to peel back the layers of the onion.

LINK

quote:

---

The “whole language” approach got its start in the 1800s through Horace Mann, a politician who is today widely known as “the father of American education.” A fierce advocate for literacy and education, Mann warned against teaching children to sound out words letter by letter because he worried that it would distract them from the words’ meaning.

---

quote:

---

As the American public education system grew and developed, many educators followed Mann’s lead and taught children to memorize the appearance of words instead of teaching them to decode the letters.

---

quote:

---

With a literature focus, whole language immersed students in reading and writing, operating under the assumption that learning to read comes naturally, and students would gain the phonics skills they needed within the context of their reading.

---