Did you know that your child has about a 40% to 50% chance of having reading problems? According to the United States Dept. of Education about 40% to 50% of all children have problems learning to read. Forty to fifty percent, and the schools want us to believe that it is NOT their fault. Who's fault is it? If forty to fifty percent of the cars we buy were defective, would it be our fault? Think about it…40% to 50%!
If you have a child who has a reading problem you have no doubt been told that your child has a "learning disability." If this "disability" persists, you will probably be told that your child has an attitude problem or is stubborn or lazy or not motivated, or not doing homework. All of these "conditions" are problems of the child. What about the school? Maybe this is a teaching disability not a learning disability! Schools have our students about 6 hours a day and they want us to believe that the problem is at home!
How come this never happened years ago? Why is it that the problem seems to have occurred in the past twenty or thirty years? The truth is, this reading problem has been around at least as long as they have been keeping records, probably forever. Recent government reports show that reading achievement scores have either decreased or stayed the same for the past 22 years (when they began testing and keeping records.) The reason it appears to be a new phenomena is due to the way jobs (for adults) have changed. Forty or fifty years ago if a student failed to learn to read well, they went on to work in a factory or held a blue collar job. Today most of those jobs have been shipped overseas and the people who can't read are showing up living on the street, being jailed, or at best underemployed. We notice this more because it is becoming a bigger and bigger burden on society.
To compound the confusion, schools and the federal government have developed what they call "special education." Ask a principal or a special education teacher what makes it 'special.' The best they can probably tell you is that in some cases there are fewer kids in a classroom. They usually leave out the fact that a large percentage of these kids have major behavior problems and their teachers spend as much or more time dealing with the behaviors as they do teaching. What is your child learning from the children who are displaying behavior problems? Are the methods that these teachers use 'special'? Think about it, would anyone really use sub-standard teaching methods for the majority of children and 'special' methods for the 10% of kids on special education programs? Lets hope not. Do you know what the requirements are to receive this special education? Well, there are many, but the craziest one of all is that your child must be two years behind before he or she is given extra help. Two years! What that means is, your third grader must be reading on a first grade or lower level to be identified as a child in need. No wonder there are so many people with literary problems. Two years!
There are many parents who "push" the school system. They are the noisy wheels that get the most grease. What do they do? They write letters to supervisors, hire lawyers, and in many cases yell a lot. What does this get them? Usually not much except the ire of the teachers. If a teacher finds you annoying, do you think they will go out of their way to help your child. Maybe, maybe not. Face it, we are all human. All teachers want their students to succeed. What happens if they don't know why Johnny can't read, and worse don't know what to do about it. Not all, but many teachers will simply tell you what you want to hear, "Johnny is improving." Improving how, how much, how fast, how can you tell and why, are good questions to ask. If you are a teacher feeling pressured, and you give a child a reading test, how difficult would it be to 'fudge' the test? Even if you didn't mean to, it is easy to help a student take a test simply with body language or facial expressions. So what if you say he moved ahead one quarter of a year, if he is tested next year and found to have lost that gain, maybe it was the next year's teacher fault. Schools only test special education students every three years, did you know that?
Does anyone know what the problem is? Not really, but there has never been another approach to teaching reading besides the one schools use now. Lets look at that approach for a minute. At age five, children spend an entire school year learning the alphabet. Do you use the alphabet when you read? When was the last time you really needed the alphabet. Lets assume it is important. First they teach kids that this 'A' is a capital A. Next they teach them that this 'a' is an A also, but a lower case A. Lower case, what does that mean to a five year old. Then after they teach that 'A' and 'a' and all the other letters, they give you a book that does NOT have an 'a' in it, it has an 'a' instead. A little confusing…how about if you are five. They tell you all these letter names, which are different from the sounds they represent. (Most teachers say, "the sounds they make"…they don't make any sounds that I can hear.) Many children become lost when the same basic shape 'b' is different when it is moved to d, p, q, etc.
Lets assume that our five year old has figured all this out. What happens if this child has ear infections, misses a few days, or just plain doesn't pay attention for awhile. What five year old stays on task all day? When they return or when they start paying attention, the class is on lesson 12, they need lesson 2, will they get it? Only if they repeat the grade! Could you skip a few (or a lot) lessons while attempting to learn a foreign language? Every adult that has ever know a child knows that all kids are different. Yet our schools teach one size fits all. No wonder 40 to 50 percent of kids have problems.
Our schools tell us that teaching them more phonics is the answer. How's your phonics? Over 90 percent of elementary school teachers fail the phonics test on our web site. How do teachers teach phonics. Lets look at one lesson. The teacher says that the sound that the letter 'B' makes is "bah". The short sound for the letter A is "ah". And the letter T makes the "tah" sound. Now students, lets put that together and we get "bat", right? No we get "Bah at" because the teacher has to project her voice so that the students can hear the sound a B makes. The B actually only makes a breath sound, but students have a hard time hearing that, so teachers say "bah". Remember….you're five. Now take all these letters and the sounds they make and somehow make a gigantic leap to reading. The problem is a little more obvious now, isn't it.
It sounds pretty bleak because it is pretty bleak. What can you do? Every day counts. Children's attitude harden. How long can they feel stupid before they give up? How often can their classmates tease them and call them retard before they are hurt? Many students become behavior problems because it is a lot less painful to be 'bad' than it is to be 'stupid.' If your child is having problems and is in elementary school, wait till they get to middle school! The combination of hormones, learning difficulties, the huge role that peer approval or disapproval plays, and interest in the opposite sex is more than many parents can deal with. Many parents give up too at this point.
Forever, the approach used with students having reading problems was to attempt to teach them more phonics. Say the word phonics to a student with reading problems and they instantly become defensive and angry. Have teachers done this because it worked? No! They have done this because they don't know what else to do. They have never had many options and even when some were offered, well, its hard to teach an old dog (or teacher) new tricks. Thank goodness that someone has done something to fix this problem. The recent explosion in brain science caused one doctor to look at the way we teach reading a little differently. He combined neuroscience with his teaching background and stirred in a great deal of common sense, with just a touch of his background in learning to read Russian. The result has been nothing short of a miracle. Not only does his method work, it works fast and kids love it. Most students are able to advance a full grade level after only 15 lessons with this doctor (or 3 months with a parent as teacher.)
For you skeptics out there, take a look at the quotes below, their sources are listed so that you can check them if you wish.
The National Institute of Health has declared reading problems to be a "Public Health Problem" not because it can make you sick but because of the gigantic impact it can have on someone's life. Significant reading problems mean you are 25 times more likely to use drugs, 50 times more likely to go to jail and 100 times more likely to drop out of school. Source: Testimony by Dr. Reid Lyon of N.I.H. before Congress on July 10, 1997.
"Unfortunately, it appears that for about half of our nation's children, learning to read is a much more formidable challenge, and for at least 20 to 30 percent, reading is one of the most difficult tasks they will have to master in their life." Source: Testimony by Dr. Reid Lyon of N.I.H. before Congress on July 10, 1997.
"Unfortunately, several recent studies and surveys of teacher knowledge about reading indicate that many teachers are under prepared to teach reading. At present motivated teachers are left on their own to obtain skills in methods of teaching reading" Source: Testimony by Dr. Reid Lyon of N.I.H. before Congress on July 10, 1997.
The United States ranks 15th in the world in average reading scores of 15 year olds. Source: U.S. Dept. of Education, Outcomes of Learning, 2000
Thirty seven percent of 4th graders read below the basic level and another twenty five percent read just at the basic level. Only thirty two percent read at or above the proficient level. Source: Reading Performance of Students in Grade 4, U.S. Dept. of Education, NCES, 2001.
Students at age 9 had a reading scale score of 214 in 1980, in 1999 that score was 210. Thirteen year olds had a score of 257 in 1980 and 257 in 1999. This was in public schools, in private schools 9 years olds lost ground. Source: Learner Outcomes, Trends in reading Performance 1980 - 1999, National center for Education Statistics, 1999
By age 17, only about 1 in 18 seventeen year olds can read and gain information from specialized text, like a local newspaper, only 1 in 100 African Americans can. Source: Reading Facts, National Institute for Literacy, 2003
44 million adults in the U.S. can't read well enough to read a simple story to a child. Source: National Adult Literacy Survey (1992) NCED, U.S. Department of Education
So strong is the link between literacy and being a useful member of society that some states (Arizona for one) use statistics concerning the number of students not reading on grade level as a factor in projecting future prison construction. - Bob Chase, President, National Education Association
Since 1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a very basic level. In the same period, more than 6 million Americans dropped out of high school altogether. Source: A Nation Still at Risk, U.S. Department of Education, 1999